Bank Holiday Sunshine

Cherry blossom against a beautiful blue
Mayday sky. 

In my previous post I wrote of the possible end of the road for the "Suzy's Six" batch of hopeful hens. We had hoped that at least some of these, if not all, would grow up female and be able to join our fox-depleted egg laying flock under the tutilege of our 2 roosters, Gandalf and Herme. Well, this was not to be and we managed, despite picking them out from Suzy's rearing batch for their 'hen-like' looks, to achieve the 1:128 odds of six roosters.

Nice clean carcasses but only achieving 1.1 to 1.3 kg oven
ready weights. 

We managed to find a home of one of these - he went off to lord it over the small flock of hens at our out-door archery venue, Con and Niamh's place. The other 5 were despatched, plucked and 'dressed' and have been either eaten or frozen.

The five new birds have landed and are getting used to
their new surroundings.

Our friend Sue cheerfully (and generously) offered to give us another batch to try, these more likely to be female as they were last year's birds and, in one case at least, already laying those tiny "Witch" or "Fairy" eggs. They currently have a mountain of eggs over there and think they have way too many chickens, so she'd be happy to sort us out some spares. So on the same run we made into "town" to drop the rooster off with Niamh, we diverted back to Sue's place and brought them home.

The new birds try a bit of free ranging

These birds look more convincing as hens than the last 6 ever did and they are a motley collection of cross breeds so they will fit in well here! 2 are red with dark tails so may have a bit of sussex in them. One is white with black hints so is probably a Sussex - this gives us a nice continuity from the recent loss of 'Enda'. One is grey and may be a Cuckoo Marans, The 5th looks mainly 'Araucana' and has a deformed foot, so has been named by Liz as 'Stumpy'. She gets around OK and even perches on the wall inside the coop. They will all do OK.

2 bunnies where there should not be any bunnies. Mutt and Jeff
in the yard.

Also new in the farmyard for this post are the 2 bunnies, Mutt and Jeff, bought for the express purpose of mowing the grass around the bee hives. These guys decided that they did not want to be out there on the periphery of our 2.5 acres and each escaped a number of times to come and take up residence in the farmyard and the chicken houses.

I have recaptured them and carried them back but they are quickly out again and I cannot see where or how they get out; maybe by flinging themselves over the 3' chicken wire like pole-vaulters. Ah well. The grass will not get grazed but they do not seem to be doing much damage so I guess they can stay for now.

Spot the cat.

With the Play and all the visitors done for now, we have been able to slot back into the relaxing routine of 'normal' life. This has, rather delightfully. coincided with a superb improvement in the weather. We have had dry days now for what seems like weeks and lately blue skies and no wind with a lovely hot sun.

One of our black spruces.

The May Bank Holiday weekend was especially kind. We have both been out in the garden weeding, topping off tall weeds (plantain, docks, nettles) in the orchard, brush-cutting the rough stuff in the 'woods' (ground elder, nettles, elder re-growth, cow parsley etc), rediscovering the caravan for use as garden shed. We have also been out (Liz in shorts!) just enjoying the balmy heat sitting in our 'Darby and Joan' chairs looking back across the pond to the house.

The new evergreen oak. That should get
away nicely. 

Tonight we have both been out - Liz off to Knitting Club and enjoying the fact that she did not have to race away from that to the next Play Rehearsal (till midnight). I have joined the Tidy Towns group so I have been out litter picking, cleaning signs and weeding in the Lady's Club flower bed in the Cemetery. I know. Rock and Roll.

When you leave the curry left overs with no lid and the cats
 decide to raid the saucepan in the night. 

May Day also saw my dear aul' Mum turn 90, entertained by my younger brother Mark and all his family down in Swindon. Happy Birthday, Mum (Pud Lady). Many more.

Finish Holidays!

The plane home. 

Finish Holidays! That was the expression (with a sigh of regret) Diane's Greek friends would use on the last days of trips to Poros as the girls packed up their belongings and prepared to join the 'Flying Dolphin' fast ferry out back to the mainland and the plane home. That was me today; back to Ireland after a superb and very enjoyable break in the UK catching up with relatives and friends, former workmates and, in one case, meeting for the first time some chums who I 'knew' quite well but only through the internet.

