Is this anything finer in the whole year than the first sunshine of March?  It is pale yellow, sumptious, luxurious.  It smiles on you and warms your insides.  After a long winter of hunching and huddling, March sunshine allows you to open up your chest, expand outwards, stretch a little, defrost.  In January, I thought that the year had already peaked with the glory of January’s sunrises. But March’s gentle sunshine, filling us back up with an easy grace, has contended for the title of Most Magnificent Month. And, guys, we’ve not had 8pm-in-the-garden-in-May yet! There’s so much to still come.

There’s been two major themes to my March: purple and ponds.

First up, ponds.  Our pond has a leak.  A slow puncture sort of leak. But it also has amorous frogs and newts and various other creatures going about the essential business of breeding. I’ve entered a weird state of amphibian-anxiety.  I’ve been adding cans of rainwater to keep the water level up (perhaps they didn’t like that). And then there were several nights in a row in which the pond froze over.  My frog-couple stayed clinched together, every single night (and therefore all day?) for almost a fortnight.  Google tells me that frogs, when mating, might tether together for 24 hours or so.  Initially, I found it a thrill to nip out with my torch after dark to check on the frogs.  First there was the male, croaking so loudly I couldn’t hear the telly.  Then, a female, on the approach.  Then copulation! Hooray! But then it was night after night after night and eventually me and my torch gave up going out. No spawn has appeared despite the weather warming, so perhaps they’ve moved on to a different pond.  Elsewhere, we saw mounds of frozen spawn at the Policies in Galashiels, and dozens of frogs croaking and piling onto each other in the garden centre pond at Woodside.  This has been my most amphibious March ever, I think.

Secondly, purple.  My purple-obsessed baby girl turned 3 this month.  Her birthday wish was to have a big purple cake and a purple party.  We spent all month making decorations – hearts cut from her purple paintings and strung together; painted purple paper plates made into flowers; purple bunnies made from old cardboard boxes.  Her birthday was a gorgeous March-sunshine day.  Her favourite people gathered, dressed in purple, and she painted our faces and a lovely time was had.  My little cat-girl, wild angel, with her cherub hair.  I can’t wait to see everything she gets up to aged three!  She’s already my favourite artist.  I can see her influence in my work – an easy joyfulness creeping into my designs.  She paints with such freedom and happiness.  I hope she never loses that.

The spring equinox has come and gone, the clocks change this coming weekend – British summertime is in motion.  If I ever feel a bit blue about not being able to make a difference in the world, I think about the days lengthening.  Just a minute at a time, a little push every day, and somehow we go from dark-at-4pm to still-light-at-10pm.  A transformation made at the edges of the day.  I find that very hopeful.  The news has been full of all sorts of scary and awful this month – Trump, Gaza, Russia – and I’ve been finding myself looking at the roots of trees, standing by the flowing river, looking at the symmetry of a feather.  There’s a grounding in nature that can keep us sane, perhaps.  

Here’s all my March sketchbook pages: