By Slanted Light

Today was supposed to be cold, and I fully expected to want to hunker up inside, which I did for a bit. Then I went out, and it turned out that the sun hitting my thermometer had taken it to 20C! Of course tonight is scheduled for -4C.... we'll see!

Here's a few of the things happening in my garden at the moment...



And here were two happy surprises from today! So yesterday Young Farmer (my landlord) asked if I'd like one of the little troughs that my neighbours opposite had, for a planter at the front of my house - yes please! I said, because I've been desperate for something like that to perk up the space between my two windows. And I pictured a nice neat little half-drum trough like the one by my neighbour's door.
Only it turned out that wasn't the kind of trough they meant at all, and now I have lots more space to play with (shade-loving) plants! *vbg* I'm thinking some kind of trellis-type thing in the middle, and I'd love to find some shade-loving climbing roses It was my night for foodsaving tonight too, and oh the bliss of sorting the food while it was still (mostly) light! So much quicker, and then even though I was delivering to all four corners of the village, it was a nice straightforward run - with bonus crescent moon. *g*

And that was Saturday... *g*

I thought I might have a go at a month of April photos - rather annoyingly, all the many pics I took on the 31st of March would have made a much better post! Oh well, here was today. Sunshine and dramatic clouds (and a cold, cold wind), and home-made wild garlic gnocchi for dinner. Okay, it doesn't look much like gnocchi, but it was pretty tasty. *g*

Post copied from lj

Going through all my old posts via backing up etc. reminds me how much I miss posting to lj when I don't do it, so here's a proper wanderings post, because I did manage a bit of wandering last weekend - I visited f_m_parkinson, and we went for a fab walk on Saturday. *g*

We walked through the watermeadows that controlled flooding around the river, a system probably introduced in the 17th century from Europe (says this website)...


...along wooded paths (through squelchy mud!), and over old bridges...


( Ponderous carriages and gingerbread smiles... )

It was a grey day today, and the colour in this dusk sky (5.02pm) was as much as I seemed to see all day. The bright light to the right is actually the tractor working away at its evening jobs - I suspect mucking out the cows, who are a mostly inside while the fields are so wet and muddy. And the wee square light nearby, at the bottom, is my house, waiting cosily for me to get back from my late afternoon walk!

On the bright side it didn't actually rain, and I managed to make a bit of a sloping ledge for my bathtub pond with stones and pebbles, collected a few pond plants from a friend, and placed some other stones around the very edges of the bathtub to help stop soil eroding in. Oh, and filled it with water from my water butte! The plants aren't looking terribly happy at the moment (well it is winter), but I'll take some pics in daylight tomorrow.

I also managed to get through to mum this morning, who was sounding cheerful, so that was good.

Bu-ut... I'm not convinced about this 2022 lark yet. I decided to make a nice healthy Spanish omlette for dinner, and was congratulating myself on having finally found a nice sharp serrated knife for cutting tomatoes and the like, when... eek! eeek! eeek! (that's the knife sound in The Shining, in case you weren't sure) - I manage to slice into the top of my thumb instead of the tomato, across towards the nailbed... blood everywhere! And how hard is it to staunch a bleeding thumb with only one hand, while trying to get your first aid stuff out, and undo bandaids and antiseptic and all? Really hard! Also, ow, ow, owwww! It's still stinging under the bandaid now, which I'm hoping is a good sign of healing rather than a bad sign of infection-gangrene-sorry-we'll-have-to-take-the-arm-off...

Okay, I'm being a bit dramatic, I don't think it's a very bad cut really. *g* But it was quite dramatic at the time, and it does still hurt, and it was distracting enough for the rest of the evening that did I manage to get on with my writing for Thursday as planned after my nice active garden-based day? No... *headdesk* I have a back-up story to post, but it's not the post I want to do, which is actually the post I wanted to do last Christmas! And tomorrow is back to work, so that won't help either... *sighs*

But to end the day on a more cheerful note - I can hear an owl whoo-ing away just outside as I type this, which is always a cool thing. Oh, and there is a squirrel who's coming into my garden from the big farmhouse garden next door and stealing my half-coconut birdfeeders! I hung up two the other day, on big S-hooks from the branches of an overhanging tree, and yesterday I found one of them on the ground with the fibrous-string hanger eaten through. So I replaced them, and today they were both entirely gone! I'm still at the amused phase of this, as I watched the squirrel from my office shed the other day, running along the wall, climbing up branches to the coconuts, and then picking them up and putting her face right into them for a feast! But clearly I will have to find some way to combat this, because while I don't mind her sharing, they're for the birds! I thought the half-coconuts would be better since there's avian flu around, and they could be taken to the farm's burn pile rather than having to be carefully cleaned, but I suspect I'll have to get my rubber gloves out and clean the metal feeders after all... Oh - here are some pics I took of her the other day (from a distance, through a plastic window)!