“We’ve reached a time in human history when our global environmental crisis requires that we make permanent life-style changes. More than ever before, we need to fall back in love with the land. Silence is our meeting place.”
– Gordon Hempton
Gordon Hempton, and acoustic ecologist warns that silence, true silence, where man-made noise does not intrude, is becoming endangered. In a world where most people live in urban communities, this noise is a background hum that fades into the category of white noise – something most people aren’t even aware of. It is a good thing that we get used to it and learn to live with it, but it really is to our detriment, as communing with silence has a direct impact on the quality of our lives.
In Abu Dhabi, even when I was out on the water on my surf-ski, the hum of the city reverberated in my cells. Here on the quinta in Portugal, it is a vibration and energy that is absent from my life. Except for on those days when tractors, diggers, or other big machinery operates in the area, and I am reminded of how precious the silence of my daily life has become.
To be at home in nature, and to truly listen to our surroundings, Gordon Hempton says, we need to pay attention to where we are. In this way, when I engage in physical chores involving only a pair of secateurs, not only am I feeling part of my surroundings, but am essentially engaging in a contemplative practice. It is my moving meditation, my yoga in motion off my mat. It is paying attention to the moment, the task, and how my body engages in it. My ears sharpen to the sounds I am surrounded with – the click of the secateurs, the subtle variations in birdsong, a rustle of leaves, the buzzing of bees, and the rumble of my inner voice.
All 50,000 words that scientists reckon swirl around our brains each and every day in the form of thoughts, suddenly clamour for my attention in these peaceful and quiet moments. The chatter of my inner voice is almost imperceptible when I am surrounded by activity and noise, even when it is always lurking around with comments and observations. Mostly it is just ticking off lists or reminders, but sometimes it is replaying social interactions in which I wish I said something different, or these days picking at all the loose ends of officialdom.
It is then that my feelings of exasperation and frustration roll itself up into a tight ball in my chest. I’ve been in Portugal long enough to realise that hardly any encounter with an official process is simple or straightforward. There are unexpected moments of surprise when human rationality and practicality override the lethargic disinterest of a bureaucratic system, but they are few and far between, so I cling to them like a drowning person would to a piece of wood.
The history of a culture can shed light on many things, as I know from my own experience of being a South African who grew up during the last two decades of Apartheid – reverberations of which still echo through daily life in complicated and surprising ways, which may confuse and baffle outsiders.
Portugal’s years under a dictatorship has created a population who is still very compliant when it comes to following rules. In some ways it is a good trait, and perhaps also why the vaccination rates are so high here, but in other ways it can be extremely frustrating. Clear explanations of requirements or processes, I find, are often severely lacking, which leads to various shades of confusion and frustration. When one is taught to follow rules, like I was in South Africa, one is definitely not encouraged to question them. Not even for clarification purposes. Do as you are told. End of discussion. The longer I’m living here, the more similarities I notice between South Africa and Portugal. Both to my delight and frustration.
As a teenager I lived with an explosive cocktail of emotions threatening to erupt at the slightest movement of the crust of my world into a spewing young volcano unsure of its destiny and path, but intent on finding its place in the world.
My interior world these days, mellowed with age, is more like an ancient, dormant volcano. It takes much longer for the pressure to build up. Sometimes it eases off before it can erupt, but every once in a while, there is a bubbling over. Nothing life threatening, and it is mostly just those closest to me who play witness to the spilling over of frustration and agitation, before it dies down into a low rumble, and dormancy again.
Luckily every time I encounter some frustration that leaves me despondent, something happens to counterbalance it and restore my faith, not just in the Portuguese, but in humanity at large. An example of this was when Michael’s Portuguese bank card arrived in the mail. Apart from the fact that a bank would actually send a card by mail (in South Africa you have to collect it from your bank, and it is only issued when your fingerprints match that on record), what surprised me most, and restored my faith in the practical intelligence and goodness of people, is that the address the bank used is not an actual physical address where mail can be received. To complicate the matter, our quinta’s name was also misspelled, yet the lady who works at the post office, where we have a post box inside, and where I recently went to pay the rent of it for the year, must have put two and two together, and slipped it into our post box. Bless her soul, I thought with extra gratitude, as I received it after a particularly challenging and emotional day. That single act managed to cool the simmering, molten rock inside of me by a couple degrees centigrade.
