OLD FLAMES, NEW SNOW

The bonfire is ready primed with buddleia prunings, scrumpled up Westmorland Gazette and a dash of white spirit. I check the breeze and it is from the east so smoke will go up the back field and not annoy any neighbours.
A match is applied and woof!
The wind immediately turns north east and thick white smoke heads next door. 😁
Sigh!!

And whe the fire has burned down I gather the ash and scatter it on the black and red currants, a good dose of potash. I will also scatter it on the veg beds as a lime substitute and put some on the compost heap.

I pondered the burning of the bonfire and global warming etc but really my small bonfire's contribution to the problem is infinitesimal - and anyway the trees and other growing plants in the garden will more than take up the gases in the smoke.


So it burned all day and was still smoking at bedtime, just need to get out the wheelbarrow now. 

Which, next day, I have done, mixing the ash with soil from the mole hills in the far lawn and top dressing the raspberries.

Already I have begun a new bonfire heap next to the old one with pruning and stuff. In time another fire will be needed - before the blackbirds think of nesting in it.
 

The cold weather has meant the snowdrops have kept on and on flowering though one or two tender plants have succumbed and turned their roots up.

On plant that grows a lot in the garden is ivy, on walls on trees and on the ground. The berries though, at this time of year, provide feed for birds and the leaves give them cover.

Up in the wood the heap of sticks is getting too big even though it would provide cover for hedgehogs (if we had any) and birds. I think in the early autumn it might need to be reduced somewhat and added to the bonfire.

Then there is the other side of the weather - this is a dirty day over the bay to Heysham and its nuclear power station from our bedroom window.

The Beast from the East is here, a present from Siberia, temperatures sub zero and snow flurries at regular intervals.

I went out and braved the gale force wind to look for footprints in the snow - and found many birds, two squirrels and a cat, Oh! and my own.
Everything else was keeping as warm as possible.

I have put out footballs for the first time and note the goldfinches are at the Nyger seed.

When the sun comes out it is a pristine and beautiful sight.

GETTING LIGHTER SPAWNING SPRING

The pond is croaking creaking with frogspawn. So the mallard are back (and hungry) and the heron keeps a watching brief for the frogs.

There are the first celandines and one or two tete-a-tete daffodils glowing yellow in the sun which also means thew crosses are wide open.
Today has been mainly removing herbaceous plants from the rose bed and replanting in what was the strawberry bed, removing more of the strawberry plants to create space, weeding the asparagus and rhubarb beds (first shoots through) and picking up sticks.

One big branch down in the wood and a lot of smaller stuff - from the recent gale.

I also started to tine the grass and gave up quickly as I realised there was much too big an area to do with a fork.
Next day was raking off the primrose banking and taking the debris to the bonfire. Then I collected more sticks and did the same, though saving some for kindling for the wood burner.

My purchase of a bag of nyger seed seems a waste of time as the birds ignore them and continue to eat the sunflower seeds and peanuts - like this long tailed tit.

So to a bunch of snowy garden pics I have not yet shown - 

We do get other weather like this sunset -

and gloomy days -

but even in the darkest times the snowdrops light up the garden.

Last year was so wet the stream never stopped running like it often does in the summer and 2018 seems to be continuing in the same rain vein - ah! a rhyme - poet and don't know it.

I have found the hole in the bed of the top stream which leads to the new spring lower down so blocked it up - but water finds a way so I expect it will reappear soon.

I seem to be going through a lot of bird food though it is not just birds that are eating it. I watch the wood mice at the back of the house and the bank voles (shown here eating half an apple) outside the kitchen window.

Then there is the master peanut cruncher - 

I have been out pruning back the buddleias as it is a mild day (Siberian cold due at the end of the week). 

The spring is running again - sigh!

Tea and a biscuit - daren't get on the weighing scales.

THAT BRITISH WEATHER, WINTER FLOWERS?

