IT'S COLD UP NORTH

 Frost on frost, not very deep, quite crisp but not very even. Pond keep freezing over and I have been out bashing the ice for our moorhen - the ice is a good 3 cm thick now. (That is more than an inch for them what resides in Blighty.)

So, blighted with cold, blighted with viruses, blighted with Brexit - no wonder UK was called Blighty.

Here are the last cardoons - would male a good movie title? The Last Cardoons.

Just been down by old log pile pruning some roses I forgot and now I have forgotten I had toes (and fingers).

Here is the bird bath with fresh water, ice removed. The stream still runs but the pond is 95% frozen. Most wildlife in the garden is hidden, sensibly curled up somewhere warm or moved to a snugger place.

One thing this Siberian weather brings are big dawns over the bay.

Have just raked out the dead vegetation out of the banking in front of the house but above the path, thought about taking it down the compost heap and then just used it as a top dressing on shrubs lower down. I only last half an hour and then come in cold and tired out - the cold has not yet gone (or I am just old and feeble).

Manuring rose beds and roses by the path to the pond and Hilary's rose by the shed does make things look a bit better (and hides all the weeds)(which should have been removed before mulching.)

A Covid snippet - it was a lovely, if cold, sunny day today and it was a wonderful spring in 2020. It is a fact (Roger Ulrich's article in Science in 1982 I think) that people in hospital with a view of nature - trees, gardens, do much better than those with no view. That we went for a walk most days, in the lanes, parks etc, helped us get through the first wave.

 

To the garden where sun on the cherry bark and the first sign of tulips in the pots does cheer one up, even if we are in lockup yet again.

Inside the house the wonderful paperwhites are so tall they are falling over. They are underplanted with hyacinths and these will flower when the narcissi are done. A lovely present from I and A. We also got an amaryllis for Christmas and it is showing its first shoot. I have repotted our old ones but two of the three bulbs are rather small and I think will not flower this year - so feed and water and hope for next year. (Or just shove them in the garden somewhere and forget them.)

But it is cold. Yesterday we went for a walk around a local park and afterwards sat on a bench and drank coffee from a flask. Looking out over the chimney tops of the town I realised there was only one chimney with smoke coming from it! 'When I were a lad' every chimney would have been smoking (and, probably, we would not have been able to see across the park.)

We are locked up again and the drone of traffic has eased, there are no planes in the sky and this morning we were wrapped in freezing fog.

Should I go gardening? Should I light the fire? No competition there.

Cuppa, book, fire I think, until the next glorious dawn.