Routine and making small changes.

Isn't it lovely to return to routines! - she says wryly.

Return from holiday and start by topping up the bird feeders. (priorities)

The grass needs cutting.

It has rained without cessation while we have been away.  I can tell from the state of the stream across the road.

Return from holiday and find that you can't get a place in any of the classes you regularly attend at the local fitness centre.

Return from holiday to the obligation to complete the clean-up on the allotment regardless of the state of the water logged soil.  Someone (and I may have had an inadvertent hand in this) has kicked the site managers into activity and they are insisting that any plots being relinquished must be handed over by the end of March.  They never used to care and would leave plots a full season (or more) from handover to reallocation; letting them get rundown and overgrown in the process.  March is sensible, it gives new plot holders a good start on the season - if they are reallocated promptly. Mine looks good (with the exception of a few rows of remaining winter veg), but I had wanted to bury the compost, and finish spreading a straw mulch over the last couple of beds.

Return from holiday to a load of laundry.  Fortunately a booking mess-up meant that we stayed our last night in a different place (nearer the airport) and it had a washing machine so we managed to do one load of laundry before we left.

Return from holiday to regular commuting. Grrrrr - the familiar routine of rail replacement busses, trains that cannot run on time or are last minute cancelled for no apparent reason, overcrowding, out of order toilets, stained seats (why do people eat and drink on trains and how do they manage to get half of it on some of the seats?)

Return from holiday to a week of participating in 'household plastic waste' survey: count and categorize all the plastic wastes we generate.

And did you know that the Great British Spring Clean starts at the end of this week.  Keep Britain Tidy campaign is in its 70th year, but I suspect Britain was tidier 70 years ago and they have been facing an oncoming tsunami of single use waste materials building and building over the last 70 years.  There are so many 'reduce waste', 'clean up the mess' campaigns around these days that I really wonder how or why some people still haven't got the message.  Although, as the plastic count people point out in their website, a lot of this is pushed on us by being given little or no choice; if we want to buy food in many parts of the country these days, what is made available to us comes pre-packaged.  Like it or starve.

On a less miserable note, the message is out there that the world doesn't need a a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly.  We need millions of people doing it imperfectly. (Anne Marie Bonneau)

Make small changes.

Picture for Sandra Madsnapper - Missy, met on last day of our holiday