The hydrangeas on our front veranda are starting to shoot. Only three weeks ago, they were bare, and considering my almost perfect record of killing plants, I wondered if I’d pruned them into oblivion a few months ago. ‘Are these dead or just dormant?’ I asked, every time I walked out the front door, or stood there with the key in my hand waiting to go inside. I was almost ready to bring in the big guns (mum and mum-in-law) for advice and rescue.

Turns out they were just doing their cold-weather thing and waiting for some warmth, and now, every single day, there is more bright green foliage unfurling. In just a couple of months they’ll be weighed down by white pom pom flowers.

Over the back fence, the branches on the neighbours’ tree – the tree that heralds the seasons with such grandeur – are covered in cottony white blossom.

Because it’s spring. Finally. It’s really spring.

And I’m ready for it, and for the clutter and sludge that inevitably infiltrates my mind in the cooler months to have a good spring clean!

Diabetes takes up a lot of my headspace. Although, as I explained to friend across the seas the other day, it’s not my diabetes that is doing that. My diabetes is boring. I love my boring diabetes.

But ‘the world of diabetes’ is overwhelming me at the moment. It’s not the first time I’ve felt this way. It happens sporadically. Sometimes it’s because there is just so much going on, other times it’s because I just feel over it all. And then there are the times that my own diabetes combined with ‘work diabetes combined with ‘miscellaneous diabetes’ just gets too much.

And that’s where I’m at. I think that months holed up inside in front of the fire allow too much time to be overtaken by the minutiae of the diabetes world, and I start to take everything on board too much. So it builds up. And up and up, until I am where I am now.

I think perhaps this is my own version of SADS, but instead of seasonal affective depression I have ‘seasonally affected diabetes’. It happens each year – I can chart it alongside a weather, sunlight and heat chart.

So, I know there is light at the end of the tunnel. Melbourne is getting warmer. There are blue skies – the sorts of skies that greet me when I wake up in the morning, hang around all day and melt into beautiful sunsets in the evenings. And there is sunshine.

And with it comes some clarity to sort through the sludge, sweeping out some of the things taking up too much mental space, discarding what I should have let go of months ago.

I’m kickstarting ridding the discontent of winter by heading to warmer climes next week, initially for a holiday and then a conference. I’m hoping that in the two weeks before the conference starts will be spent outside, wandering cobblestone streets, enjoying lighter fare (and gelati) and basking in sunshine- real sunshine that will dance on my skin and penetrate all the way through to my bones.

By the time I get back home, Melbourne will be in full spring glory – the jacarandas will have started to flower, the blossoms on the tree over the fence will have scattered to the ground and given way to a covering of green leaves, dappling sunlight across the garden.

And hopefully, I’ll be lighter and clearer and spring-cleaned, with nothing more than my own (boring) diabetes.

My favourite local serving up my first iced latte of the season!