A lazy Sunday Springy morning

A weed.

The tell-tale green haze on the willows, tiny leaflets on the rose bush and clematis, the sweet smell of manure from nearby farms hanging in the air. Another sign: I sighted the first Ferrari of the season yesterday - a 355, freed from its winter lair, shamelessly downshifting for no obvious reason other than to make a cheerful noise, flaunting its 8-cylinder muscle at the record-high gasoline prices we seem to be saddled with in these parts.

Spring, it seems, is here, as is the annual post about it, I guess.

And with spring comes grant deadlines, unfortunately. I have a string of them on my whiteboard at work, stretching out through mid-May (and a few long-range ones into July, and even October). Which goes a long way towards explaining why posts here have been thin, to say the least, even taking yesterday's exceedingly lame effort into consideration.

Of course, the deadlines really have the effect of feeding my procrastination engine: weekends are now so nice and sunny (although still cool, with a crisp breeze blowing today) that I have no problem at all in finding multiple things to do instead of grant-writing (or blogging, for that matter). Even mundane tasks, like dismantling the ageing composter, or picking last year's ivy leaves out of the flower beds, take on a remarkably romantic appeal when compared with sitting and typing about this piece of equipment, or that budget line item, or trying to articulate in 2,000 characters or less why we need great gobs of government money to do our research.

I would type more now, but I need to pour some more coffee, and maybe barbeque some lunch. Having already been roped into playing a couple of rounds of a Scooby-Doo boardgame, after watching the red cars dominate the Spanish Grand Prix, I'd say that this Sunday, like many others, is shaping up to be another less-productive-than-anticipated day. Ah well. At least there's a blog post to show for it.