Wet Wet Wet

Spent the day painting the bathroom.

Log Fires and Below Zero

I had a good day yesterday. A local farmer came with his Landrover and brought me a trailer load of logs. Must have been well over a ton. He dropped them on the driveway outside my back door and then waved good bye. Hard working farmers are always busy.

 I got my wheelbarrow and started to ferry them across the lawn into  the nearest polytunnel. And then the heavens opened and didn't it rain. It took me just over an hour to stack them all in the dry. Wet through to the skin but so chuffed to get the job completed. 

Not so long after the sun came out for a few moments - (yeah I know) - and brought with it the most fabulous sunset. Two gifts in one day.





I woke up this morning to minus 6 and ice on the insides of my window.

Like this



                                    and this

But soon had my Rayburn lit and a roaring log fire in my 'front room'

All toasty.
It was a good day yesterday.

Shadows after the Storm

Yesterday Storm Callum hit home, bucketed down all day and most of the night.

Still raining Sunday morning.

Then late afternoon the sun came out.

Happy Shadow Shot Sunday 2

Ophelia

I woke up this morning to find that Ophelia had left me enough fire wood to keep me warm through the winter.

It was quite strange though, because all the house roof slates seem to be intact and the poly tunnels weren't a bit torn. The wind must have channeled high speed  through a very small area.

I took a photo today of  a pheasant roosting up in a nearby tree.
He wouldn't have done that yesterday.

Blood Red

 A strange sort of a morning. All over was covered in a thick blanket of cloud and it was still dark enough to need the light on at nine am. It was quite warm though when I went out to feed the cats. No sunshine but  the sky completely tinged with an orange/yellowness. It had the feeling of everything being put on hold for the time being. Almost like it was holding it's breath for what was to come.

 I had intended to go into Welshpool today to refuel my car but decided against it after I heard the weather  forecast. I started to clean a cupboard out instead. I happened to look out of the window - and saw the most amazing sun. One of those moments when you've just got to grab your camera and shoot - except the battery was low on mine, just when I needed it most -

It hardly shows the outline of the sun but there it was - blood red and a perfect circle. And everywhere else a thick blanket of grey.

I tried to play around with the colours/ saturation etc with Windows 10 tools on screen but the blood red still didn't show like it was.
I've just read in the news that apparently it was a dust phenomenon thrown up by hurricane Ophelia and did actually appear to turn the sun a blood red. Amazing.

Did anyone else see it?

The wind was wild here late afternoon and getting wilder.

Adiós Gonzalo

It's been a strange sort of day today - one minute blazing sunshine, howling gales,  an ominous black sky and stampeding rain the next. I was so glad that I'd invested a tenner's worth into Rhino tape from Coed-y and hunkered the poly tunnels down as much as I could the other day. Amazingly enough they are still holding together (only just) and my plants have survived (so far). But we've been lucky - not so good  in West Sussex and all along the west coast, right across up to Cumbria,

Brompton Stocks and Antirrhinums.

At the end of August, I collected up quite a few  seeds from around the garden. I sowed them in margarine tubs, pricked them out into seed trays and they  are coming on quite well. Will over winter them and plant them out in the spring, (she says). Our son and his partner are planning to get married in July/August next year so I've offered  to grow  flowers  for the pending 'do'.  J said that she would like to do her own flowers, so I told her that she can have the pick of as many as she wants. (If she wants them). I love weddings.

This was one little patch, earlier on in the year - a bit of a mish mash of all sorts.

My friend brought me two baby holly hock plants last spring. They were gorgeous and have produced loads of seeds. I've planted a sea of little seedlings from them. Hope they survive the winter. Looking quite good up to now.

Aquilegia and Pinks

Another scrambly border. This pic was taken in early summer. I spent yesterday cutting everything back and rooting out all the weeds, I've taken some cuttings of the one in the front so I hope they 'take'.

Canterbury Bells, lupins and a little oak sapling I found growing in the middle of them.

Holly hocks,  lupins, primulas  and  stocks

Still got a few runner beans hanging on. Hope there's enough to make a meal tomorrow.

Musselburg Leeks

Carrots

Beetroot

Marrows

The wind seems to have died down at last so here's to tomorrow. Have a good week
Molly

Aberystwyth Re-visited

At the beginning of the year, all along the south and west coasts Britain was battered by storms. Seems such a long time ago now. Hard to imagine that only nine months ago, it was all like this.
Aberystwyth on the South Wales coastline was one of the many little towns and hamlets to feel the brunt ....



