COLD! SNOW! POTATO DAY!! BURNS.

First some chilly pics -

Cold weather at last - hopes it deals with some of the garden pests including the munching slugs. It won't make much difference to the squirrels though - cheeky as ever. I am waiting for them to come in through the door (opening it first) and raid the fridge.

I have seen two chaffinches with foot disease today and wonder if it is becoming more common. It is caused by Fringilla papillomavirus and affects other finches like bramblings.

It snowed last night and is snowing again - we have about 4 inches now.

So we have just come back from the above and R bought Dahlia Bishop of Llandaff (the red one) and three packs of seeds - butternut squash, courgette and beetroot boltardy. Well, one has to feed the snails and slugs with something. 
We had soup, a cuppa and cake there. It is always funny going back to Greenodd as I was born only 150 yards up the Coniston Road. The hall tables are laid out with boxes of seed potatoes, rhubarb, horseradish, dahlias, onion sets, garlic, and there are fruit bushes and trees and seed packets.

Potato Day

SUNDAY 17th JANUARY 2016

10 am until 3 pm : GREENODD VILLAGE HALL

Choose from over 120 varieties of potatoes, fruit canes, onion sets, shallots, seeds, dahlia tubers, fruit trees etc.

HOMEMADE SOUP & CAKE for sale

I thought the rabbits would be curled up snugly in their burrows but here is one under the small oak sheltering.

Monday - well, that didn't last very long - thaw already set in and snow going. By evening it is 90% gone - short winter?

Tuesday and I have a new arrival to deal with the long grass on the banking. It is a metal bladed Flymo and all I need now is a long extension lead with a safety cut out plug. 
Quite like the colour. I had a similar one some years ago but it died - Flymo RIP.
R and I have been around the garden and there are signs of snowdrops flowering - and a lot of mess. One stream disappears into a hole in its bed and reemerges thirty yards away by some tree roots. To get there the water has to flow underneath another stream!

Wednesday and a beautiful cold morning again - can't quite get used to this dry weather. The mowers are coming back after servicing. I am cooking tonight (don't faint) and have picked some Brussels Sprouts - no nasty creepy crawlies so far.

Here are a couple more snowy pics - from Sunday. The back field with sheep and rooks starting to gather and begin nesting and looking back down the track up to the house. There were only two sets of footprints - mine and Megatron the black cat from down the road. The last one is looking the other way at the house.

I have just looked at my hands and they are muck up from the garden. No wonder the keyboard gets a bit grubby!

Thursday - rain is back, I am inside looking out.
Friday - rain is back, I am inside looking out.
Friday afternoon - sun is out and I have fed the birds (and of course, unintentionally the squirrels).

Monday is is Burns' Night so we are celebrating it tonight  - that is (Saturday) and the old tartan tie will need to be sought. (My mother was a Hay) (So, perhaps, I can just get away with it?)
And, of course - My love is like a red, red Rose! (In joke for those who know.)
I can see snowdrops flowering on the upper banking and even outside the kitchen door. Things are a-stirring.  That is except the rose that continues to flower whatever the date.
What else? I have just tried to descale the kettle but it will need a second go and have ordered a replacement car for the 8 year old one we have. Now I will need an electric socket!
All this is very garden I don't think.

Time to don me Wellies after a coffee in town - however it might be raining by this afternoon and . . . . .
But it did not rain till 5pm so I went out and tined wet lawn, raked bankings so the snowdrops showed up better and carted fallen sticks to the bonfire. 

I wonder if I can remember the words to 'Ye banks and braes o bonny Doon'?

Didn't need to - was regaled by Tam o' Shanter, ate cock a leekie soup, haggis, tatties and neeps and excellent puds to be finished off perfectly with a wee dram of Lagavulin single malt whisky. Good company and great hosts!

THE RAIN STICKS, HOPE COMES

I am not going to mention the rain again, you me and everyone is bored with the subject - hang on - I've just mentioned it - d***!
I am wondering if its is all the fault of my Chilean rain stick.

R has been out with the power washer - power washing the paving. I have started the weeding and clearing up and shifted a barrow load of the old manure - my back is not what it was - partly as I was trying to push the barrow with a half flat tyre - and the old muck is wet and heavy. 
The wagon has been to collect the mowers for servicing.

Today, Wednesday, has been a good day - rain due but not yet. The sun shone this afternoon and we are all confused as to what is this strange light in the sky.

 Now to some house planty bits with pics of the poor ailing things. Poinsettia still surviving me on the left and a Peruvian lily on the right that has needed potting on months ago. 
Then on the right is the lemon scented geranium that comes in for the winter. I hacked this back last spring but it is doing okay.
However the streptocarpus on the left, also needing repotting, got overwatered as we were both topping it up and a lot of the leaves went yucky so I cut them off. It is in recovery mode.

 This is the window in the utility where I stick odd stuff, blue salvia on the left, then dead parsley, a small Hydrangea Annabelle alive and sprouting and two amaryllis almost at the end of their build up for next years flowering.

R has developed the habit of announcing that the moorhen is back on the pond by saying she can see the mallard. There are differences - one could eat a mallard but a moorhen would be very scraggy.

So what does one do when it is raining outside - eat. sleep, tv, write blogs, muck about and read. It is such a shame Harry Bosch is now a pensioner. I have just finished an amazing book - Joshua's Story by James Titcombe - traumatic reading of how the death of his son began a road through the minefield of NHS and political bureaucracy to change the way the NHS works.

Now I am reading The Shepherd's Life by James Rebanks about a disappearing way of life in The Lake District. I grew up on a sheep farm though was never going to be a shepherd but recognise much of what he describes.
At the moment we have a movement for the wilding of the fells, the removal of the sheep - and of a way of life that certainly dates back to the Vikings and maybe many thousands of years further. In the end it may be achieved because hill farming cannot pay.

The outcome may be that wilding comes but with it the landscape loved by visitors will change for ever as fields disappear to be replaced by more upland woods. And these woods will reach up onto the mountains obscuring the views.

The tree fellows (fellers?)(both) are cutting down a neighbours huge evergreen and we will have a much better sight of the bay.



And then suddenly, after a dark wet morning, the sun comes blasting from behind a cloud. I walk up the garden, treading carefully on the gravel paths, and see new growth - snowdrops pushing through the leaf litter, buds braking on the flowering currant and there is light everywhere. The trees are full of finches and tits; robins, dunnocks and blackbirds scrabble around searching for food.
Of course it does not last, soon it darkens over and rain returns but now I can see into the future and how it might be.

The paving needs repointing so got a man coming to quote Tuesday - cannot do it until weather better though.

It is raining again.