A matter of degrees.

I just realised, with some embarrassment, that a viewer in Russia - "Здравствуйте!" (which I hope is Hello in Russian) had read my post about the cold weather here. As my sister in law stated when she read my blog over Christmastime when I was raving about 20cm of snow, I'm a "Softy Southerner". It's all relative though and it is cold here for me. Mind you, every so often we see a jogger run past in shorts and a tee shirt. Brrrrrr. Back to my milky drink.

Spring has sprung?

What a gorgeous day we are having. Luke and I are sitting in the conservatory because it's finally got warm after a morning of sunshine. We've visited the local garden centre and I've purchased a tray of primroses as they will stand the cold and give a splash of bright colour at the front door. Luke bought a 20kg bag of bird seed and some treats to attract nuthatches. We have had them here before, sharing the nuts with the myriad of tits but they aren't a frequent visitor. We can't put them on the ground yet as our chicks are out and they would greedily gobble them up. Right now, one of them is clearing out my border of any worms she might find. whilst the others are scrubbing around under the wild bird seed feeder waiting for a free lunch after a sparrow or siskin drops some of the food it has pecked out.
Next door's cat is out on the wooden table, basking in the warmth of the sun. Luke still hasn't forgiven her for her misdemeanour on the cooker this week so she's not allowed in.

So many plants are pushing up through the soil and the fresh growth looks very promising but they aren't 'out of the woods' yet. We can still have a hard frost and their tender tips can be cut back by the cold but we only need a day or two of warmth and they seem to grow an inch. Whilst I really want to get outdoors and do a good hard day's gardening I can't actually dig any of the borders because of all the bulbs and root systems that could be destroyed. What I could do is dig over some of the veg patch to enlarge it but as soon as I think that I realise that it's still too blinking cold to enjoy it properly. What I really want to do is sit indoors, enjoy the view and drink copious amounts of steaming milky coffees. A time and a place for everything.

Frosty morning.

Into March, some people will have bought their trays of tiny weak bedding plants and now we've had a frost and those little hopefuls will have suffered a heavy blow. This is why I never buy mine till the risk of frost is over however let's hope we will get our staging up int eh greenhouse and get some seeds planted instead; a much cheaper way to ensure flowers are in the garden.
Getting up to a white covering on the car roof and peeking at the robins, standing bright against a washed out background where the frost cloaked the true colours made me hurry back to bed with two cups of steaming tea. Three hours later all the frost has gone and whilst it's still cold the sun has come out and is lighting the conifers into a vivid green haze. I must put down my fourth cup of tea and get dressed. These birds 'waste' my time like nothing else. I start watching them for a minute then realise an hour has passed. I especially like the blackbirds when they come into land. The flash of raven black feathers, their deep orange beaks and the way they put their heads down, their tails up and scuttle at a rate of knots across the lawn makes me laugh every time. The robins have the photogenic edge and know their place as firm favourites of the gardener whilst the tits are too busy getting peanuts to bother. The shrub that the feeders hang from seems to sway independently of the breeze and it's because it is alive with jostling blue and coal tits all intent on grabbing their next bit of food. In a day those two feeders will be devoid of any nuts. Any that fall on the floor are quickly hoovered up by the chicks if they are out or some of the ground feeders. Nothing gets wasted.

The buzzard debate continues.

Did I tell you that we had our boiler serviced a couple of weeks ago? I only tell you because the chap who serviced the boiler was a bird spotter and he had bird calls on his iPhone. "Watch this," he whispered excitedly as he walked over to the bird feeders. "The birds'll go mad when they hear this". To his disappointment, the birds did nothing but eat their nuts. I didn't have the heart to encourage him further by opening the window wider and letting him stick his hand out to ensure they got to hear it. Anyway, I wanted my boiler serviced! I talked to him about the buzzard visit and the reply I'd had from the expert who said that a buzzard wasn't interested or particularly capable of taking chickens. He believed that a buzzard would do just that. Well, so far we haven't had to worry about it as we haven't had a visit since.
This month's Practical Poultry, to my amazement, has a whole page dedicated to my buzzard question. Part of me feels ridiculously naive to even chance it but when I see how much those chickens enjoy scratching around, locating worms or having a dust bath I can't really justify keeping them in their pen.
Luke showed me a short clip that he recorded of Buck Buckey and Sweety enjoying a dust bath which I will try to put on this blog in the next couple of days. Am I sounding like a proud mother? Over a few chickens? As always, I think I need to get out more!

A lesson for me.

