Golden Day!

HAPPY GOLDEN WEDDING

MUM & DAD

Nesting Time?

Bird-cam is catching a fair bit of activity at the moment - almost invariably the birds are ferrying something somewhere ...


Can only conclude that there is some serious nest construction going on out there!

Timber Two

Back in November, the wind brought down a couple of our trees, the remains of which have been littering the garden ever since.


A sunny Saturday finally saw us out and about in the garden, tackling the debris - and since we had the chainsaw out we thinned out a couple of the bushy trees for good measure.

While Martin logged stuff up, I snipped up bits of twig for kindling - although began to run out of space for it all after a while.  Bagged up the leafy bits for the tip, and job done.



Some much needed replenishment for the wood stock after a long winter.

The Wall

As it turned out the high winds at the end of November did a bit more damage than we'd thought, and in addition to the trees we also lost (the admittedly rather rickety) fence at the bottom of the garden.  Our neighbours suggested that we go for a rather more permanent replacement, and we agreed to split the cost for a breeze-block wall.

Construction was held up by some of our wetter weather - but got there despite it all, and we now have a rather smart (and hopefully extremely solid) boundary wall:

This area of the garden has always been something of a 'sun-spot' (good for drying wood!) so we're now contemplating how we might use the wall space.  Unfortunately there's too much concrete to allow us to espalier fruit trees against the wall, but we might manage a lean-to greenhouse for chillies or peppers.

Watch this space . . .

Winter-ish . .

January got a bit colder, even saw snow one day (didn't last).  Ended the month with a few wild and windy days, and an occasional thunderstorm to add to the drama:

Overall, still pretty wet, but not as wet as December - so on the whole an improvement . . .

Lightning!

Was wondering what the noise was last night - then looked out the window and the world lit up:

We're not generally big on thunderstorms but this one was practically shaking the house - luckily it didn't last long.

Break Out the Champagne!

Well, actually, the champagne was broken out a good decade or more ago, and we've been hoarding 5 pence pieces in the bottle ever since - all of which added up to an awful lot of coins:

Took a lot of effort to get them out of the bottle mind you, and some considerable time counting and bagging them up after - but we're now over £380 the richer (exceeding all predictions, which ranged from £50 to £300).  Spookily this is also more or less what it costs to buy a Methuselah of Moet & Chandon at 2013 prices!