LOOKING CLOSER

I begin this blog on February 16th - we have been in our house for 12 years. Crocuses are out, bumblebees in the garden and this after noon a Peregrine falcon flew over heading east.

It is mild today - 11C.

We have chard for supper with some rather strange veggie sausages. I hope they taste better than the Quorn mince we tried in a Shepherd's Pie (?Greengrocer's Pie)(suggestions on a postcard please.)

When you think there is nothing in the garden a good look is worth it.

Frond by the pond -

- bark on the poplar.

catkins on hazel, moss on the ground.

The big sycamore's reflection in the pond - no frogspawn yet but having had the video camera in the very bottom corner where the stream leaves the garden we have found the bathing site for many birds - tits, finches, sparrows, blackbirds, and even rabbits. 




This place is a highway for pheasants and moorhen. (or is it moorhens?) In fact the pheasants seem to go in for communal bathing!

R did much of the hard work cutting back the buddleia along the banking and carting it away to the ever growing non flammable bonfire. It looks a bit stumpy now but later in the year it will be covered in brightly coloured butterflies. 

I am enjoying the continuing mild weather despite Brexit but feel that there is something nasty, if not in the woodshed, then at least in the near future. 
It is interesting if tedious to watch our political parties with the knives out - reminds me of when I played Julius Caesar at school - Et Tu Boris?

Broccoli for supper and freezer after 1 minute blanching in boiling water.

And in some forgotten corner of some  garden flower bed lurks Doc - behind the thyme (as usual) - with snowdrops in the background.

Having said that the snowdrops are just beginning to go over after four weeks of glory.

But there is hope - the first leaves are coming on the elder by the path to the pond and a euphorbia in flower higher up.

It is Saturday, temperature reached 15.5C yesterday and is warm today. There are two pairs of mallard on the pond and, looking out of the bathroom window at the back banking, I watched a rabbit collecting dry grass for bedding and taking it down a new burrow. The world is on the move.