* * * * *
ON MY PLATE & IN THE GARDEN
The world is full of a biodiversity that is shunned and overlooked in a world that favours monocultures, and I am particularly keen on making sure we plant a variety of different edible plants on the quinta. So why stop at those fruit trees that grow best in this climate like peaches, cherries, oranges, and figs? My latest shopping spree included different varieties of passion fruit, strawberry guavas, pitangas, pitangatubas, and two palo verde trees. Now I just need to find the best spots for them, as some of them are a bit sensitive to frost. Luckily Michael is scheduled for a quick visit soon, so we can do some planning together, which he often misses out on.
WEATHERING THE WEATHER
It has been a dry February, with only 2 mm of rain. Our last good rains fell before Christmas. Surprisingly our sharka (seasonal pond) is still full and the croaking of frog voices often float through the still air in the form of an early evening chorus. Something that also prompts regular visits from a lone stork at the moment. Predictions of rain on a couple of occasions during the month have been like fata morganas hovering on the horizon, full of promise, only to disappear and move further into the distance as one moves closer in time.
We’ve had 5 days of frost, mostly just light frost. At least that I know of, as I’ve been lingering in bed either writing or learning Portuguese, and light frost is only noticeable, when I venture outside. There was one morning, when the world was drowned in mist and another day with extremely strong winds.
The weather has always impacted my mood and well-being, but now, living closer to the land, I find that the influence is even more pronounced. So on that note, I have to confess that I’ve now had enough of cold weather. For someone who grew up in the, what I now consider near-perfect weather of South Africa, and has spent 9 years in the brutal heat of the UAE, Portugal’s winters are cold and oh so long. Spring is luckily busy unfolding around me, and there is a strength in the sun that is slowly returning after a long absence, but like in all times of transition, the weather is wildly fluctuating between warm spring and chilly wintery days.
OFFICIALDOM
On the days my sense of humour threatens to desert me, I have to remind myself why I am trying to live here. Especially as there is still a delay in the visa process, and I feel frustrated that I am stuck in one place.
And then there are those unexpected frustrations when dealing with matters that should be straight forward, but where it is the attitude of people or lack of interest that is the stumbling block. After confusing instructions were recently issued in an email relating to the technical nitty gritty of the online Portuguese language course I enrolled in, my email asking for clarification was promptly ignored. This poor communication led to about 8 of us connecting incorrectly to the second lesson, and then being thrown out of the meeting without an explanation by the teacher. Long story short, I knew that both the confusion and the answer were embedded in that first email we received. An email whose instructions, so by the way, at first glance even confused my more tech savvy husband. I decided to try and solve the confusion myself first, before bothering him with it, and after a couple of tries, I did. But here is my bitch about it. If the person who wrote the email gave clear instructions in the first place, there would not have been an issue. I’ve managed to set up a credit card payment option on our website, after all, a much more complicated process, but as the instructions were clear, they were easy to follow.
After I had to send more than one official document to the company, the person in charge of setting up my Teams login details still managed to get the spelling of my name wrong. Sadly, it grates me more than it should. Wanting to fix it so that I can avoid potential problems down the road, I sent a polite email to get it fixed. A deadly silence followed. Now, I can of course ignore this, and deal with the resultant inner chatter in the hope that it will be another person in charge of transferring my name onto the eventual certificate. But after having been in Portugal for a while now, I realise that it is a bit like hoping to find a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Or maybe more accurately, winning the lottery, as there is that off-chance that they may get it right, of course. A friend, who did the same course a while ago, and found his name spelled incorrectly on his certificate had to battle through a year’s worth of emails before it was corrected. It was only when he, out of exasperation, asked for the details of their complaints book that the person in charge was prompted into action and corrected the mistake.
MIDNIGHT & LILY
PORTUGUESE WORDS
barulho – noise
ouvir – listen
silêncio – silence
correio – post office
Perhaps the biggest challenge when learning a new language is where to even begin with the enormous amount of vocabulary one needs to master in order to understand even the most basic of sentences. Simply starting at words with beginning with ‘a’ will lead to exhaustion before even reaching ‘b’. Starting with some basic categories is a logical place to start at, especially as they are fairly small and contained – days; months; colours; numbers. It appears that most language courses use these as springboards, but then things can become both interesting, as words need to be combined with others to form sentences to convey meaning. And that is when the real fun in Portuguese starts. Did I say fun? I mean challenge. Let me try to explain what I understand, and please correct me if I’m wrong.
