AN EVEN COLDER COMING

 Last blog I said that it was cold but it has got colder. I had vague hopes of sweet peas and parsley surviving the winter but not now. R has even let me put on the central heating in there daytime. She has just admitted she has on six or seven layers of clothing and is still a bit cold.

Then the boiler started leaking. So a cold night until we were rescued.

Enough, the trellis by the shed that supports the red climbing rose and the lonicera halliana is going rotten. I have fixed a temporary support by ramming a long piece of wood into its structure but it will have to be mended. Anyway I have pruned the rose. R continues to tend her snowdrops.

The pond is frozen over now though this image shows an area that tends to stay water - I think it is where a drain from the house enters the pond.

The sunrises are getting spectacular, here a chilled rook waiting for the horse ladies next door to scatter some seed.

Nevertheless there are signs of hope - our first crocuses, tulips in pots sprouting forth and, of course, the snowdrops.

The garden, albeit sunny, does look rather bare at this time of year. A sea of old manure with the odd plant protruding through the surface is a fair description. The ground is hard so no digging for now.

S has been and cut back hard the big privet at the back of the house. One thinks of privet as a low hedging, edging plant but this has a stool almost three feet across.

I have sneaked another bird feeder onto the cherry outside the big windows but when I went to the shed for the seed I found the bottom of the plastic bottle I keep it in had a large hole in it - mice!

The woodland is just stirring and sunlight highlights the moss and ferns - this is a cheat, not our woody area but Sea Wood, a Woodland Trust place.

  

 

At Christmas we gave my brother and his wife an amaryllis - and they gave us one! This is it.

 

We do not have a lot of statues and stuff but this small boy sits freezing up by the snowdrops. Moss is now growing over him.

The winter delivery of logs has arrived and are stacked in the log shed. They will need to dry through the summer but if we get too cold and run out then needs must.

I have shot out in the freezing cold and tried to light the bonfire but failed. I have also pruned the buddleias outside the kitchen window and suddenly we can see the snowdrops properly.

When the pond is like a rock there is only one place to be - beside this.

Anyway, the weather forecast is for snow later today and then warmer, wetter weather coming in from the west. 

We wait.