All his days seem to be 'bad hair' days. The rather disreputable
looking but very sweet Rags (Ragworth)

Of course the 'main event' was a trip home to see Mum ('Pud Lady' on these pages) and, as it turned out, 'big brother' Tom who was around the house for both my visit days. My main base was Daine's husband John's place in Faversham so huge thanks to him for TOPP hosting. He has a spotless (and very newly refurbished) house and the bed in his spare room is easily the softest and most comfortable bed I have slept in for years. He was also keen to try out his cooking skills on the guests, so we were treated to a succession of the likes of "Panackelty" (a northern layered 'stew' of corned beef which he used to do instructed by Stockton-on-Tees born Diane) and Hungarian Goulash and side salads which were so generous that they dwarfed the main course.

Miles and Paul with the 'heavies'

The 'internet' lads are 2CV owners (which is how I first 'found' them) but also keep a smallholding and I had been following their antics which ran in parallel to ours as they got to grips with sheep-owning, bee keeping, turkey poults and chickens. I knew too, that they followed my blog and as they live at a mid point between my Faversham base and Mum's place, I couldn't resist schmoozing them up for a visit so that I could put real faces to the Facebook stories. I was also dead curious to see the two 'species' which we don't do here - heavy horses and the tiny 'Dexter' cattle. I begged some directions and we decided a time and date. I just had to rock up in the very bright red hired Vauxhall Astra. There was even the promise of some home made onion soup and excellent bread.

I'm 6 foot 1. These are BIG horses.

The visit was a huge success and we got on like a house on fire. Miles and Paul welcomed me enthusiastically and we had a good 'farm tour' which took us everywhere. Their place is a chocolate-box beautiful period farmhouse near Rye, recently restored and improved in keeping with local listed-building regs. They have a vintage grey tractor which I covet (as well as a quad bike!). The horses are three huge geldings with feet as big as dinner plates - Shires and Clydesdales if memory serves (do jump in and comment if I have this wrong guys). They were quiet and gentle but quite curious about this new person in their field, so I got well 'loomed' over. They run with 2 standard sized mares to keep them company. The Dexters were two mums with calves at foot. Like us they are currently without pigs (wrong season). The onion soup was to die for. Thank you so so much M+P.

From huge horses to tiny cattle - Dexters.

The visit 'home' was also a great success. Brother (Tom) and Mum were on fine form and we had some lovely chat catching up on the gossip and Hastings stuff. We played some Scrabble and although we both beat Mum, it was not by much and we reckon she was happy with our argument that this proved she had reared a couple of genius sons. What's wrong with that? Mum is, of course well able for the pair of us and whizzed around cooking us a lovely roast chicken lunch which she insisted on carving to show us who was really in charge here. Tom and I might be 58/60, but Mum trumps us with her 88. There's no arguing with that.

Pud Lady at 88 attacks a chicken. 

I also managed to sneak in a visit to see the widow of my old work mate Steve (see post of 3rd July this year entitled "Hen and Two"), who was also the breeder of our oldest bitch, Deefer. Jean (that lady) still has Deefer's mother (Mollie) and brother (Archie) though she has had to have the 'dad' (Hector) put down. It was fascinating that the dogs well remembered me after 4 years and were straight way into clambering all over me and loving me up as I tried to drink the proffered coffee. Thank you and the very best of luck, Jean.

2CV Llew on the roof fixing down some panels. 

Another Westie who remembered me straight away was Boris, belonging to old mate 2CV Llew who has featured many times in this blog. We'd arranged to meet for breakfast in the Wetherspoons pub in Herne Bay, "Saxon Shore" (and very nice it was too!) But it seems that these days I have a taste for the buildering and can't keep away from it, so when Llew said he was roofing his new workshop in Herne village on the Wednesday and I'd be welcome to help him, I found myself agreeing to go at this all day despite the arrival of the British Isles's next named storm, Barney.

Llew's new workshop.

Llew had already created the frame of this 16' by 16' building in 2 inch steel box section and angle-iron (it's what he does for work) so we could do a day of Llew being up on the roof fixing down the panels while I was 'man on the ground' cutting panels to size and the 'firing' them up to him, plus scurrying up and down the ladder bringing him bits, connecting up power tools and helping to fix battens to the erected panels so that they would more securely take the next ones. All good clean fun.

