Tuesday 16th January

 The rest of my Ladybird 'What to look for' books, Spring and Summer, arrived today, secondhand and beautifully packaged, from Country House booksellers. They both look well-used, one has a boy's name written in it, the other 'Borthwick'. I guess that could be a name or a school. I do love wondering who had the books before me.

I've put them to one side for now. I'll keep dipping into the winter one until the end of February. 

Yesterday was the beginning of the next microseason in my Nature's Calendar, the year in 72 seasons book.

I think I might have noticed that snowdrops have three petals, but I didn't know enough about flowers to know this is relatively unusual. Ours began to flower just before Christmas so they must be an early flowering variety. They will keep going for most of February. 

Pearl earrings, of the type in the famous 'girl with a pearl earing' portrait were known as scheetropfen in German. 

In France they are sometimes called violettes dela Chandeleur - Candlemas violets.

At long last I have tackled the East-facing bay windows in the sitting room. The sun shines in all morning, so every mark is very obvious. I've done three of the five sections, and then had to stop. I'll have to ask Himself to do the other two sections as they are tricky to get to. 

I won't know how successful I've been at removing streaks, spots and smears until the sun shines through tomorrow. I washed the glass with hot water with a spot of fairy liquid, rinsed them twice, dried them and finally polished the glass with a vileda glass cloth. Surely that should have been enough? I notice I had added 1000 steps to my step count by the time I finished.

Every time I walked into the sitting room I paused to admire my handiwork. Clean windows make such a differ ence!

Next will be the bay windows in the bedroom. These also face East and get the morning sun, so also annoy me all morning if they are dirty! 

I'll leave the windows at the back of the house for a few weeks as the sun doesn't reach them at the moment. Maybe it would be a good idea to allocate a few windows to each month; kitchen in February, back of the house in March, landing and bathroom in April? Sounds like a plan.