BACKYARD BLISS | Spring: the season for renewal, growth and change

Have you noticed how your whole life changes as each season roles in and out?

As spring kicks in these are the things that we notice and how they change our lives:

There is more sun action - this glorious ball of warmth starts to stick around longer, increasing our days length to luxurious, long evenings.

This means that even while we might be on task with projects all day, there's still time for swimming in the ocean, a barbecue with our mates at the park or evening gardening sessions where we stumble inside around 9pm and only then start thinking about dinner.

Actually, spring is usually when we start to eat outside around the campfire, which is pretty much the best thing ever - so we don't really come inside until bed time.

Also known as the windy season, spring is the time where we generally pray our roof doesn't fly away.

We know that over the next few months there will be some crazy wind storms where we'll have to straighten our tomatoes and that we may loose some corn or beans to the wind gods and goddesses.

To prevent too much damage, we plant them in tight clusters and we plant a bit extra, just to be safe.

After a decent winter hiatus our chickens and duck are back on the lay, which means everything egg is on the menu again.

Our diets change drastically with the seasons, although due to our mega preserving sessions we're still happily eating tomatoes, beans and cucumbers from last summer.

But we're looking forward to the fresh factor and crunching into everything that the warmer months bring.

We have the perfect place to nurse a couple of thousand babies - of the seedling variety, that is. Our wicked sunroom allows us to get a started on propagating.

All through late winter and early spring we are attentive parents to our green babies, making sure they get watered first thing in the morning as we drink our coffee. As they grow and move out into the garden, our rhythms change and we drink our tea and coffee outside - while checking for slug damage.

Soil is always a bit of a focus around here - but come spring we start digging in green manures and making compost piles with the excess green waste from the winter crops we pull out.

Then it's on to prepping the beds with compost and perhaps some gentle aerating for the new crops.

When the soil is happy, we're happy, so the seasonal changes allows us to check in with it in a major way.

Having grown up in Queensland, I don't think I owned a proper pair of shoes until I had to start school. As a result I'm a broad footed lass whose feet long to be outside and free.

This is the season where we can dust off the thongs or just go barefoot and toughen up our soft feet with sunshine and dirt.

As much as we try not to, we do tend to hibernate in winter. It's just that our fireplace and books seem more enticing and cosy than navigating chilly, wet nights or days. Come spring though, you'll find us well rested and seeking out friends in their kitchens, down the street or out in their paddocks.

However, the world is a big and interesting place full of uncertainty right now. Perhaps it always is - but we're all just being personally impacted by it right now due to the global spread of COVID-19.

So while the socialising aspect of spring is different this year, it does offer the perfect time to ask ourselves "what type of world do we want to re-emerge into" on the other side of all this. Time to imagine a better way forward.