Hidden treasure, Derek's old Roller.

The workshop is in the yard of a superbly "wheeler-dealer"  type guy who by coincidence knows our part of Ireland quite well as his son has just bought a former nunnery in Lanesborough (on the Shannon) so he's often in and out of Knock airport. He also turns out to have a lovely Rolls Royce under a sheet in one of the garages which Llew wishes he would use to drive the two of them to the local pub. It would make quite an impression, thinks Llew. Probably have to wipe the fish and chip grease off the fingers before you got back in, though, mate. Anyway, we got his roof done despite some impressive gusts of wind from 'Barney', working right round till last light, so dark that we needed a torch to go round rounding up the tools to tidy up at the end of the job.

John's lovely little "Faversham" stove - really meant for
boat and yacht cabins. 

My final call was to drop in on good friend of this blog, Mazy-Lou, where John and I had been invited round to supper and Mazy was known to have been BAKING. Anyone who knows Mazy will be familiar with her legendary baking skills and we were due a steak and kidney pie with 2 kinds of pastry (she uses shortcrust on the bottom and flakey pastry above) and multiple veg, a fruit crumble and then a cheese course all washed down with excellent wine. She did us proud. We were full to groaning point by the end and had to take a couple of "trou Normande" breaks to recover between courses. An armagnac and a good coffee sorted us out for the journey home.

One of John's plaques - made near to where he was born by
Osbourne Plaques, this one includes a Thames Barge bottom
right. 

Of course, with me away, Liz was left in charge of the farm and coped but reports that she was run ragged what with work and a training course she had to attend, so was really missing the chance to drink a whole cup of tea without being interupted. There was also a day when she, too was away at the Dublin 'Knit and Stitch' show/trade sale and I cannot close this post without thanking two more people, our fellow small-holder friends, Sue and Rob (of the various piglet adventures) who stepped into the breach and came to let chickens in and out in the day-light, safe from Mr Fox. We owe you guys. So that was it. Aer Lingus flew me home this afternoon on an interesting, Jet-Stream affected, turbulent flight (it was like being driven home over rocky roads in an army truck! They "suspended" the refreshment service for half an hour for risk of bouncing hot drinks over the passengers while the pilot found a calmer altitude). Liz has had her tea and all is well with the world.

O Sole Mio?

Yes; I've been making my own entertainment this week, with Lizzie off down in Silverwood-land "minding" Daddy (Mr SL) while Steak Lady steals some time in the sun in Malta off with her gang of former Bridge Club chums from Portmarnock. Not that Mr SL needs much minding, you understand; he's all well again from his Hospital scares so this is not Intensive Care we are talking about. Liz tells me that he instructs her not to get up and start "fussing" before 9 a.m. because he likes to wake up and potter about gently and if she'd be good enough to leave him alone till then he'll bring her a cup of tea.

Some first-year shoots from those English's Nursery crowns
only in the ground a week or so!

When she dives in and tries to start clearing the meal table and do washing up he good naturedly shuts her in the sun-room with a glass of wine and insists that HE will do it because he "knows where everything goes" when it comes out of the dish-washer. Yes, it's a tough old job this "minding" but Liz will survive. She is also getting plenty of opportunities to go visit the Silverwoods and be visited by them.

Let loose in the kitchen, I am trying my hand at a few scones.

And I do NOT want you to get the impression that I am feeling sorry for myself here. I am quite self sufficient, me, so though I miss the wifely presence (it would be impolite not to!), I can chug along happily here on the 'farm'. There is always plenty to do and the dogs, cats and livestock are all good company (if a bit thin on simulating conversation). I do a little bit of this and a little bit of that - gardening, the bees, shopping, photography, blogging, facebook, cooking stuff for myself, entertaining the occasional guest, housework and even some baking. The latter always feels a bit "bold", like interfering where you are not normally allowed to go. Although I can cook perfectly well, we have slotted into a rhythm here where it is Liz who rules in the kitchen and does all the fancy cookery while I am mainly outdoor jobs. So if I stray into the kitchen I always get the impression I am being 'watched', the same way I am sure Liz feels if she were to wander out into my veg plot and start weeding.