Take for example a simple sentence like:
My two cats are black. In Portuguese, if they are female the sentence will read:
As minhas duas gatas são pretas.
If they are male, every single word in the sentence will take on a different form, except for são (is):
Os meus dois gatos são pretos.
If I use the same sentence, but refer to just one cat:
A minha gata é preta. (feminino – female)
O meu gato é preto. (masculino – male)
NOTES
# Consider the following statistic:
In 2008 only around 27% of Portuguese aged between 25 and 64 had completed secondary school. (The second worst was neighbouring Spain with 51 percent.) Fast forward this statistic by 14 years to 2022, and those 25-year-olds today, are 39-year-olds. I’m not trying to bash the Portuguese, but this fact does explain a lot about the challenges people who live in Portugal face on a daily basis in a variety of situations – both foreign and Portuguese. (Source: The Portuguese by Barry Hatton)
# According to the World Health Organization, noise is one of the most hazardous forms of pollution and has become omnipresent in both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.
TO READ
# Chatter: The Voice in Our Head and How to Harness it – Ethan Kross
TO LISTEN TO
# Interview with Gordon Hempton (episode 889) on the On Being podcast
# Interview with Ethan Kross (episode 501) on The Lucas Rockwood Show
LINKS TO WEBSITES
# To find a potential Quiet Wilderness Park near you, click here.
# To explore the Quiet Parks International website, click here.
“Silence is not the absence of something, but the presence of everything. It is the presence of time, undisturbed.”
– Gordon Hempton
Written by: Jolandi
You’re so fortunate to live in a rural area where the wind in the trees and the occasional bird are the only sounds in the background. I have to admit though that I have inflicted a great deal of noise on myself: I often do housework with my phone tuned in to the latest podcast or streaming news site, and when I finally get a break, I sit with the radio or TV playing. Yesterday however, I found myself getting stressed out, and realized it was the unrelenting stream of bad news about the Ukraine, global warming, and the anti-mask protests in my area. (It seems a number of Americans hate any restriction on their “freedom,” even if their behavior endangers others. I somewhat envy the Portuguese, though I don’t like bureaucratic nitpicking either.) So I shut off the radio and put the phone down: it wasn’t real, absolute silence—you’re right, there’s a constant drone in the background when you live in a city, whether it’s electrical appliances humming inside the house or the almost ocean-like roar of traffic from the nearby freeway. But for a while, I could hear my own thoughts again. Not that they were always pleasant! Again, you’re right, as one ages it seems like one becomes more like a dormant volcano. I also had tumultuous, angry adolescence, and I sometimes feel that anger roiling inside when I ruminate too much. But I also know how to calm myself, which is a skill one acquires with age.
Anyway, it’s good to hear from you again! I have wondered how you were doing with all the paperwork of becoming a permanent resident of Portugal and settling into rural life.
When one lives in a city, I think it is often the default mode to drown noise with noise, Hangaku. I love reading about your own battles with balancing noise and silence, both from the world and inside. I love listening to podcasts, but I find that it is only when I am cooking, doing dishes, or the odd bit of ironing that I can fully engage with it. When I am outside, the silence is definitely like a soft, comforting blanket, because inside the fridge is humming away . . . 🙉😆 – Jolandi
Dear Jolandi You are so brave! So many challenges and frustrations that you are managing for the most part on your own. It is hard enough navigating bureaucracy when you do speak the lingo so I can only imagine the gut wrenching churnings and mind messing you are coping with. Well done!
I hope Michael is able to join you soon and that your hard work on the quinta bears fruit in the summer which must surely be on its way. X
Thank you, Christina. You know, I am starting to understand that no matter where in the world you are, there is always a degree of bureaucracy. One of the joys of blogging is that one doesn’t only share one’s own experience, but others share theirs back. It definitely makes me feel less lonely knowing we all grapple with similar things no matter where we live in the world. Michael has just arrived for a quick visit, which is so lovely. Big hug. – Jolandi
You might find these websites of interest:
http://www.seedsofsilence.org.uk/silence-quotes.html
https://www.meetup.com/Tuesday-English-Portuguese-conversation/events/283861256/?