Glad not to be at the Winter Olympics - minus 20C. Siberian weather. 
I have bought some nyger seed to see if I can attract those birds who like the finer things in life, particularly goldfinches. 
The messy strawberry bed calls for a complete tidy and make over and I must stir myself, but first another coffee, hands wrapped around the mug.
Then outside and I find the strawberries are not worth keeping - scrawny and old - so up they come - well, half the bed and by then my fingers were numb. Returned with a barrow load of compost and finished top dressing the long bed. Have pruned the roses, black currants and red currants between sleet showers.
Had to come in to thaw and began to make mushroom soup - Crank's recipe. Will make about 4 or 5 pints (3 litres). Just onion, potato, mushrooms and milk with butter and thyme. I have left out the parsley.

So there I was with a blog written (almost) and then it snowed. Well, I could not ignore it so - 

out with the camera, the magic tracery of trees under snowfall, the green of the daffodil leaves, even a frozen looking wood pigeon on a high branch all captured with the lens. Fortunately snow, when the sun is not shining, is easier to take. So not a lot of gardening done. In fact, as we do not have a greenhouse, just sheds and a clapped out cold frame rate his is a quiet sort of compost spreading time of year.

but given a hour or two

the sun was out and the snow thawing hard in sunshine even though it was still very cold with ice around. The garden glowed in the crystal clear air and colour, such as the witch hazel, glowed.

Is had to nip down to the pond and take a panorama shot up the garden, rake some moss off the path and pick up sticks shed by the trees.

And next morning I looked out of the bedroom window and we were above the could level in thick mist and steady drizzle.

Our weather is ever changing and this can make gardening a challenge, especially with the rain we now have with global warming - I read that all but one of our record wettest years have been since 2000! Of course if we had the same weather every day we would have nothing to talk about (except this Brexit mess 😒).

To move on - what brightens up the garden in winter? In a way the birds are like winter flowers filling the place with colour and variety - 

 

 

 

 

 

So just like I feed the plants, I feed the birds, our own little dinosaurs.

GARDEN QUIRKS AND FAST JAM

Today is bright and sharp so out with camera noting the things around the garden that are not growing - small odds and focal points, personal quirks.

Metal dogs under the feeders by the kitchen spattered with bird droppings,

the moss sporangia on the stone with the sundial highlighted by the sun,

Doc is fading as the years pass (aren't we all),

and Roy's little house under the magnolia needs a little repair.

Up the garden the chimes are still hanging in the ash tree above the snowdrop, and later, daffodil banking. I had thought the branch to which they are attached would have fallen off by now but not so.

On the windowsill outside the living room are odd pebbles brought back from distant travel, inside a sculpture bought at Workshop Wales in north Pembrokeshire.

 Down by the pond are Adam Booth's metal birds and Linda's falcon. The broken pot in the background is there for a toad shelter. (Whether they use or not I do not know but it is a nice idea.)
And, of course, the useless faded plastic heron I got from my brother peers into the water.

There is rubbish around too - the decaying log pile, a haven for creepy crawlies and a cd up a damson tree. I think I had been using it as a bird scarer to keep the pigeons off the veg. It never worked so I stuck it up the tree and it has been there for several years.

 There is a cracked pot under the downpipe at the shed as the pipe was too short to reach the ground and I couldn't be bothered to buy a longer one and a robin nest box on the big sycamore. There are several tit boxes up in the wood.

Back up at the house rattling birds hang from the roof over the paving outside the kitchen. The duck from my son and the strange one in a nest from my sister-in-law. Come a breeze they clatter away.
The duck has been blown off twice but I have repaired it. When the swallows nested nearby the young fledglings used to sit on top of the duck.

And feeding stations - there are two. This is the one outside the kitchen with a plethora of feeders. For some unknown reason I get them as Christmas presents but they are very welcome. It is just that it takes more and more stuff to fill them.

Now, just because it is February and raining does not mean that it is not jam making time - the wonders of the freezer!
So today was Raspberry Jam time - a super easy quick recipe.

2.5 pounds raspberries, 3 pounds granulated sugar and juice of half a lemon. (Say 1.25 Kg fruit to 1.5 Kg sugar.) Put sugar in oven to warm.
Do not wash fruit. You want them dry if possible. If frozen thaw then bring to the boil and  boil rapidly for 5 minutes. Add sugar warmed in the oven and stir until dissolved. Bring back to the boil and boil hard for 1 minute only. Skim and put in hot jars and cover. I use old jars with metal lids which seal themselves as they cool - you can hear them popping.