Possibly not the brightest place to sit, Blue.

Just for a bit of fun, I also had another go at taking some video footage and uploading it to the internet, one short chunk of the new twin lambs, and one of the new piggies. These are the links if you are that way inclined. Unfortunately, they are facebook based links (I failed to grab the Youtube addresses which appear briefly when they were first put up there and I have no idea how to find these out again)

This is the pig one https://www.facebook.com/matt.care.54/videos/vb.100002645805158/769903719774481/?type=2

and this the lambs one

https://www.facebook.com/matt.care.54/videos/vb.100002645805158/769526129812240/?type=2&theater

Apologies if you can't get at them. Equally, if anyone knows how to find them on Youtube, then please do let on. Perhaps the solution is to upload them again and take notes?

Lots of activity fom the new bees. 

We have also had our very pleasing result (so far anyway) in the bee keeping department. When I last posted I had just done my moonlight flit over to Killashee in County Longford to collect my new colony from the wonderful BO'D and carefully set it up next to the old hive. Any worries I might have had of bees suffering in the car journey were quickly dispelled when the new workers were out and buzzing first thing the next day, even though it was a bit chilly. There were bees pinging everywhere, certainly more than my 'old' hive has done this year. A good few were doing the face-the-hive, fly-backwards and spiral outwards flights which we know are 're-orientation' flights, the bees emerging from the hive to discover an unfamiliar landscape and having to learn the new map.

The twin lambs now thriving again at almost 3 weeks. 

I have set the hives next to each other so that in a few days we can slot all the frames from inside BO'D's boxes, into the old white boxes, which will have been cleaned and sterilized just in case, and then spirit the old brown boxes away. The bees will then (so goes the theory) cope with the fact that their home has suddenly 'turned white' because they will come back and mill about for a while, confused by the visual change, but then smell the familiar smells of home coming from the entrance slot of this funny white box. It is almost beekeeping mantra that you can move a hive less than 3 feet or more than 3 miles, but never anything in between.

Cheeky happy pigs, scarfing more fruit.

Bees find their way about by a remembered map. They will find the hive again if it has only gone 3 feet, but if it has gone further away they will mill about at the old location, lost, till they run out of fuel and then simply die on the ground. If you move the hive less than 3 miles, which is the bees natural forage range, they may accidentally come across an old remembered route to the old location and follow that back to the former home (where they will, again, die of lack of fuel). If you want to move your hive ten feet, then you have to move it 3 miles to an out-station (a friend's ground for example), wait 3 weeks while they re-orientate to that and forget the old map, then move them back to the old apiary but new position. Strange but true.

George the Gander. You lookin' at me?

And I have had that birthday, of course, which was looking to be a non-event, with the celebrations postponed till Liz came home. All my friends and contacts, though, must have had other ideas - I received a veritable blizzard of greetings on Facebook, I got a card and gift from the UK through the post (Thanks Pud Lady and Tom!) and visits from friends who wanted to meet the piggies plus one from Anne and Simon who arrived bearing rhubarb and stayed for a cup of tea, a sit down and a chat. Also some phone calls about the bees and a nice call home. May also have pinged a few texts back and forth to/from the absent Lizzie. It all made for a perfectly good day.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles......

The house in Hastings where I grew up.

"Just write about what you did in your holidays" - that clichéd old instruction in English Composition classes at school when you were first back from the summer break. Once a year I get the urge to 'go home' (all be it 'home' now feels very much like here, rather than Hastings or Kent), to catch up with Pud Lady (now 87) and my brother, Tom, to drop in on Kent friends and, of course, to get a fix of the 'Thames Sailing Barge' drug. I do all these in one trip, leaving poor Liz in charge of all the livestock. She asks for a check list in case she misses anyone, and gets handed one running to 4 pages of a note book this time (!). She tells me she loves it for a couple of days but by night-5 she is missing her lay-ins and cups of first-thing-in-the-morning tea and she is happy to hand the gang back,

Pud Lady cooks up the next cheating
devious manouvre in scrabble!

