IT IS WINTER

I think.

It is Friday, I am on a fibre free diet as I am due to have a long pipe with an eye on the end stuffed up a rather personal orifice next week - Covid test tomorrow.

So, walked the garden - I have never known it so wet in the lower lawn, the grass is dying due to the water logging despite there being drains there. Near the end I went along below the hedge at the back of the house and, I do not believe it, something shiny caught my eye. It was the BMW car key I lost in the spring and spent days searching for! Not much use now as I have changed my car - for one of the BMWs with the dodgy battery so my hybrid is running on petrol at the moment.

Rain comes and goes, if there is sun sometimes a rainbow.

The veg garden still has broccoli and winter spinach, pots outside are flowering.

R has been making apple chutney and filling the kitchen with the smell of vinegar.

And just when we have had more than enough of viruses and lockdowns and so on the sun comes out, just for a moment. Backlit euphorbias and the liquidambar, still not in full autumn colour, a calendula and the erigeron come to life.

The garden shines (probably all the water everywhere).

And down in the pond, where we want water, the moorhen swims.

Since the rat invasion I have been banned from having bird feeders outside the kitchen - someone in the house does not like the outside rodents. 

So I am limited in my ability to take photos of our avian life. any way here is a pied wagtail on our roof.  We have the grey version in the garden as well. 

Some of the paths need more chippings and the grass grows where I do not want it to, does not grow where it needs to.

In the lockdown in the spring the weather was glorious and we were in drought, now it is dark, damp and cold - more difficult to deal with.

One good thing is that I complained to Sarah Raven about my non-germinating sweet peas and I have had an email to sat another packet is on the way. So I shall try again beginning with a piece of damp kitchen paper - fingers crossed.

I am stuck at home as in isolation till the investigation tomorrow post covid test. The garden seems full of rabbits and there is a mallard drake on the pond.

Enough - cup of black coffee or water.