WAITING

As the years pass I think I look more like my father, then this morning I looked up from the sink in the bathroom at the mirror, at my reflection, and thought no, I look more like Sloth out of The Goonies!

It rains and rains. There is really nothing I can do much in the garden as it is so wet. There are big bags of slate clippings waiting to go on the paths and another of topsoil. They are waiting for the gardener to shift them. The mower is waiting to be serviced. The broken branches are waiting to be cleared. The gateman has started on mending the electric gate but waiting for that to be finished which it has been at last.

We do have first daffodils and the pulmonaria is flowering, but no camellias yet. There are many other flowers out.

The birds are consuming a whole feeder full of sunflower seed every day. 

Finally we have a day with a little sunshine. I investigate the whereabouts of our rabbit hole. Two fat bunnies feeding on the banking this morning. Found only one burrow but I bet they have a back door.

This afternoon we are beset by a loony bluetit tapping on the tall Westmorland window by the stairs. Presumably having a go at its own image.

And just when we think there is spring in the air it is Jane Morgan weather again (1958).

We will have floods and unlike the song Mother Earth’s arms are already saturated.

So a better morning, a blackbird singing and a greater spotted woodpecker hammering on one of our trees.

There is colour from the shrubs - quince, skimmia, clematis armandii, hazel and the stems on the maple.

The moss is lush with the mild damp weather and the parsley still thrives.  And the snowdrops still carpet the wood.

I shall pick up sticks I say but get a shovel full of disapproval. Someone wants the garden to be spick and span not ignored and wild and messy and I am getting to creaky to do it. No names mentioned but the asparagus bed looks a lot better now.

The heron comes but only when the trail camera is elsewhere so all I have are hen pheasants and a grey squirrel.

THE WINTER GOES ON AND ON

 Oh-oh-oh-oh and it comes out here.

There are moments when one holds one’s breath - R said to look out of the kitchen doors and there, in the rosemary bush ten feet away were five long-tailed tits. So I sit with my turmeric and ginger drink and listen to the one note samba from the sparrows outside the window. I presume they are getting ready to build a nest in the bathroom vent again. Yesterday we had a wheeling of rooks from the tall trees - a buzzard up there setting them off.

Went for a walk near Bouth in Grubbins Wood and the footpaths were almost impassible with fallen trees an swollen streams. The moss was splendid and flooding in the lower fields by the Rusland Pool.

And now the moorhen’s back, heyla, heyla, the moorhen’s back. 

Fox in the night on the camera.

A breather Wednesday before the weather goes downhill. Sleet and rain forecast. So in garden and tidying a bit, removing dead stuff and trimming low branches - the ones I always catch my head on.

We are replacing the mechanism on the electric gate at great expense but it is seventeen years old. 

The sixth of February was the 56th anniversary of the first time I took R out! Where have all the years gone?

We have our first primrose and cyclamen flowering by the log pile. Both hellebores in bloom and when (when!) the sun comes out it highlights there cherry bark.

So now Thursday and it started sleeting, then snowing, then a gale got up and it is raining and cold 2C.

 

Think I will stay in this afternoon.

This is my 959th blog - time to retire soon?