POTLESS AND PERISHED

On Sunday we went to Potato Day at Greenodd Village Hall, just around wthe corner from where I was born. Tables laden with seed potatoes, fruit bushes and trees, seeds and bulbs for sale and a lunch of soup and a cake, Entry the devastating sum of £1. It was packed. There are going to be a lot of potatoes grown around here next year. R bought some bulbs and perpetual spinach seeds. And there was good company.

It is Tuesday and I am zonked - the smoke alarm began to go off in the middle of the night. It now has a new battery and is schtum.
We went to Inglefield Plants at Staveley in search of a big pot for the monstrous clivia. It was open on the internet but shut in reality so we regrouped and had lunch out beside a roaring fire at the Strickland Arms.
It is intermittently sleeting.
Yesterday I dragged the last of the branches I had cut at the back, two big elders, to the bonfire and made a feeble attempt at lighting it - but it was too damp and needed a bucketful of fuel on it, which I did not have.
The windowsills and lintels on the house are not made anymore so we cannot get a match. Just another irritation.
It is very cold and damp. I have a big mug of tea and am going to have a nap.

 The building goes on, and on, and on, and . . . 

The garden is so tidy (Mmm!) 

One day?

Still the ever expanding sea of snowdrops is cheery, I think.

And then it went cold and we had some snow, just a little. It made the track icy and I am glad I am not a builder in the cold. In the garden there were tracks - rabbit and moorhen, and moles still active. And then I came out one lunchtime and the builders were messing about with metal detectors. So, says I, some years ago I lost my gold signet ring, either down by the pond or up at the far end in the compost heap by the wall. The first day they looked by the pond and only found nails, part of an old scythe and a manhole cover. BUT on the second day, by the wall they found my gold ring and it is now on my finger again. It was given to me by my uncle and godfather John Hay when I was 21.

The skeins of geese were flying over again this morning - just wonderful.

This is the view east from the field behind the house past the replica of the Eddystone Lighthouse above the town, a memorial to Sir John Barrow.