ISHA ISHA

 All fall down. What a name for a storm, and now Jocelyn. I mean perhaps Ruarri, or something?

Floods and wind, the electric gate needs replacing, and now I have hearings aids I can hear every zephyr. 

Even the Berberis from Cally gardens has gone lopsided.

R has been clearing up the flower beds and I have raked out the debris from the stream so now, hopefully, it will not spread across the garden, so soggy. 

J has been round and will give me a quote for tidying up the broken branches. D has been and told us we need a new gate motor. I have been to the doc only it was the wrong day so I came home.

I have put all the scruffy amaryllis into one big pot with compost and some pelleted hen manure. I have found a couple of rabbit holes hidden away by the top fence but they are hard to get at for one who tends to fall over a lot.

And the wind has reached 150mph in The Faroes, raining again, though the heron was back on the pond and I saw a treecreeper ascending the big cherry tree.

The Amaryllis we got at Christmas is looking splendid.

The gardener did not come today and I do not blame him. It is dark and the rain is spattering on my window.

However we do have our first daffodil buds and the snowdrops are great - this is really due to R diligently spreading them. (This is my main gardener and she comes free(ish).

We do have colour here and there like the quince and the viburnum.

So now nearly February and where has the time gone? (Probably asleep or reading a book?)

Our bench is on its back again.

There are floods in the low fields.

All in all things can only get better.

Can't they??

Should I write to the King and ask him how the op was?

2024 AND TREES

 So here we are in 2024 and it is still raining, floods in the fields and squelch across the garden. At least we have survived the festive season, just.

I have just found how difficult it is to type accurately when having the hiccoughs, am stil findin it ard.

The garden is best left alone at the moment perhaps to avoid damage - when it is so wet.

So a bit on trees, big trees. These I photographed on our last visit to Holker Hall, big trees are amazing things.

 

There is something about trees, especially the trunks, that is majestic.

The big ones are all older than I can ever be and much more attractive than I could be as a skeleton - the spread of branches, the strength of the trunk.

I look at the wrecked garden and decide to stay in the house. Where it is warm. If the oil man ever delivers.

So the last year sprawls into the new, what was going on is still going on - very depressing.

Then it is twelfth night, well day, and the decorations are down - AND the sun is shining - and it is not raining.

We went to the garden centre in Beetham today, really for a coffee, but ended up buying a big pot in which to dump all the weedy amaryllis I have around the house, a christmas rose for R and a female skimmia for our lonely male skimmia.

I will really need to get out there and tidy away the debris.

There is still colour on the liquidambar despite broken branches and the viburnum is flowering as is the winter flowering honeysuckle.

And we have one rose flower and the beginnings of rhubarb. It is a month of silhouettes and shapes. Not all the world is asleep - the moles are hard at work messing the lawn.

Then there are the stirring snowdrops bringing hope in the dark days.

The sun shines and lifts then whole mood of the garden even though we are in frosty weather.

When we were in lockdown with the Covid the blue sky was untarnished by contrails - alas no longer - 

Roll on spring.

I’M DREAMING OF

 A dry Christmas, with no rain or snow or hail - actually no rain would be good.

So Happy Christmas to all those in more balmy (barmy?) climes from Welly boot land.

I have been rash and bought a small chainsaw for pruning and dealing with all the fallen wood after the snow. Unlike the banks we have lots of branches on the ground. So the stream is unblocked but the grass is so wet water runs across it and I have to paddle and squelch. The gardener wisely has stayed away. (It is raining again.)

The twenty first is the shortest day (hurrah!) so I can only get longer in the tooth from now on.

And then storm Pia came along and blew and soaked us all.

All around then garden are remnants of the summer that need clearing away -

But the weather is so unkind. I has planted grasses after seeing them covered in frost and looking beautiful in magazines but now they will have to be cut back and removed. And R and I have had some sort of cold - she coughed and I ached. No I do not know if it is Covid as our testing kit is out of date and why bother anyway. As it becomes gloomy outside the sky turns, not red, but a pale purplish grey like a bruise. And in then background is the roar of the wind.

So happy Christmas and New Year!

But there are signs of hope, snowdrops through, daffodils too and buds on the camellias.

And the winter flowering viburnum bodnantiense is well out.

And every day there is four o’clock again and again, and it is dark, no moon, no stars just cloud, and rain.

FOUR O’CLOCK 

It's four o'clock, whatever I say,  

it's four o'clock again,

a dark and drab December day,

and it's just begun to rain.

The sky is filled with dismal grey

we’re short of sun again.

Time is ever set at four

this year’s gone down the drain,

And its miserable outside the door,

its four o’clock again.

Winter - always four o'clock,

as the afternoon light falls,

I would go outside. unblock

the beck but can’t be arsed at all.

I shall makes some tea

For R and me, have a piece of cake,

take a break from the dreary rain,

Oh! It’s four o'clock again.

But the tree is up and decorated, we have bankrupted ourselves in the supermarket so for ten days Scrooge will have to go on the back burner and wait.

WAAAAAATER

So the snow is all but gone - because of the RAIN!

We now have floods, the stream in the garden has burst its banks and the fallen limb of the silver birch has landed in the flow causing a diversion. I suppose next we will have an ox-bow lake.

So much is flattened by the snow and the broken branches will have to just lie where they fell for now. 

The electric gate decided not to work yesterday so I leaped from the car into six inches of flowing water - wet feet. This morning, after fixing the gate, I had to retrieve one of our waste bins from under the car at the house down the road, blown there by the gale.

The pheasant is hiding under the bay and I do not blame him.

The ground is so sodden I have just to stay off it despite needing to clear up after the storm - anyway there is another coming - Fergus!

So what can I show you? More pics of destruction - some of the buddleias have been pruned early -

After that here are, in order, the magnolia grandiflora, the ash in the wood, the big damson, the silver birch I got with yogurt tops from Yeo Valley, and two of the osier.

And I have not shown you the magnolia stellata nor the grey poplar. There are smaller branches off the tall eucalyptus also and the willows in the far garden are horizontal. 

I have never known the garden to be so wet.

While all this has been going on the trail camera has been up in the wood revealing the usual suspects - rabbit, grey squirrel, wood mouse, rat. next door's cat and four hen pheasants as the snow melted.

I must go and wind the clocks. Time waits for no man.

Have a good Christmas, especially my readers in the USA.

SNOOOOOOOW!

Sorry for the delay with new blog but had no electricity nor landline, hence internet - reason below. 

Sometimes at this time of year when all is dreary and dark something happens to raise the spirits. Yesterday I looked out of our bedroom dormer and on the roof six feet away were two elegant grey wagtails and today I held a blue tit that had flown into the kitchen. Then I looked out of the window and we have snowdrops emerging from the soil.

There were thinking how mild the weather was when we had a storm and all these cherry leaves ended up on the ground. Then it rained.

Then it got really frosty,

Then it snoooooooowed.

And the snow created havoc - this is our silver birch fallen with the weight of the white stuff. Branches down in the wood, and here our

willows flattened. Several shrubs are snapped off and a big branch down from the big damson tree. Today, Tuesday, we have finally managed to get to town for milk and so on. We have, at least, a wood burner to boil a kettle. The Aga lost heat as it is electrically controlled though oil fired.

The postman finally got through today and the internet and landline have been temporarily restored.

My feet are cold.

The pond is not quite frozen over and the real heron has been but, I suspect, left hungry. There is some open water for drinking.

I have no intention of sitting on the bench outside the house.

So now we have some rain, though frost tonight, and then more rain. The garden could not get boggier. One good thing, I have not fallen over yet - yet!