Awaiting Spring.............

I'm always anxious, like most people, for the weather to warm up after the long Winter months.  I do not however like really hot weather........88 degrees here a few days ago was just a bit uncomfortable!

After all, who in their right mind has appropriate hot weather clothing at the ready to throw on in February? Closet cleaning is now in session here at the cottage.

Good thing was the heat allowed opening the grimy windows and feeling fresh air waft in, followed by slamming them shut and cranking up the air conditioning when we started feeling miserably warm (apologies to dear friends still looking at snow). Yes Spring is definitely in the air here.

Home in Springtime!  Oh how my heart aches to be in Devon when the loveliest season arrives.  The brilliant green grass where new lambs gambol. Fields of dancing daffodils, pale yellow primroses in the hedgerows, and stunning bluebell woods. The fields run down to the cliffs which then plunge deeply to the sea. 

These images are from 2009, already two long years ago. Last year you will recall I was on that fabulous safari in Africa in May!  

Nowhere on earth is more beautiful to me than Devon.

The patchwork would almost be impossible to replicate with fabric......colors and shapes so amazing, the flora delicate and so fresh.  Quilters out there, could you stitch this with your wonderful talents?  Perhaps applique the 200 year-old English oaks, the lacy wildflowers along the lanes.  See the deep blue between the land and sky?  The ocean separating my two homes...............my birthplace and my adopted land.

This view is so loved.  It's where I now stay when visiting my home town - I walk from the apartment we rent down through the gardens to the beach below.  No longer having the family home is sad, however we didn't have a sea view there so this lovely place is now special also. In Spring it's too cold for bathing but the walks along the shore and up into the cliffs are wonderful.  I try to do it early morning alone, and then in mid-afternoon with DH.  We find a bench to sit and look out across Tor Bay and the English Channel to France, now home to part of my family. Too distant to be visible, except in one's imagination, but it is there, the Brittany and Normandy coastline.

Why am I showing you my home today?  Not because I'm sad but because I'll be heading across the pond for a visit in May.....and I'm already so excited.

Have you visited England's West Country, the counties of Devon, Cornwall, Somerset and Dorset?  If so, please share your stories.  If you ever plan to go you will be amazed at just how beautiful the area is.