JANUARY

Why does it always seem to be 4 pm?

It is Saturday. We went for a walk and saw our first lesser celandine lighting up a hedge bottom. From my window I watch a procession of pheasants pass my window. First three plump hens, then one skinnier hen and finally a cock pheasant strutting his stuff, a bit Trump like. I am not sure if five is enough to declare I have seen a bouquet of pheasants but that is their collective noun.

A trip to the lower lawn reveals we have a disastrous problem with a large area bog. Somehow the drain we put in is not doing its job and the water is soaking into the turf, then gathering in the old, now filled in stream bed, and reemerging further down - where, in fact, I bogged down the lawn tractor.

Here and there a pearl of white signifies a snowdrop just emerging but not yet open. The year is almost stirring despite the cold and flurries of snow.

The garden is almost devoid of wildlife though a caught a pair of rabbits scooting up the bottom lawn this morning and mole hills have started to appear. Also there are other birds - a feather in a bush, I think a pigeon.

Then we have a sprinkling of overnight snow.

And now there is evidence of rabbits - tracks everywhere. And on the track to the house, tyre marks from the paper delivery, footprints and dog prints from a walker taking the bridleway.

 

And still we get spectacular sunrises.

And then we get up on Sunday and all the snow has gone. Still some ice on the pond but not a lot - that will please the moorhens. 

So what to do in the lockup, tidy the dead bits from the garden - the lemon balm is well dead. 

So I made some Covid blackcurrant jam with fruit from the freezer.

We walk the lanes, drink endless cups of tea - well, almost - I never seem to get past half a cup and throw the rest away.

Tuesday and a glorious day, morning light makes the garden glow. 

Then Wednesday and it RAINS. Sam the gardener comes clad in his waterproofs. Shifts some manure and cuts back all the dead vegetation between the house and the garden. Now we can see a long way. A bit early to do some of the buddleias but what the . . . 

R shoots out to the supermarket. I make marmalade. Well something to do on the lock up. I have also ordered some plants from Sarah Raven as I had a £10 voucher - and ended up spending much more - on cosmos, verbena, ammi and sweet peas.

I have just read a marvellous book by Leokadia Majewicz about her terrible time as a Pole exiled by Stalin to Russia as slave labour when a girl. Then I realised she was the elder sister of an old friend and artist George Kosinski who now lives in America. It is a small world sometimes. 

Finding reading matter with libraries closed is hard. Accessed Jo Nesbo's Knife via Borrow Box, a library on-line site, but could not read it as it was so depressing and we need something to cheer us up.

And just as I am about be really glum P send photos of our grandchildren in Oxford and I see snowdrops flowering on the upper banking. 

And now I notice the stream disappearing into its bed near the compost heaps. I think it is draining into the soakaway for the septic tank, well I hope it is, but it could just be running underground to emerge somewhere else, like where the ground has become a quagmire? Water has a way of insinuating itself into unwanted corners, leaking in unwanted places and generally just being a nuisance. Mind you I say that in a place where we usually have no shortage of the stuff. I might feel differently if I lived in a desert.

Waiting for a vaccination.