WEIRD WINTER?

This came to me as we were walking near Bouth and the Winter Heliotrope was flowering in the roadside - there are still a lot of flowers in the garden if one looks carefully - I mean, not just the snowdrops - now coming out - nor the winter flowering honeysuckle (a shrub not a climber).

I have cut some of the scented flowers of the latter and put them in a base on the stairs windowsill. We also have some flowering currant sprouting in a vase in the kitchen.

There are the usual nutters flowering when they shouldn't ought - I have just picked a white pink, smelling faintly but still - in January?


Red campion have the occasional flower in the wood and the red rose A and P gave us is doing well by the shed.

The hellebore - the Corsican one I think - is well into flowering and, of course, that anthemis by the path . . . 

It makes me wonder if we have a new mutation - an all year round anthemis - flowers whatever the weather.
Actually I do not believe this - it would lose the flowers etc if we had a really hard snap.

In fact we woke to a bright morning and a covering of hail.

 Now the wind is getting up and rain is on the way - AGAIN!

This does not mean I have not been in the garden, I have, a bit. The rose bed is manured and I have gathered many sticks, some for the wood shed and other stacked in the trees for wildlife. Sadly the wall of the shed nearest the house has disintegrated (It was made up of old failed paintings nailed to a trellis.)

Yesterday we went to the funeral of an old family friend of R in Cheshire. She loved nature and gardening. She painted watercolours and we have one in our living room as a reminder of a lovely lady. 

WILD MENAGERIE

No cigarettes, perhaps a little whisky and no wild, wild women but wild wild weather.

My windmill is bent - could not take the strain.

And the garden is a menagerie. I am sorry R but the spray of squirrel repellent did not do much and the peanut feeders are regularly assaulted.
Then I wander upstairs to see two fat rabbits munching the lawn.

Yesterday was gales and driving rain flooding through the garden. Down by the settling pond a miserable looking, bedraggled heron was trying too shelter from the wet and wind. The pic is not sharp due the the copious amounts of water driving through the air between us.

Gardening is intermittent to say the least, R tidying, me picking up sticks and barrowing well rotted horse manure onto the rose bed.

 There are still flowers on some the roses and we have a small vase of them with some honesty seed heads in the kitchen.

 There are a plethora of blue tits on the feeders, many surviving the winter well.

The grasses and such as the cardoons have been left for the winter frost to coat them but all we get is westerly wet. You can just see the new growth at the bottom coming already.

Thank all sorts that we have a sanctuary here, away from the horrors humanity inflicts on itself - Paris, Australia - you name it.

What a waste of life, a gift that we all need to nurture and enjoy - yes, there are good times and bad times but that is all part of the incredible journey. In fact I think that I would like my last words to be that - What and incredible journey! But not quite yet - a little more road to travel I hope.

IT'S A NUMB THUMB IN 2015

Just been out, recovering from Manflu and it is COLD! Tidied some of the rose bed and picked up some kindling. Now my left thumb is very numb with cold.

The dawn is still getting later even though the evenings are beginning to get lighter - something to do with the wobbly earth. (Nothing to do with, 'Did the earth wobble for you?' and stuff.)

I have failed, so far, to get a pic of the little white egret but here are two heron shots from the bedroom window.

Ah man, (as Luke Davenport would say) there ain't gonna be any frogs in the water this year with all this interest.

I noted that the early crocuses are through by the rosa rubifolia and three inches high. Things are stirring underground.

We were given a pot and some white muscari for Christmas by D and J and these are potted up.
The third of the pots of paperwhites is starting to get a bit leggy and will need to be moved soon but, at least, we had some for the festive days.

The wallflowers bought in the autumn are doing fine - these are in the lily pot on the paving.

And the anthemis flowers on!

I must nip out and check the ties on the new trees but another day - need to thaw out.

Sunday morning and a hard frost overnight.

Went for a walk up the field the other day and noticed that the shallow channel from the spring was clogged. It is not really a spring but before we moved here the tenant farmer drained the back field - badly - and let the water run into the top of our property. If I do not keep the channel open it overflows all over the place into the garden.
So, out with a rake and a-clearing we do go.