Thanks to you reading this post, I get to brush up on my geography (a blessing given that I got THREE 'ungraded' results for my geography exams - a bit of a blow seeing as how I considered being a geography teacher in my younger years). If I check on the audience view I can see which parts of the world are looking at my blog. Thank you!
I've now got it into my brain that South Africa is not South America. A shocking confession, I know and I hereby apologise for being so unaware of the world.

Having spent yesterday working in a windowless room all day I have a day's holiday today and the chickens are delighted about that. I let them out at lunchtime and popped out into the back garden to top up the peanuts in the feeders. Buck Bucky was so desperate to see what food I had that she ran too fast and shocked herself by taking flight. With a mass of flapping she got herself half way down the garden before finding her feet on solid ground again and coming to a stop. Very amusing.
Now, whilst the others are clearing out the weeds in my herb garden, Buck Bucky is wandering along with a small tomato in  her beak, making her look like a circus clown with a huge red nose. Chickens do the same sort of thing with grapes; so desperate are they to escape from the crowd to keep their rich pickings for themselves that they grab them and race off with little green hooters. I can see them all from where I am typing on the laptop and I can also see my breath in front of me even though I am in the house.
It is 1.5 degrees today which delighted Luke as it means his garlic will be having a happy start to it's growing life.

Now I should be mopping the kitchen floor right now but I am procrastinating because I've still got s glowing nose from having just spent two hours in the garden. I have mowed the front and back gardens for the first time this year (quite early but I always think it's like vacuuming carpets, they always look ten times better for a go over. I've also cleaned up the cat poo from next door's cat. No idea why she bothers using the outdoors though as she stayed in here overnight and deposited a 'present' on our cooker top! I'm sure she does these things to wind up Luke. The reason I have to mop the floor is because I am sure I can smell the other part of her present somewhere and need to get the place fresh again. She's outside on our deck looking at me through the french windows. I've called Jack to let him know that first she was in with me and that now she is back outdoors again but he's out playing golf I think. I also raked up some leaves to clear the borders and then spent a happy half an hour trying to pressure wash the conservatory roof. I ended up abandoning that and just jetting the bird bath clean instead.
Well, thanks for letting me waffle on, time to mop is fast approaching. I won't tell Luke if you won't.

A walk through the weed - quite literally.

 At the weekend we took ourselves off for a long walk across the fields and onto "the wrong side of the tracks". From a churning river, rolling green fields and dense hedgerows, we ended up in a less salubrious part of Cardiff; the first person we met was chugging away at a huge fat roll up - of cannabis! I did take a crafty breath in as I passed. As I don't smoke I quite like an illegal and free second hand whiff of a spliff but don't quote me on that, will you?
Now the evenings are starting to draw out and we've had a day or two of sunshine everything seems to have pushed itself up in our garden. Those fat stems of the tulips are letting me know the circus is almost in town and that within a few months our garden will be full of colour. Yippee.
I won't welcome the weekly lawn mowing that summer brings but that's a very small price to pay for warmth, balmy evenings and sunshine. The raspberries are sprouting forth new growth and there are unfurled leaves on several of my shrubs and my weeping pear which I have yet to find a home for. I'm very excited about the white lilac. I brought it with me from the last garden where it had resided in a large pot because I couldn't bear to part with it and knew we wouldn't always be there. Now it's got a place in the border and is just bursting with bright green tips. Jack's cat loves to fight with the whippy branches so I'm thrilled to see it hasn't stopped it from producing fat bundles of promise. I love the smell of lilac but it lasts such a short time if picked so I tend to spend my time walking past the lilac doing what I did at the weekend when I passed the spliff-smoker; looking nonchalant whilst taking in great lung-fulls for air on the sneak.

Better late than never.

Luke has eventually got around to getting his garlic planted. He has dug over the veg patch and chilled his garlic for a day in the fridge before he plants it. We were going to spend more time in the garden  but the weather is still too wet to do much.I sat outside whilst he dug so as to keep him company but soon got so chilled I wimped out and went back indoors. Having tidied the monochrome border and being chuffed to see the primulas pushing through the earth  I decided that the garden really would have to wait another few weeks before it had dried out enough to not compact the earth when I stood on it. We ended up going to Bath instead to pick up the vintage mannequin I had won on EBay and to visit friends who had moved there a few years ago. If you are checking this place out and are not from the UK do Google 'Bath, England' as it's a beautiful Georgian town with the most wonderful Bath stone, all honey coloured. The Royal Crescent is the jewel in the crown and it's a real tourist trap. It also houses the natural springs which formed the Roman baths which are now excavated and can be viewed. Fascinating stuff.