Thanks for both links, Trevor. I love them both. I am a true sucker for a good quote, and will definitely have a look at joining up in one of these conversations. It should be fun, even when it is online. – Jolandi
“I have to remind myself why I am trying to live here.” I’m not sure exactly why, but that line made me laugh out loud. You so aptly captured the challenge, and the determination. I just read about Michael’s sea rescue today, for the first time. It makes sense that that experience is connected to why you are trying to live there. Lily looks exhausted from all that studying, and yes! I recently had a similar meltdown in a blog post with learning all the different ways to say a sentence depending on whether the subjects are male or female or singular or plural, when in English one sentence would cover all situations, or maybe just add an “s.” It makes me frustrated and resentful at first. But once I am fluent (because I will become fluent, damnit), I am sure it will make more sense than a lazy language that uses only one sentence to cover multiple situations.
I love hearing about your own battles with learning another language, Crystal, and I am glad to hear that you are determined to become fluent. One has to remind oneself in those challenging times why one wants to do something, as it really helps one to cope with the inevitable challenges. – Jolandi
When I lived in the London suburbs I hardly noticed the noise from traffic – cars, bikes, planes, buses, trains – I was so used to it, it was as if it wasn’t there. I now live outside a small village in a rural agricultural area. It is very quiet though sadly not as quiet as it used to be and because some of the farmers here like to keep their shed and barn lights on all night there is also more light pollution than there used to be. Some of our visitors are intimidated by the dark and the silence and rush back to town with a sigh of relief!
I hope your difficulties with officialdom become less as time goes by. I also hope the language classes become clearer as your expertise grows.
Spring will come eventually and so will the warm weather. We have had no real snow this winter but the forecasters say that there may be a chance of some very cold weather and maybe snow during the next week or so. Typically, the worst weather just as March is here!
I hope you and Michael have good weather when he visits and you manage to make some plans and have some relaxation, too
Love Clare xoxo
It is a pity about the light pollution in your area, Clare. I love how bright the stars are here on a moonless night. Both light and noise pollution are sad realities of modern life, and they are so often not restricted to cities only. It is fascinating how so many people feel uncomfortable with the dark and silence. Perhaps it is a good thing, as most people have no choice, but to live in a city.
Michael just arrived, and so did the cold! Like you say, it is often typical that the worst weather will arrive in March when one is ready for the warmth of spring. Fingers crossed good weather will be around the corner for both of us. Big hug. – Jolandi
Silence is something I also began to appreciate as I grow older. I remember there was a time when the air-conditioner and other electrical appliances were turned off and there wasn’t noise from the surroundings, and I thought, hey this is nice!
Portugal and South Africa sound so similar to Indonesia in the sense that people generally follow rules without asking too many questions. This often frustrates me especially if there are rules that don’t make any sense at all. There was a time when I confronted a person for doing something that made me uncomfortable. When I asked him why, he said “my boss told me so.” Sometimes I wish people think more critically when they are given an order, so that at least they know why they are doing it.
I’m also continually ‘amused’ by how similar Portuguese and Indonesians are when it comes to inefficiency in bureaucracy. I hope over time you’ll manage to deal with it, Jolandi.
I always find it interesting how one’s preferences change when getting older, Bama. You are right in how much noise electrical appliances emit. I said to Michael that when the cold in Portugal wears us down, we should just move to Indonesia, as it sounds like we will feel right at home there. I really love how I gain insight into Indonesian culture through your blog and your comments here, Bama. It appears that bureaucracy is more a norm than an exception in most countries. A reality that I find quite sad, as it doesn’t shed a good light on our ability to think in practical and intelligent ways as humans. – Jolandi
Ha! if you really do consider moving to Indonesia, please let me know way in advance so I can provide you with some more warnings about what you will encounter here. 🙂 Apart from those, life is quite good.
😂 I will definitely do that, Bama.
I can remember once telling someone who was interested in moving to rural Portugal that I would tell him exactly what we did, so that he can do the exact opposite. Thank goodness my sense of humour has saved many a day, but I honestly think that I only have enough life force for one of these adventures in this life. If there is such a thing as reincarnation, I may even skip a couple of lifetimes before I would be prepared to take on another of these challenges. 😅 Moving to the UAE, because it can only be temporary was a breeze in comparison. – Jolandi
As always, you have sparked so many thoughts in me. Many years ago, I did a course with the School for Self-Knowledge. Drawing on many belief systems, cultures and religions, it was a lot about self-awareness, wisdom, ego, etc and focused the mind on staying in the present. I enjoyed the first two terms, but gave it up as we advanced and I became worried we were going to get to plaiting our navel hair, or some other esoteric form of meditation. But much of what you say about actively listening to silence was a part of that.
As for learning languages, luckily I have an ear for them, and the basics of gender and plurals I can usually master. In Serbo-Croat, I had to decline words according to whether I was male or female. Since I heard more male voices than female, I often fell into the trap of using their declensions. LOL. But when I got to Japanese, a mere two hours a week while speaking English all the rest of the time, and needed to master a different way of counting depending on the item being counted, I really lost it and gave up after a term. Unfortunately, here in Australia, there is little use for anything but English unless you are mixing with other cultures, and so I am rusty on whatever I did know. For example, I listen in Italian and answer in English. But I used to work with Portuguese speakers, and the physical sound was quite different to Mainland or Latino Spanish, or Italian – even though you might imagine they would be related languages. I feel it is influenced by Arabic and perhaps even Maltese. I’d have to live there to acquire the “marble in the mouth” inflection. And as for bureaucratic mix-ups, in the days before internet I applied by snail mail to attend the University for Foreigners in Perugia, Italy to learn Italian. The Uni accepted me, but their letter arrived three months after the course had started. I’d enrolled in a private school in Rome by then.
One of the wonderful things about coming out the other side of winter is that week by week you can observe spring, springing up. Not like in Australia, and I assume in South Africa, the sudden realisation that the flowers and landscape have changed, even if your wardrobe hasn’t.
Solitude and reflection are great enjoyments, but one does have to be alert to ruminating on negative thoughts and emotions, so the occasional volcano explosion is not a bad thing in my book!
Your comments are always so interesting, Gwen. And I had a good giggle about your Uni acceptance letter that arrived three months after the course started. I admire your forays into learning a variety of different languages. I definitely wish I had your knack for languages, but even without it, I will keep going, as I know I will be grateful if I persevere. Even if I never speak it very well. Like you point out, Portuguese does have very specific sounds, which one has to learn to wrap one’s tongue around – a whole lot of ‘sh’ sounds can make one feel one is stuck in a tongue twister.
Your observation about spring in Australia is spot on for South Africa too. Spring and autumn are almost non-existent. I can remember the first time I came to Europe, people asked me if there were four seasons in South Africa. My reply was ‘of course!’ But that changed when I realised what four seasons actually look like. 😂 – Jolandi
I’m just catching up on your reply to my comment, as I checked back from your April post. For some reason, my email does not alert me. That’s why I started commenting sometime on your Facebook version.
Anyway, thank you for such lovely feedback, and also to hear our reminiscences about changing seasons have much in common.
I couldn’t believe it at first but you cannot win in Italy either. Lottery it is, everything, the internet connection, the post, the prices, etc. I realise that I’m much less pedantic that I assumed and just go with the flow. It helps that amore is Italian and I learn by example. I bet it is tough but I’m sure with years you will harden. Wishing you well and much fun with language learning. And that the spring wins soon!
From what I hear from others, both Italy and France make bureaucracy in other places pale in comparisson, Manja. It appears that the human race in general severely lack common sense. 🙊 You are definitely right in that one should have a more ‘go with the flow’ attitude. It is definitely a state of mind I have to adopt in order to cope. – Jolandi
Hi jolandi , For years I have been following your blog and your life’s journey… it truly is a gift and I thank you for yr sharing and the human connection. Here in south Oz where I live on the edge of the southern Ocean on the outskirts of a small town called goolwa at the mouth of the Murray River..I truly know and appreciate the joy of being able to connect w nature and stillness, silence and the sounds of the ocean. I love that the seasons are changing and the mornings are crisp, that my garden is in constant change, that the creatures I share this with continue to come and go, most likely more aware of time passing and where to be and what to do. I’m also aware that life on our planet is changing and at times have great sadness that as humans we are soo unaware of our destructive actions.
Keep going with learning Portuguese..I too struggle with learning another language . . Indonesian..for I have a deep connection w Indonesia tho I have not been able to be there for some years now.
