LAST WEEK OF JANUARY

Already!

So, let us get the pics snowdrops done with - by the path up to the wood and under the fallen tree they are struggling to flower.

So the asparagus bed is weeded and composted - 2 to 4 inches. Roses are pruned and manured.

We have viburnum, quince and winter honeysuckle out as well as snowdrops, the year moves on.

The bonfire will still not light.

The trellising by the shed has been taken down and the honeysuckle, rose and clematis cut hard back.

Blue tits already inspecting the bird boxes. R has had me knock off the old martin nests as they were taken over by the sparrows and she wants the house martins back.

There is still a mess in the upper garden though the path has been cleared. I am surprised at how much ivy there was on the fallen tree - no wonder it got blown over.

We do have a small vase of flowering shrubs in the kitchen but there is not much else apart from the snowdrops and some small iris beginning to show.

The euphorbias in the two pots either side of the back door are also coming into flower. The winter has, so far, been mild and damp.

We have four hen pheasants searching under the feeders

for fallen seed. It is the Big Birdwatch this weekend where people across the country count the wild birds in their gardens.

Things are a-stirring in the veg beds not least the arrival of the first planks for S the gardener to begin refurbishing them and the forcing pot has been placed over the sprouting rhubarb. We even have our first winter sprouting broccoli but R will be wondering how many hidden caterpillars are lurking there.

I continue to transport barrows full of stuff and scatter it on the beds as a mulch. 

The mowers are booked in for a service - I await their collection - and R waits for them to be gone as she wants the sheds to be cleared out of stuff - a skip has been mentioned - I still have screws, nuts, bolts, washers etc from her father's garage we brought home un the 1980s! Well, you never know when something like that might be useful.

We sit under a high pressure system, cold, grey and largely dry but little frost or breeze. No doubt that will soon change with wind and rain.

GETTING LIGHTER AT LAST

Dry-ish at the moment, clearing beds, failing to light bonfire again, running the sit on mower in shed so battery does not go flat, time for mower servicing, read Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke again and forgot what a brilliant book it is (and found that it is my Dad's copy and a First UK Edition!) 

Now must  go out and move loads of ivy to the bonfire. Today will try with dry sticks and firelighter and paper and so on - was foggy early on but now cleared and sun shining.

I moved the bird feeders to another tree and the pheasants have moved with them, waiting for the great tits to discard any seed slightly below perfect.

There are signs of a new year with the euphorbias burgeoning with life, this one Characias, ssp Wulfenii.

Snowdrops coming out but R worries as one of the trees has come down on part of our woodland display, dreaming of bluebell woods in the spring. (This is at Muncaster Castle, cannot claim our ones are as good.)

Egret on pond,

And won Country Life poetry competition!

WITH EYES CLOSED

‘I remember the touch of things:

the brittle harshness of barn straw,

the warm softness of September hay.

They all come to mind, make me wonder

how so many things - not scent, not sight,

not taste, nor sound - are stored 

within my head: my father’s cheek

late in the day, rough with stubble,

the coldness of my mother’s hands - 

she would come in from the dairy,

silently, thrust her fingers

down my collar, extract a cry.

But that is sound not touch.

Sense the softness of a hen’s wing, 

moss on a dry-stone wall, 

a long-haired collie, stretched cat,

the harshness of a pig’s back,

crumbled slate on the quarry tip,

the rasp of a calf’s tongue,

the pain of a fist of gorse.

And there are may things 

remembered wordless. -

lichen on a stone, tadpole slime,

a slither of minnows on the palm.

Some things are more abstract - 

a warm bed under an eiderdown, 

being wrapped in total darkness,

bathed in sunlight, washed with happiness;

the ribbed surface of my elephant,

hand-knitted, hand-stuffed, no ears,

clasped within my arms.

The sense of freedom on the fell,

by the lake, under the water chasing perch.

Of no responsibility, no worries

of waking on a Saturday - no school,

alive, with eyes closed.’

WEATHERING ON

 Here are the dark days, the wet days when the stream overflows, new springs erupt from the bankings. Yes there are a few bulbspushing up - snowdrops and daffodils - but we are a while from flowering.

The ducks and moorhens have not returned to the pond (yet) (we have hope) so we are stuck with the pheasants, pigeons and small birds - and, Oh! yes - the grey squirrel trying to rip the top off the feeders.

And when it is miserable outside we light the wood burner and turn our backs on the weather.

But there are flowers about - we went for a walk near Snows and the gorse was well in bloom and in the garden the quince is out.

And walking around I come across these plants - have forgotten what they are but suspect they were a free bonus of small alliums - time will tell.

There are still sticks to collect and place on the bonfire which grows and grows.

One has to look for interest other then contrasting leaf colour - like the shape of the leaves ofslowly growing rhododendrons we brought back from Stonefield Castle Hotel some years ago and the black berries on the privet.

The ladies with the horses in the paddock have become concerned that our notable sycamore (registered with the Woodland Trust) is so big that should it blow over it might fall on their stable. I do not think that is a risk at the moment but it would be sacrilege to chop off the top.

And for all the wet weather we have had the odd frosty day, and hail, and sleet and gales.

AND SO IT GOES

On and on into 2022, must say have not done much recently - a bit of raking and leaf blowing and keeping off the sodden turf. 

And the stream overflows, covers the planks we walk across, mild weather but WET!

New bird feeder for Christmas fixed under cover out of the rain and the butterfly one which attracted no butterflies so, apologies to B, I have converted it into a nesting box. The feeders are being well used - goldfinches on the nyger seed, and all sorts on the other and here pheasants scavenging on the ground below.

The gardener has been again and the log pile grows, the bonfire is getting huge and the hole in the woodland seems rather forlorn.

However it is not always four o'clock and getting dark though it feels like it and bulbs are coming up early - snowdrops and daffodils mainly. We still have parsley and the weeds have not been assassinated by hard frost so are thriving, alas. There is no sign of the tulips in the pots but it is only January 1st.

And though almost every day feels dark and damp there is the occasional burst of sunshine to draw me out of the kitchen door to look at the view.

We do have colour in the garden and I did get a small vase for the table over the festive season. The miscanthus glows when sunny and the undersides of the leaves on the magnolia grandiflora mimic that colour.

On the lower banking the Viburnum bodnantiense pink dawn is flowering and casting scent across the grass.

And so it was Christmas, and what have we done, eaten too much and had lots of fun (sorry John).

I leave you with that emblem of the British Yule tide, the robin.

Happy New Year