Joys of Winter

DD1 has been making compost fences in Cheshire with the local Wildlife Trust. I'm going to start making one today if the weather holds. It will involve a lot of tramping up the hill with bundles of small branches I've cut off hedges recently – the top of our garden is ten or more metres higher up the hill than the bottom. Don't need jogging or gym to keep fit here!

Compost fences?

I've seen them bagitha and they're such a great idea. Hope you are feeling so much better today and your asthma doesn't make a come-back!

Please explain Bagitha we are intriguededde cant spell it...

Well, as DD explained it to me, you hammer some posts (sticks) into the ground in two rows about a foot apart, or whatever's required by your filler. The sticks are a similar distance apart in each row and staggered with the other row. You follow? Then you line up branches and other dead stuff in between them, just lying the stuff down to fill the space. Gradually you build up a screen. Gradually it all rots down naturally. So it's a kind of temporary fence made of stuff you would be rotting down or burning anyway.

You can also use two rows of wire fencing and stuff (verb) stuff (noun) (!) between them for the same effect.

My plan is to make a barrier to stop another pile of compost from tumbling down the hill (or getting kicked down by chickens).

There are pics if you google "compost fence".

Chest is back to usual niggle, thanks, but it wouldn't do to give in to it completely. I've done enough of that already. I just have to be prepared to collapse for a bit afterwards. Asthma info that says it needn't stop you doing stuff is NOT TRUE!

Bagitha compost fence making NOT good for asthma, think of ALL the mould spores in and around the rotting veg. Huffing and puffing super cold air is another No No! Bad girl!!!

Well, it has warmed up to 3.1° now so I'm off out to enjoy some cold sunshine and fresh air. Will puff on the Ventolin first for good measure. Bugger the asthma! I'd rather have it and do stuff I enjoy than sit around and get depressed by being a good girl. It's bugger the asthma anyway, because if cold air and spores don't get me, common cold viruses will (do anyway), so TCHA! Can't win with asthma, so fight on is my attitude.

Absolutely! I spent yesterday morning cutting back the raspberry canes SO I do not practise what I preach and I do get on with it too! Daily Seretide keeps my asthma under control but the asthma nurse freaks at my peak/flow. I, on the other hand, have long decided that we cannot all be the same and that my levels are 'normal' for me!
One thing I did have to give up was hockey, while I was at College many years ago, as running around in the afternoon guaranteed I would wheeze all night.... not good when you are trying to impress a BF!!!!

Wrestled with a double ladder
Trying to separate the two bits
Because I only needed one.
Gave up and hauled another down
So I could adjust the 'mode' —
That's the time on the clock
To you and me! —
On our outdoor max/min thermometer
Which was resetting twelve hours out
And is out of reach but more sheltered
Than the last one which, though waterproof
(they said), let in water.
It was hurricane water — penetrating.
Thought I might need a ladder to rescue a hen
Stuck in a tree, but she unstuck herself.
Then I went to build my compost fence.
Started small, two or three metres in length,
Half a metre high. It's only to hold in
More compost!
Stuffed it with dead gorse,
Rowan twigs blown off in
That gale (or several!),
And fern that has flopped
And looks messy.
My joints and my chest ache a bit now,
As they do,
But that Sun and that Air
Was glorious.

The sun is sex lovely today.

bagitha Reading your amazing word picture tired me out. You certainly are made of stern stuff...

A heron stands statue-still
On the shell scattered shore -
Rooted by his reflection
It scans the pebbled pool.
The sea is baby blue
Barely a ruffle or ripple to
Scar it's perfect calm.

That's lovely, supernana - cool and refreshing with a chilled-out heron.

Butter Nothing seems to stress a heron

I was in search mode for a while looking for butty's reference to the sparrows eating bird cherry blossom. Found it on here. We get bullfinches that eat the flower buds off our wild plum tree before they even open. They visit specially for that feast.

super, Ted Hughes's description of thrushes hunting (in the eponymous poem) always reminds me of herons too, and so herons always remind me of thrushes.

Is that usage of eponymous correct?

i 'tink so.
Is that a kind of surreal one-line work of art jingl ?

Bags, your energy astounds me! Hope you are none the worse for your exertions.

super, what a lovely little picture of the heron. I really like your use of alliteration too. Brilliant!

Does anyone remember poem called (I think) the darkling thrush. I think it has a line about" bindweed scores the darkening sky?"

Bagitha I haven't that particular poem in my book. But I reckon you reckon right! Are you feeling better? I do not like to hear otherwise x

One of my favourite poems, jeni
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres

I might be in a minority but I like Hardy's poetry. Wish I had the vision to write like that! Or like super and bags and butter, for that matter.

Ah, bagitha, nothing beats invigorating cool air with a lovely drop of sunshine. Enough to put anyone in the 'mode' for poetry?

Am I right?

Very 'modish' bags

annobel ah! Hardy. Now I know who by i can look it up haven't read it since I was 12. I used to write poetry but haven't for years, perhaps it's something I should try again? Thanks annobel

Hardy is very good - if you're already in the mood for suicide.

The guessers are right! It's rather fun game, butty; let's do it again another day.

Yes, thank you, super, so far so good (enough) today. Maybe it was the hedge dust yesterday. I never know as half the time it's exercise-induced, and sometimes just a change in atmospheric pressure is enough to set things off. Crazy.