We live inland about 60 miles away. Last Monday we went out on a day trip. It's funny, when it's winter you can't imagine the summer and in the summer time, winter seems a million light years away.



The sun was shining, but most the holiday makers had packed up and gone home. The children, back in school. The uni and college students not yet back. The boats in the harbour, hunkered down and not a fisherman in sight. The walkway through the castle ruins all but deserted. The last remnants of the wild little pink thrift growing in clumps by the castle wall. Rock pools with fronds of trailing red and green algae and limpets. The sea endlessly swishing as the tide idly ebbed and flowed. You could breathe in the pungent smell of  seaweed trapped on the shore. Just a few of us and the seagulls and I loved it.

Rainbow

I  turned my head, looked up and there it was!

In the deep distant greyness of the sky,

A faint arc beyond the hill.

And then suddenly  it became clearer, vibrant, stunning, beautiful.

Closer. So close. 

And in that moment, I reached out my arms and touched a rainbow.

And no-one else took any notice.

Picking up the Pieces

It was a wild one last night! In our thirty six years down here, I don't think I've ever experienced a storm like it. By four-o-clock in the afternoon, the wind was fairly raging and the rain was rattling down in stair rods.  I did my best to mend a small rip in the newest poly tunnel but had to give in and dive for cover into the house.

One look through the bedroom window this morning and this is what greeted us - the 30 foot tunnel on the east side, next to the brook looked as if it had been slashed with a knife. The seventy footer one next to it was torn to shreds. Oh well  - it did need a new cover - we'd been saying for ages. and it certainly does now.

Spent the afternoon, patching the smaller tunnel with Rhino tape. Brilliant stuff for holding it all together. It was just about in one piece again when I came in. I've got spring cabbage, leeks, onions, garlic and lettuce in there right now.

All my plants were in the disaster area, along with some broad beans, I'd sown in cardboard pots.  I'd sown 6 rows of parsnips a couple of days ago. Also got beetroot, broccoli and cauliflowers growing - but they look as though they'd survived okay. It was a bit of a marathon, fleecing up as much as I could, so hope they make it through.

Anyway, the daffodil bulbs are are pushing their heads up where they can.

And the primroses starting to bud..

Good old hellebore flowering again amongst last year's windfall apples.

And Eric? ..... well he slept through the lot of it.
There's another front coming in tomorrow, so they tell us.

Every Once In A While

I found this on You Tube and I love his voice - Kurt Nilsen, Norway World Idol 2004

Nearly six months have gone by since we had our holiday. It cheers me up a bit, when the days are short and the weather's rough, to look back at some of the photos we took.

Our first stop off was in Norway,  Kristiansand. A beautiful little harbour town. The sun was  shining and wild flowers were out all along the path into the main street. What really struck me though was how the recession had hit over there as much or even more so than here. A lot of their economy depends on tourism - the shops were struggling - sales and slashed prices. A young woman was curled up against a concrete pillar, a small empty chipped pottery bowl by her feet. She was younger than my daughter. Her plight touched me. I tipped the meagre bits of Norwegian coinage I had in my purse into the bowl. Honestly, it was almost nothing. She reached out and held my hand for a few minutes and the communion of eyes said it all. It's winter in Norway now too. I can still picture her face. I hope she's OK.

The Ace of Spades

The sun shone a bit today. Actually it wan't too bad out at all. After days of battling through the floods and the quagmire, unblocking clogged up grids and attempting to tame a rampant brook we really felt like getting out and going somewhere. We went down to 'Coed-y-dinas' Agricultural Store just on the edge of Welshpool. All the Christmas glitz and the New Year celebrations well and truly packed away and the spades, forks, bags of compost, arrays of seed packets and chicken coops all there to tempt you to spend the last of your hard earned cash. Don't you feel so much better when the sun shines! Along with bags of coal for the Rayburn and a cylinder of gas for the Super Ser, I bought a huge bargain bag of daffodils for £2 - yeah, I know, they should have been planted last September/October, but £2 - two pounds  - too cheap to leave there for that. I shall be planting bulbs in the mud tomorrow if it doesn't rain again.
D'you like that great big shovel they'd got outside the entrance?   All I need now is to find the great big man to go with it and we'll get back on an even keel in no time at all.

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