Sadness

It's only now that I can say that Barney has died. I'm so glad that he hasn't had to suffer in this dreadful cold snowy weather, but I miss him so much. He was the best dog and he went with dignity.  Such a sad day. This is photo shows how I will always remember him.

Snowing and still sewing

   Quilt making has to be the best job to have at present. Here we are in Lincolnshire with enormous amounts of snow, ice, freezing fog but my job involves snuggling under Deah's quilt as I add the hand sewing to the bindings. Its a tough job but it has to be done.  Husband meanwhile is installing a wood burning stove in the sitting room. This involves a Big Crane for getting the liner down the chimney. Could he use this crane for other seasonal purposes.... with a red suit and a white beard I think he could make a lot of friends.... But now our garden looks like the second photo and we are really looking forward to the log burner welcome party!

Wild weather

Last week the weather was wild here although the sun shone. Barney and I ventured onto the common, me with a woolly hat and him with his ears blown upright. The hawthorn berries were bright red and shone like jewels on their stiff twigs, breakfast for hungry blackbirds in the weeks to come. High in the sky a heron was struggling to make progress, but the wind blew him about. He looked like a kite without a string. Eventually he gave up, landed and perched near the fence in a grumpy manner, looking cold and fed up. Barney is so slow now, joints painful but still positive about exploring rabbit holes....

Owls

Three years ago we had two baby tawny owls in the garden. They stayed awake all day like toddlers who wouldn't go to sleep and their parents must have been exhausted. As they got bigger they hopped about in the upper branches of the willow tree and if I walked underneath  and looked up, there they would be looking down at me in astonishment. It was a magical summer that year but sadly it has never happened again even though we have a perfect owl box set at just the right angle in the pear tree. Recently Jo asked me if I had found the owls in the cathedral and showed me where they were. So here they are, identical twins, who have watched the congregation from high on a pillar for centuries.

Harvest

Now I don't want to appear smug and after commenting on the winter stash  tendencies of our squirrels, but I'm just going to swank about my jam jars. Which are full. All of them . Barney and I have been tottering around the blackberry bush on the common everyday for weeks. Me picking a small bag of berries daily and him lying in wait for any very slow rabbits who might pass by... Now the berries have been converted into jam. Not only blackberry, but balckcurrant, mulberry ( due to husband's scrumping efforts on the tree at work), and strawberry, due to a lucky buy in the local shop. The slugs have enjoyed my strawberries mightily! Lovely Jo sent me an appropriate postcard too which made me laugh, we both have favourite jam jars which have been reused over the seasons.

Winter larder

In Lincolnshire our Horse Chestnut trees are stricken with two problems. One makes them ooze a sticky tar like substance and the other makes the leaves die. In our garden the  tree near the house looks very sick. Never the less there is an annual replanting process going on. People with  bushy tails  are very busy, rushing about, burying conkers... anywhere will do....flowerpots, the middle of the vegetable patch, in the lawn.... What few conkers we have are being distributed around the garden in a random fashion which denotes  a short memory span by our population of grey squirrels. They also steal peanuts and bury those. And walnuts and bury those too. And my tulip bulbs have disappeared, the alium bulbs never got chance to appear at all, and I can guess who dug them up! And I won't  mention the hazelnuts, but I can hear  the squirrels as they run along the sewing room roof, between the hazel tree and the  back garden, so I know what they are up to!

Winter larder

Now I don't want to appear smug and after commenting on the winter stash  tendencies of our squirrels, but I'm just going to swank about my jam jars. Which are full. All of them . Barney and I have been tottering around the blackberry bush on the common everyday for weeks. Me picking a small bag of berries daily and him lying in wait for any very slow rabbits who might pass by... Now the berries have been converted into jam. Not only blackberry, but balckcurrant, mulberry ( due to husband's scrumping efforts on the tree at work), and strawberry, due to a lucky buy in the local shop. The slugs have enjoyed my strawberries mightily! Lovely Jo sent me an appropriate postcard too which made me laugh, we both have favourite jam jars which have been reused over the seasons.