In these days of cheap flights it is all reasonably priced and we are delighted to be only 25 minutes drive down country lanes from Knock Airport. We both remember with horror those traffic-clogged trudges to Gatwick (and hour and a half each way on a good day) and some nightmare runs all the way round the M25 to Heathrow (2 hours if you were very lucky). I fly Aer Lingus to Gatwick, hire a small car (VW Polo this time), and trundle down to Kent always in awe of how many cars there are about; I am used to my quiet roads of the 'Wesht' by now. This time I dropped in on former neighbours, the 'Angel Betty' and Jim for a lovely chat and a coffee, then headed for Diamond's with John for supper, a visit from Mazy and a comfortable night's sleep.

Sailing Barge Cambria at night in St Katharine Docks

Thursday saw me down in Hastings catching up with Pud Lady and Tom, helping with and then sharing lunch and then being beaten badly by PL at Scrabble. She will read this, of course, so I can't be too rude, but we do have a good laugh with the Scrabble because she is always dreaming up devious cheating manouvres which she tells me are allowed when you are over 85 years old. There is a rule somewhere, apparently. You can write words upwards, diagonally or even detached from the rest of the grid, plus you can use shamelessly foreign words like "quinze" (15) or initials like 'TT' (tee-total) if it means you can lay your cunning word alongside an existing one in order to put your 'X' or 'Z' on a triple word. Who am I to argue? Just the obedient son........ To be fair in her defence, I should add that she also got lots of genuine and very clever, high scoring words without breaking any rules, 'Friezes' for example across a treble letter, completing 2 other sizable words into the bargain.

Those famous poppies at the Tower of London

From Hastings, back to Diamond's via Mazy's near Faversham for another lovely chat and to collect a cake and a jar of tomato chutney for the barge folk. John and I bought fish and chips (Ahhh the nostalgia) from our old favourite outlet, the Park Fish Bar in Faversham. Diamond is, as regular readers will know, not at all well and did not feel up to the fishy feast but she enjoyed us enjoying it. Local pub, The Elephant also operates a draught beer take-away service, where you can buy 2 pints of any of their guest draughts in a 'Tetra-pack' style container to bring home. We chose the mild Kent stout 'Canterbury Ale' and the paler (Rother Valley Brewery) 'Boadicea', both excellent.

Boozy reception and boaters' prize giving on board Cambria

And so to London to hand back the car at Gatwick and find my way through to St Katharine Docks to "join my ship". This was the Sailing Barge Cambria which was in town as part of Boris Johnson's "Totally Thames" festival and St Kat's "Classic Boat Weekend". Cambria is always a big attraction at such things - she is huge and tall so she can be seen for miles, she is free to enter (donations welcome!) and because she has no engine or terribly 'dangerous bits', parents and kids can come on board and go pretty much anywhere, up and down the three companionways.

Raffle prize - a nice jeroboam of red in
a hand painted bottle.

We make sure there are plenty of volunteers about to act as guides, to man the boarding stairs, to work the shop and, this year, the teas, coffees and cakes. I love to do the guiding and I am told that I have a natural gift of the gab (Blarney?) and often get a rapt group of listeners as I waffle on about 170 tonnes of cargo, 11 inches of free board amidships, lee boards and sprit-sail rigs. We opened the barge on Friday afternoon, plus all of Saturday (where we saw a record 1705 souls come through and hosted a gang of shanty singers who wanted to raise money on our behalf by passing round the bucket used for sluicing down our deck) and on Sunday till 4 pm (1125 people). We were exhausted, aching of foot from standing up all day and sore of throat from speechifying.

Former Mate on Cambria (in trade), Dick Durham (left)
judges and presents the champagne prizes. 

At 4 we closed the shop and became Reception Venue of for a fun and lighthearted prize giving for the boat owners at the festival (71 more people!). There were all manner of daft categories as well as the 'best dressed' (with bunting) award - fizz went to the best fairy lights, a 'travelling light' award to a Belgian guy who had left his clothes behind, to a bizarre combination of best dog and deck furniture, and to the 'spirit of the Festival', a guy who found some lost jewelry in the Marina washrooms and managed to return it to its owner. It was all a bit mad and great fun. Judging, invention of categories and prize giving were done by friend and former in-trade Mate of the barge, Dick Durham, now a writer for Yachting Monthly magazine.