Then down the channels in the garden removing sticks and dead leaves etc until I reach the pond. Here the water cress is already growing - not something I want to take over the pond. It prefers running water and as you can see by the outflow the pond is a big blob on the stream. This running water also is the reason why the pond has not frozen over as the surface is continually moving.


So I stumble into 2015, still coughing. 
R has gone to church.
I am going to coffee and must remember to take the mushroom soup she had made out of the oven.

I am not certain that I love marmite chocolate (sorry R) as there is no way enough marmite in there. Wait - I could spread the bar with marmite and . . . ?

LAST BLOG IN ROSSIDE FOR 2014

It is a glorious cold winter day, early frost and blue skies, a day for gardening, for weeding and manuring, for picking up sticks and general tidying.

But here at The Nook it is much like the World Cup - Germany v Brazil - Manflu 7 - Gardening 1 (actually more like minus 1. Writing this blog, a bit at a time, is about my limit as I cough and wheeze, plough through endless handkerchiefs and, in true manly fashion, feel thoroughly sorry for myself.

Even the visiting heron caught sight of me at the upstairs window and flapped off across the field like a ragged sheet of newspaper.

Instead of a-digging and a-weeding I sit and read.

Actually a fabulous book of poetry called 'A Lift of Wings' published by Indigo Dreams in the UK (by Kerry my sister-in-law) - no bias at all - they are really good (much better than mine).

R has just said that the heron is back at the pond. I will let it be.

To the left is an example of boggy sog that needs draining, to the right the hardly glamorous dead leaves of the alchemilla. The garden is looking decidedly drab and almost dead despite the sunshine.

 
Nasturtiums, not yet cleared away, are tangles of memory - there is so much to do and no stamina, in fact no nothing at all.
I shall be glad to have a go at a new year.

Gotcha - heron in pond then R shouted her car will not start - she took mine, her battery flat. With Christmas and illness the car has not been used.

Then heron gone so only one pic.

Panic! Last year great trouble with mower as its battery flat when they came to collect it for service. The trouble is the engine will only run if I am sitting on the seat - a safety device I know, but sometimes annoying. So shot out to shed - it started first time and chunnered happily for a few minutes.

My cousin A. in Nelson, NZ has a blog at - 

http://www.sustainablegardener.org/latest-post/

Great advice on gardening the organic way. He does it seriously rather than fiddling about like myself.

So, to end, here is a weary winter garden on a dismal day waiting for someone to do something. 

Perhaps I will chop a log, a whole one.
Perhaps not, perhaps a cup of tea.
Manflu the new diet! Just got lower than my younger son, weight wise. Mind you I have given him the bug so my success will be short lived. 
I must encourage him to 'feed a cold'.

I'M DREAMING OF A WHITE YOU KNOW

Because the garden will look clean and sharp and I will not have to go out there - except my grandchildren are here so if it snows whilst they are present there is no way I can escape.

Actually, at the moment (Saturday) rain and hail are lashing my window on a strong westerly gale. This does not stop the birds stuffing their beaks on the feeders though.

The garden looks surprisingly green at the moment - all the water falling on it .

Sunday morning and I go out for wood for the fire - there are two little white egrets by the pond. They lift off and are chased away by carrion crows - hence I can make a size comparison. Global Warming has reached Cumbria.

The sweet peas are not dead yet as you can see. I have just tipped through the squelchy sods to the far corner and cut some thin willows for W to make a Christmas present by entwining the stems and such.

Now, I now these anthems should be long gone but . . .

Phew! I am full of Yuletide food and rich stuff. Slept 10.5 hours last night and could have gone on sleeping. My cold-in-dedose progresseth slowly. R has lost her voice and can only berate me in a whisper.

The poppy from the display around the Tower of London has arrived - commemorating the fallen in the first world war, and I have put it in a gin bottle on the side in the kitchen.

As usual I have messed up  who gets what present and Grandchildren have left without two. Son C is here at the moment but sadly not P, his spoused one, who has had to go to her parents. It is a shame as she always livens up the place and it wonderful to hear her singing in the hall.

