Markers of spring

Every year we go through  a similar process as we move from winter to spring, via our "extra" season, spring-winter.
The first signs come long before the snow goes, as the days get longer. We hear birds starting to sing. It gets warm enough on sunny days to sit out on the south side of the house and drink your morning tea. Colour seems to return the world - which has been very monochrome at midwinter. Cumulus clouds appear in the sky for the first time since last autumn.
Most of the other signs happen as the snow melts away. Rhubarb starts pushing up through the soil. The whole path to the car is free of snow.  We change from winter tyres to summer ones. Flowers appear. The first coltsfoot, and the first liverwort flowers appear. Daphne (tibast in Swedish) flowers come out, even as the bush is growing out of the snow. We hang our washing out to dry.
Today it is those final two things on the list that feature on my blip. The washing is hanging out, and we have seen daphne flowers on the edge of the garden (extra). Since I started blipping I have often photographed these events, so now I have a record and can compare with earlier years, in a rather nerdish way! Hanging out the washing now comes 3- 4 weeks earlier than normal. (The last 4 years it was 22 April twice, and the 28 and 30 April.) Daphne is different because it flowers whether or not the snow is there. So in 2016 and 2020 it bloomed in March and the other years it was later than now, throughout April.
We did the first long walk of our "get fit by walking" program. Long is, of course, a subjective term but objectively we walked about 8 kms, 11200 steps. We both felt a bit tired by the time we got home but it's been a winter of colds and flu so we feel fine with how things are going.
We've one more day of this unusually warm weather and then things get a little colder, though still mostly above freezing.