St Kat's Marina is now all 'done up' and renovated as chi-chi posh apartments, cafés and restaurants and the Marina had arranged for boat owners to get a discount card, so we ate in the evenings, in those eateries, sipping our house red and watching the marina's comings and goings and the beautiful lights on the craft, reflected in the water. They were all warm, sunny days and balmy evenings; we were very lucky with the weather.

Mapp and Lucia kill a blown cabbage

My journey home was going to be another 'innocents abroad' job. Although I had traversed London calmly enough on Friday to get to St Kat's, that was at lunchtime with no frantic commuters about, just me and a thin selection of ambling, confused 'tourists'. An early flight on Monday meant that I'd have to travel home during rush hour. I had visions of me clinging to an underground walk-way wall, face like a rabbit caught in the headlights, watching the torrent of determined and unsympathetic 'suits' flow purposefully past me.

My Bee's Lemon survived the slugs

No such drama in the end. I'd set the alarm for 06:45 and walked to Tower Hill tube by 07:15 with nobody much about yet. My District Line train to Victoria filled up but I'd bought my Gatwick Express ticket on Friday, so I marched through the crowds in Victoria to grab my seat on that, made Gatwick with half an hour to spare before I needed to check in, so checked in anyway and went to find some breakfast.

Roast Guinea fowl 'welcome home' supper. Not one of
our birds!

It was a nice easy flight home with the plane only 1/3 full, so nobody next to me in '25A'. Liz met me from Knock and delivered me home. I love the trip and the Cambria stuff but it is always lovely to be home to Liz, one of Liz's welcome home meals (Guinea fowl roast followed by raspberry and blackberry 'cranachan'), to the livestock and to our own bed. Happy, weary traveler.

Red is not just for Santa

I may have already mentioned that, after 20 years married, this was to be our first ever real Christmas together on our own, as it were, not descending on some one else and not having the hoards descend upon us. We have up to now, most years, descended upon Pud Lady in Hastings for the 'traditional' (to our family) Family Christmas. I was always working right up to Christmas Eve (as was Liz, to 5 pm when those lovely trusting bosses would phone her work from the cosy firesides just to check no-one had bunked off a bit early! Happy Christmas, guys!) and I was often back in again for Boxing Day (St Stephen's Day) morning. The hour's drive to Hastings was about as far as you could go.

No 'Food Miles' on these. Just about 50 yards!

Just a couple of times (and once for me) Liz got enough time to get to Ireland and saw the wrapping paper storm as the Silverwoods children were at those magic ages. Then once we were over here, while we were house building we 'did' the Silverwoods again, and last Christmas they all came to us. Well that was all very lovely and appropriately 'Merry' but we were determined this time, now we have our own house and it is all settled down, to stay here, just the two of us.

Presents and papers from 'home'. We love that!

 We were amused to note that this

would mean we could do Christmas how WE wanted, at our speed, eating and drinking what we wanted and maybe starting our own 'traditions', cherry picking from the nice bits from previous years and walking on by the bits that weren't so much fun. Soft boiled goose eggs and toast soldiers for breakfast, anyone? Feed and release the livestock before taking tea and 'between us' presents up to bed? Your own goose? Ice cream with the 'pud' instead of the regulation custard or brandy butter? Time will tell whether all these bits are 'keepers'.

We also had some fun trying to list the bits of the feast which were home grown and less than a tenth of a food mile - just a few yards from the allotment or the orchard; the goose of course, potatoes, sprouts, any eggs of course, herbs like sage and thyme, onions, beetroot, broad beans. We are hoping to do even better next year possibly including red cabbage, apples and our own sausage meat. Liz may also MAKE the marzipan. She doesn't like shop marzipan but her objection is to the almond ESSENCE flavour - she can eat ground almonds and anything with the almonds flaked into it, so we think that marzipan made with real almonds, sugar and egg might work for her.