And there this brief blog collapsed in a mess of Manflu on Tuesday evening. I have just risen from my litter and had a cup of tea - so a real C*appy Christmas (for me) the others said that they had a brilliant meal whilst I suffered upstairs issuing an occasional grunt.

My son has given me a spray of squirrel repellent as a gift - beware O small tree rats, here I come.

FIRST SNOW, FROST AND EXTRA SOCKS

First sprinkling of snow - Canada eat your heart out!

And now a hard frost but the pond remains clear as the water flowing through continually disturbs the surface preventing the ice from forming.

There are frost ferns on the cars, fascinating shapes, and the roads are icy.

The new drain (not finished yet, just a shallow trench) has running water which indicates to me a spring water source higher up - yes, another one.
A. is coming tomorrow to discuss draining the garden which will be another step forward. R has been telling me to do this for years and she is right - time I got it done rather than tread on spongy grass half floating in the sog.

All drains lead, ultimately, to the stream or the pond. It was glassy today and the reflection good.

It is now today, A has been - work assessed and they will probably start inn March(ish).

Pond in the morning

I put this pic in to show you that the sun does shine in the UK in December but it was not taken today as all is grey and gloomy.

I have spent some time trying to get the outside solar powered L.E.Ds working so they can twinkle in the Christmas darkness.

Outside the pansies are flowering in the pots and the tulips in this one have come through.

Despite the frosts the sweet peas are not dead - yet. Actually the passion flower has buds - it is usually cut back by now. You will note the rusty cow hanging from the fence with its bell (that does not ring). There are a few such things hanging about in the garden - old goggles, things the grandchildren have made and so on, me occasionally.

Time for another frost pic - 

Just a short blog - it is now Wednesday and we have been in Manchester where I have gone through yet another scan etc. 6 more months off but they want to stick the camera - well you know where. This will cheer up all my friends who have had this done!

Our thoughts also go out to RJ and H P and their tough few weeks.

It is the festive season and I cannot avoid it so here we gooooooooooooo . . . . 

DODGING CHILLY DRIZZLE AND A COLD IN THE DOSE

Cold outside (3C) and raining so driven in. Managed to tidy a bed by the wall - bulbs showing already, pruned the deutzia (at the wrong time) removing older wood and cutting back to a promising bud facing the way I want the plant to grow, and took cuttings (also at the wrong time). 


The quince against the wall I trimmed and it had suckers so I dug these up and replanted down in the veg bed area. The old trellis the quince was on has rotted so I removed this and untangled the wires holding it together. I am not sure it needs another support and will watch how it goes.

My fingers are FROZEN my thumbs are numb.

I have got the heating on!

Two days ago ice and frost, yesterday wet, today windy and showers with sun, ice and wintry showers forecast for tonight - it is good to have reliable weather.

I had not seen the goldfinches for a while so I got some more Nyger seed to mix with the sunflower and they are back - a delight.

The female greater-spotted woodpecker is now a regular visitor to the peanuts. The male and juveniles have a red splodge on the head.





It is amazing how much better a flower bed looks when it is tidied and mulched. I did this this morning - the poppy bed - and the mulch was a cocktail of old rotted horse manure and compost.

I have discovered a new stream across the lawn below the compost heap and now we have blocked in the main stream down the garden the water has nowhere to go - I feel another drain coming on!

Here are some premature daffs shoving though the leaf litter - I think they could be in for a nasty shock.

Well, midweek and today started like this and went steadily downhill - now evening and gales and lashing rain. Highlight of the day a visit to the gym - sad isn't it! Mind you the media are calling it a weather bomb - more a bit of a damp squib here.

Just been out digging the drain that's coming on but the hail and rain has driven me in - bit muddy and wet now. I have almost filled in the last bit of the old stream and it will just need flattening.
Only a short time to the shortest day and then the way will be forward (I hope).
It is getting dark and only 3 pm.

It is like an outdoor aviary through my window - up to fifteen to twenty small birds at a time around the feeders - sparrows, finches and tits. None of the more unusual winter visitors yet.

I need a hot cup of tea, light the woodburner and moan about my coldinthenose. I haven't had a cold for months and months!