Hibernation

I think I've gone into hibernation. Last week saw lots of drab, dreich days, I just wanted to curl up under the duvet and sleep.......

But this week has been all about crisp, hard frosts and Mr. Sunshine has come back out to play. It's amazing how a bit of sunshine can totally change your day :)

Some photos of the dazzling crystals in the garden.

Anyone else out there in hibernation?

L x

Feathered friends

This stretch of superb weather has brought the garden and local wildlife on in leaps and bounds, lets just hope that our summer hasn't arrived early and this is it for the next few weeks. Ever the optimist, I'm hopeful that we'll have a long, balmy summer, stretching through to September, how fabulous would that be.......

I'm always waiting in anticipation at this time of year for the arrival of the swallows. The house and sand martins have been here for a good few weeks, darting around in the sky. I checked the diary from last year, they had arrived on 2nd of May, a year ago today. We were getting ready to go to the local farmers market on Saturday when I spotted the arrival of the our first swallow, sat on the telephone line chattering away. Such a fantastic sight, and a feeling that summer is just around the corner. We have the remains of a few nests in the eves of the stables but since we've lived here none have ever nested there. Maybe this year we'll be lucky enough to have them as guests over the summer.

The warm weather has been kind to all the young birds that we have too, the feeders are constantly covered in tits and finches, we even get regular visits from the woodpecker. We have a couple of blackbirds and a thrush constantly bobbing around on the lawn hunting for worms so they must have nests close by in the hedgerows.

While in the workshop yesterday morning fishing out some screws to go with a pinboard order, I could hear the constant tweeting of what sounded like a young bird, I assumed it had maybe fallen out of it's nest, so I went to investigate. To my delight, I found a mother dipper flying back and forth to her young fledgling perched on a stone in the middle of our burn. It slowly followed her down the burn, carefully flying from one stone to the next. She kept returning with beakfulls of food for it. Our ducks were quite intrigued and followed them all the way down the burn! I heard it again in the afternoon and amazingly managed to get some really close up pictures of the baby, looking very fat and fluffy!

On the domestic fowl front we are getting very close to hatching day with our french cuckoo maran, hopefully this Sunday or Monday we'll be hearing little cheeps of chicks from underneath her, I'm so excited. A hen takes around 21 days to incubate fertile eggs, believe me it's been the longest 3 weeks ever!

After our disastrous attempt at moving our little duck and her nest, we managed to find the other nest with 11 eggs in it, tucked underneath a tuft of grass in our neighbours garden! I took advice and moved the eggs into a little coop and have sat one of our broody bantams on them. Duck eggs takes around 28 days to incubate, so we'll be at the halfway mark this Friday. Fingers and toes crossed that they hatch, I'm so looking forward to playing surrogate mummy this summer.

Spring showers

At last some rain has arrived in our neck of the woods, in the form of spring showers, little bursts of really heavy rain, on and off all morning. It always amazes me the weather and peoples reaction to it. We have a spell of beautiful Spring sunshine, perfectly timed with the Easter holidays, but we still manage to complain, everyone talking about how dry the ground is, having to water spring plants and the like, and how they wished it would rain! Why is it that sometimes we are never a happy nation?

Anyway, amidst the glorious sunshine of last weekend we managed to have our first BBQ's, both Saturday and Sunday night, sitting outside enjoying the last of the days rays, how fab is that for mid April?

I also got stuck into the seed planting in a big way, probably a little bit late, but still early enough not to be too worried that I'll be harvesting my peas in September! I got the pasting table set up and had a little production line going, while dancing away to a digital radio station we've just discovered, Life, they play lots of oldies mixed in with some new stuff. Gregg and I spent the whole weekend saying to each other "ooh listen to this one, I haven't heard that in ages......." boogy, boogy, boogy!

It was actually mostly flower seeds that I was planting, 17 varieties in all, so no excuses for empty beds this year! The last of the veggie seeds will be planted tomorrow hopefully, if I get my finger out of my (slightly bruised) bottom and get all my work finished today, nothing like a deadline to get you going and the thought of a day off spent in the garden!

Photos are of the quickly filling up greenhouse and some Rocket that has germinated already.

On the chicken front, the duck came off the nest yesterday so no ducklings from her I'm afraid. Bit of a shame but I had my doubts after we'd disturbed her, I'd rather she was safe than foxy loxys supper though. Plenty of time yet for little ducklings though, we have to live and learn from our mistakes!

Blizzards and snow babes......

Well at last the snow has made it's way north, it's snowed all day today and has been on and off for the last 3 days, so we have a good 4 -5 ", it's fab! Today has involved mega snowball fights including rolling around in the snow getting it shoved up my back and down my bum!, walking about in a blizzard trying to find ski poles, but best of all was this........

Meet Sadie Frost, the snow babe! We decided, rather than to build the conventional snow MAN we would build a snow lady! Gregg had a bit of creative direction in the modelling of the body, hence the rather large boobs! I decided she must cover up so we gave her a rather fetching red bikini, hope she doesn't get frost bite on her bum!!!

Here's more pictures of today, me, Catriona and Gregg all posing with her!

Catriona making her head!

Gregg posing with his new lady friend!!!

Catriona and me making some moves on the snow dance floor!

Could this be Spring?

Well, it's the 31st of January and boy, is it mild. I can't believe the first month of 2007 is almost passed, not that I'm particularly sad as I hate the long, dark, cold days of January. But amazingly after all the gales, snow and freezing weather we've had over the past couple of weeks it has now turned to be so mild and Spring like - what's happened, January is never like this? In fact it is so mild that I have taken my sewing outside to do. I just can't bare to sit inside when it's mild like this, the birds are cheeping away, the chickens are scratching about in the garden, and best of all the spring bulbs are at last starting to show (not that there's many as most of them only got put in the ground on sunday!!!). I've got a stinking cough at the moment so I'm a tad zomby like, getting outside will do me the world of good and hopefully waken me up a bit!

Just being able to get the washing out on the line is such a treat, I have to say, hanging out the washing is my favourite chore - peg bags are a must for this year and will definitely be crossed off the "to do" list! I've also decided to stick with my trusty "dotty" fabric. I've always worked along the lines of once a fabric is finished it's finished as I don't like the idea of churning out hundreds of the same product in one fabric (not that I ever make 100 of anything - I'm lucky if I make a dozen at a time!!). But, seeing as it is soooo popular I've decided to stick with it, a bit like Emma Bridgewater and her dotty china, everyone loves it and it's a bit of a classic in every country kitchen.

I've plonked a jug of my daffs on the table outside with me, seeing as there aren't any out in the garden yet, but it's something to look forward to - if the hens don't scratch them all up! I seriously think mother nature is fooling us though, there's no way it'll stay like this for next few months, I'm sure there'll be a cold snap just around the corner? But I'm going to make the most of it while it lasts.

Right, I think that's the bread maker I hear bleeping, fresh bread for lunch - outside of course, anyone joining me?

L x