So, basically, we had a lovely day, just quiet and 'local'. We strolled round to neighbour Una in the morning to check she was OK. She is struggling to get over a finger badly infected by a rose thorn puncture wound, so we have been fetching logs, turf and coal in from the shed for her and she sat us both down for a cup of 'tay' and a chocolate biscuit. From there I walked the dogs down to the bridge, as usual, and called by John Deere Bob to check on him. I was immediately given the biggest tumbler of whiskey you ever did see. Both he and Una were being collected later by their respective families or loved ones and taken off for the meal, so they had declined our offer of goose.

Back home then for a relaxing afternoon of eating and drinking our fill, chilling and then phoning various family and friends, as you do. Later still we walked down to Carolyn's, invited down for drinks with herself, Charlotte, K-Dub and little Henry who was as proud as Punch with his new sit-in, push along the floor with your feet, car and a fancy 'tent' which had been erected in the living room for him. The girls were dressed in superb white "hoodies" made to look like snow men with black eyes, carrot noses and soft knitted "lumps of coal" for the 'coat buttons'.

 Everyone seems to have had a great time but several of them have suffered at the hands of the huge storm which blew through on the 23rd and 24th. We had a tree blow down but it was an already dead one which needed 'weeding' out anyway and it fell (mostly) inside our woods so no damage was done, just the spindly top of it hitting the stone wall and part blocking the Rose Walk. We hear that Mazy, in Kent has had problems with a 'lean-to' sun-room leaking rain badly, guttering ripped away by the wind and at one stage an internal power cut. The Angel B and Jim have had ridge tiles ripped off by the wind and our former garden fence is broken off and leaning into their garden.

Both these homes and many more are now struggling with the problems of getting hold of surveyors, repair men and insurance assessors over the Christmas break and Jim, we know is very fed up that after paying premiums for 30 odd years with never a claim, he is now dealing with Insurance staff who are trying to argue that his flying ridge tiles are 'just wear and tear'. You have to love these chancers, don't you?

Our hearts go out to them but there is, apparently more to come. Met Éireann have Red Alerts out all over the place for Ireland tonight and tomorrow, especially south and west coastal counties. The pink on this map is for average winds of 34-41 knots (Gale Force 8), the red is 42-48 knots (Force 9) and there are warnings of gusts up to 150 kph offshore Clare, Galway and Mayo. Batten down the hatches, people, extra rocks on the chicken houses. The only mercy for us, inland a bit is that Roscommon falls in the grey coloured bit ( Force 4 ) but no doubt we will get our turn soon. Look after yourselves. Happy New Year.

The Shortest Day

A thin Winter Solstice sun rises behind the trees

The Winter Solstice. Now there's an event worth celebrating. Never mind all this commercialized, Santa and sleigh bells, possible birth date (?) of the Infant Jesus malarkey. The shortest day, the turn of the year, the official beginning of winter. From now it is onward and upward into spring, days getting longer, sap rising and summer beckoning frantically. It's pretty much forgotten now of course; most 'townies' do not know what it is, do not know its date and would not be able to tell you its significance. They would care less, too, in the rush to Christmas, wrapping paper and mince pie cookery.

Winter Iris breaks surface

We are starting to see some signs of spring already - pictured is a good sized clump of Winter Iris emerging in one of our big tubs in the yard. These were bulbs generously given to me by Pud Lady when I was over in September. In the 'Rose Walk' a good show of new daffodil shoots reminds us of the net of mixed bulbs which came to us from the Steak Lady; both the 'Mums' have made their mark on this garden. Thank you Mums.

Some early bud expansion is also making an impression - in this case currant bushes in the Jam and Jerusalem hedge and on a flowering currant (Ribes) in the raised flower bed. Ribes are probably the easiest and earliest way of getting food to the bees in spring, so we will be planting plenty and then trying to strike cuttings from these bushes, all part of our wildlife gardening push. We are both enormously looking forward to how the pond, in particular, will fare. Will we get frogs and newts? Will the aquatic plants which we had mail order from the UK and which have mainly died back in autumn, leap back into action with spring?

Meanwhile we had to smile at this bizarre sleeping position by the boy-pup Towser. Wait till 'Daddy' puts his boots in front of the range, let them warm up a bit, then sink your nose down deep inside like a person drinking in the scent of a rose flower, and FALL ASLEEP. Daft beggar.

Happy Solstice!