Christmas Shopping

Two more shopping days until Christmas.  However carefully you choose, there's a hair's breadth between buying your nearest and dearest exactly what they'd like and what you might imagine they'd like. I read an interesting tid bit in the Daily Mail about how to read body language on whether your chosen ones like what you've chosen  - here's a link on Choosing what to buy

We had an unexpected Christmas present the other day. A recent storm had brought a tree down on my brother-in-law's farm. He phoned us to say that he was cutting logs up and would we like any?  We have a solid fuel Rayburn which eats logs like they're going out of fashion. With the soaring electric and central heating oil prices, I have to say that its recently come back into fashion with a vengeance. He chopped them up on his log splitter in the pouring rain and we loaded a Transit van full. We're having to dry them  in the Rayburn oven,  a few at a time before we burn them, but the bestest present out.

  Like everyone else in Britain, the floods and storms are on the way with more heavy rain forecast for tomorrow. It looks as if we could be hunkered in for Christmas Day. To you who call by - have a special, happy Christmas.  Keep warm and dry, love from Molly xx

Mistletoe and Holly

All in all, it's been a bit of a day today. But not as bad as the folks down south have had.We must have had quite a storm during the night. The muddy torrent was torrenting down the road past our house this morning and I wanted to go out.  I zipped up the track to where a certain person's drain had blocked yet again and poked it free with a stick. Then freed the rest of the drains down the lane except one. Couldn't free that one - a gaggle of unenthusiastic road repairing council workers had recently tarmacked over the grid and the water was gliding effortlessly over the top. Ah well! Anyway I did manage to get out which was OK.

Mistletoe on an apple tree at the Mill

A few years ago O/H was at a farm sale with the intention of buying a rotovater. He missed the final bid but got talking to the person standing next to him, who was also hoping to buy one. His own had packed up and had no idea how to fix it. The conversation culminated in an invitation for us to visit.

Honestly, I have never seen such a fantastic garden. This dear, generous old man was well in his eighties and his eyes lit up as he showed us round. He lived at a place called Stiperstones. His little terraced house was built at the foot of 'Peggy's Hill'. I thought it was steep where we lived, but nothing like this. He'd got a little grove of hawthorn bushes with masses and masses of mistletoe on them. At Christmas time he sold it to eke out his pension. He also had 500 little fir saplings which he also sold as they grew bigger. He insisted that we take an armful of vegetables and a bundle of mistletoe. He said to make a small insertion in the bark of a tree and gently rub the white berry into it.  It was such a thrill today to see that some of it had actually started to grow. Apparently it takes quite a few years to grow a sizeable amount. I don't know whether he's even still alive now. I hope he's still enjoying his garden.

Holly tree growing at the back of the garage.

Another nice thing today. We used to go for walks around the single track roads. O/H is not too well now and can't walk too far like he could then. Sometimes we'd take little  holly cuttings from hedges along the fields. We stuck the stem in the ground planted one of them at the back of the garage. This year it's loaded with berries and is beautiful. Apparently you have to have both male and female plants for the female to produce berries so we must have hit it right somewhere along the line.

A fair sized chunk of a broken oak branch came floating down on the rush of water. More logs for the Rayburn.
Thank you God.

Little Things

It's been tipping down for most of day here. That sort of windy, grey, wet, gets in your bones kind of a day.We have a solid fuel Rayburn which we hadn't lit for the last four years. That was in the good old days when central heating oil was relatively cheap and sawing up logs wasn't worth the myther. But I lit it today. Believe me, there is nothing as nice as a log fire on a wet day.  I've had the whistling kettle on the hob all day,  (tea on demand) and cooked a chicken in the oven.

When the brook at the end of the road  flooded in September, the torrents brought drift wood and  bits of branches from upstream. When the water subsided we managed to hook a few bits out of the brook and saw them up.

We stored them in wheel barrows in the polytunnel to help them to dry out.

I noticed these little toadstools growing on a piece of waterlogged timber. They're pale yellow with a goldeny bit on the crown. I wouldn't eat them but they're lovely to look at. What are they?

Darling Buds of May Bank Holiday

What did you get up to this May Bank Holiday? Whatever it was I hope it was nice.  We didn't go to the beach. We didn't go anywhere. But in a way of consolation, the beach came to us. After all the heavy rain and flooding, the ford along side the road at the mill was covered in shale and little coloured, smooth rounded bits of stone all along the edge.

Piles of driftwood were stacked haphazardly close by and everything looked so much fresher and greener today.

Red Campion , the real native (proper) English bluebells, stitchwort

and wild garlic on the embankment.

Fronds of cow parsley just starting to come into bud and unfurl. There was a little Colt's Foot in full blow.

And blossom on all the trees.

I discovered a little sapling growing in the undergrowth. The leaf on it was reddish bronze coloured.

Not dis-similar to an oak leaf but then it looked quite like a sycamore as well. Any ideas as to what it might be?

Still Raining - Scary

I never really intended to post another weather blog but it's been a bit of a day here. This morning .......
'I'm going out,' I said
'What time will you be back?'
'Should be home by about half twelveish at the latest.'
I had already prepared today's mid-day dinner yesterday so it was going to be Roast Beef Poppity Ping (thanks John) soon as I got back through the door.
Pulbuchan Brook which runs along side the road 500 metres down from our house was starting to fill up a bit but not full to the top so I thought it would be OK. Put my black wellies (or wollies as my grand daughter used to call them) in the boot of the Foccy and away. Didn't it rain! Did you have all that rain? I guess you did if you lived anywhere in Britain.

Half past twelve I turned the Mill Bank corner to find the brook had become a river and the road was somewhere underneath. I pulled into the lay by, retrieved black wollies and plodded the hundred metres or so towards the flooded. I waded about ten metres in, thinking that I could walk home the rest of the way up the bank. The current was quite a force and the tops of black wollies were rapidly getting submerged.  Time to about turn and take refuge back in the car. I rang Other Half to let him know where I was to stop him worrying. I rang three times - no answer. Then I began to worry what might have happened to him? Three hours later he rang me back.  He brought a metal hoe with him and managed to get across the top end of the road, into the adjoining field and along the top side of the hedge. I locked the car and he helped me climb through the thorn hedge into the field. We scrambled  along the hedge on higher ground to the narrowest part of the flooding. The current still looked scary.  I held on to him and was so glad to get to the house side, up the bank and own back door. We got home at four pm

St Christopher

We went down again tonight to see if we could bring the car up. No chance! The water had gone down a bit but still too deep. Quite frankly, I didn't give a toss about the car. Just grateful to escape a watery grave that might have been and get back in the warm. I'll probably feel differently in the morning,
How's your day been?