Take care and continue to be present thank you again Trees
Thank you so much for this lovely comment, Trees. I love how it gives me insight in your thoughts and way of life. The sounds of the ocean isn’t something I miss per se, but when I am at the ocean I always marvel at the wonderful gifts it brings, so it is definitely lucky that you live near to it.
I wonder if you follow Bama’s blog. He is Indonesian, and although he writes about other travel adventures too, a lot of it is focused on Indonesia. Perhaps it can soothe your yearning in some way: https://harindabama.com/
I hope you will be able to find your way there again soon. – Jolandi
This is a great read, Jolandi, and something I’ve thought about almost subconsciously. The feel of a big city is something special and to wrap yourself up in at times ~ but when I head back to my small hometown in Oregon, it is such a different feeling. A different vibe. This post explains it ~ the natural, almost spiritual silence that nature holds has such a positive affect on us. I too had to smile at your line “I have to remind myself why I am trying to live here.”
Thank you, Randall. I just spent three nights in Madrid, and although it was lovely to dress up a bit, eat food I cannot find here in restaurants that are physically appealing, and browse through stores with beautiful products I don’t otherwise see, it was so much nicer to come back home to the silence, peace, and simplicity of the quinta. I am glad I can do it this way around, and not the other way like I used to when I lived in the city. That said, I always marvel at how adaptable we are as humans to live in environments that vary greatly from one another. – Jolandi
I remember the first time I realized how much background noise we live with — the power cut off at the office and the silence was unreal, and surprising. Our computers emit a low-grade noise, the fans, A/Cs, traffic in the background, and much to our great annoyance, our fish tank bubbler, all make noise which we’ve learned to ‘tune out’.
Noise pollution is definitely one of the biggest challenges about living in SEA. So you’re quite lucky, but I know you might not always feel that way given the bureaucracy you are dealing with these days. Portugal and S. Af sound a lot like Thailand and Cambo, too. And the school where I work has got me ugly crying on a regular basis. The ability to triangulate information and make decisions with both feet on the ground are rarities apparently.
I found myself relating maybe a little too well to what you’re going through. My fear is that once my volcanic pressure reaches that tipping point, I’ll say something I’ll regret. Here’s hoping our heads remain cool and our hearts warm. xo
Oh my goodness, Lani, my heart goes out to you. I can so relate to the ‘ugly crying’ and hope that your volcano doesn’t get to that tipping point, where one always regrets the words and reaction afterwards. I cringe when I think how many times in my life I’ve stepped into that. Life can be so frustrating, especially when one can see that it doesn’t have to be. But like you point out, almost no culture is without bureaucracy or inability of people who can think and process information with both feet on the ground. I often despair for humanity in general, when I read about these experiences. Cheers to ‘cool heads and warm hearts’! – Jolandi
Hello again Jolandi,
I am finally caught up on your lovely articles! It is eerily comforting that I read this just when I was relishing the moments of “silence” in our home this afternoon. My husband and I lived in Tokyo for over 10 years because of our jobs. As neither of us were “city people” being surrounded by constant noise was something we could never grow accustomed to. What a relief it was for our senses (and spirit) when we moved closer to my husband’s hometown – away from the city and a footstep away from nature. I still remember tearing up the first night we spent out here – pure silence and a star filled sky.
As you have noted, bureaucracy is the common factor across all countries, and admittedly I was grumbling about the annual tax procedures, etc for our home. But the moment I step outside and walk around our neighborhood, hearing the birds chirping as Spring approaches, I am reminded that I am not alone, and these minor hassles are worth it.
I can also relate to fantastic eruptions and simmering bubbling reaching the breaking point. It is easier said than done of course, but I hope taking a few deep breaths and looking outside at your piece of heaven will bring a smile to your face today. As always, our best to both of you, and take care my friend.
Takami 🙂
Just reading your lovely words bring a smile to my face, Takami. Your words resonate deep within me. Countries and cultures add flavour and nuance to experiences, but there are human experiences that bind us all together no matter where we live in the world. Our connection to nature is definitely one we specifically share, and like you point out, I will put up with a lot because of that. The ability to immerse oneself in nature is such a privilege and blessing. Wishing you a gorgeous spring season. I love how nature puts on her party clothes and the birdsong becomes louder and more cheerful. There are definitely a lot of bees buzzing around at the moment. – Jolandi
Ps Good luck with the tax procedures for the house.