Joys of Winter

JessM and super ....... the camellia sounds lovely and the cat sounds hungry.....

Don't mention food!

It has been actually cold today. Was really nice to be out in it on my bike!

Camellias do well near us and are very pretty. I might try one in our killer garden.

Bramble yanking today
With cold hands
In thick leather gloves
So I couldn't keep it up for long.
Then went to tidy some ferns.
Raking up the bits
I found some more
Four inch daffodil shoots
And a bank vole hole
At the base of our fallen
But very alive ancient apple tree
Loved by jays when apple-loaded.
The chickens came over to see what was up
And had a good scratch around
Where I'd been.
I hope the vole
Keeps out of their sight.

Are you sure it's a vole
And not a mole
And where's it's hole
Wherein to scuttle

Oh chickens beware
For old baggy's there
If you get in her hair
You'll end in the pot

Indeed! Very tasty too.

There were some mole hills last summer too which, in our garden wild hillside is no big deal for us but probably something of a big deal for the mole — difficult digging.

One of my neighbours carefully sifted all the soil before sowing what was going to be perfect lawn. Guess what! Every mole within 10 miles moved into his garden!

jeni, now you've started on the poetry, there's no stopping you. Great stuff! Keep going!

Dear annobel
What the hell
I'll pen my verse
I can't do worse!

I could smell the soil and the ferns, see your ancient tree and feel your tiring energy, bagitha. . What lovely pleasures.

Annobel - ditto.

what - Very cold here today, too. Biking? Impressed!

Can't do it
Won't do it
Would like to do it
....with an electric motor.

supernana.... your lovely poem evokes the old Welsh hiraeth!

I remember perfect days of icy calm,
Rootling around in rock pools
'til my hands turned blue.
Striding, leaden footed,through sandhills
Cold legs whipped by sharp blades
Of marram grass.
Stopping again and again to catch my breath,
Holding up my face
To the pale winter sun.
Leaving behind the shining sea.

That's very evocative, OGM . I had to look up the Welsh word. The Scots have that too but I don't know the word for it. Hoping to get a chance to learn some Gaelic soon though.

Wet pebbles, super .

Bagitha it's one of those 'untranslatable' words but sort of means a longing (for one's homeland) Why I long for Anglesey, I don't know! In tracing my ancestry I find I can only be described as European!

My far flung 'clan' are having a gathering on Anglesey this summer. I think I'm the second furthest away after my middle brother in upstate New York. Hopefully it will span four generations.

Sounds lovely!

ogm - I can smell the salt.

Suggested cure for molehills: get some chickens. They'll spread out the heaps for you.

Would they mix with the badgers and deer that also invade his garden. His wife is convinced the deer think the plants she plant are especially for the m

I saw little green buds on some Hazel today. And the catkins have unfurled. Lovely!

A visiting deer is a nightmare in the garden! We had a muntjack a couple of years back. It loved Bizzie Lizzies! And other things.

Well, ours 'mix' with deer all the time. Which is to say, they don't mix because chickens are day time critters and deer are whatever-that-word-is-that-describes-dusk-and-dawn-using animals. In short, the chickens have gone to bed or not got up when the deer (roe and red in our case) turn up. I expect the same would apply to badgers, but there aren't any of those where I live.

Ah! Just remembered: crepuscular.

This afternoon
It's January's end
With lanes of snow-melt,
Mud and grub
Wellies in the kitchen
Are dribbling and dampened
Flopped over on scuffed up newspaper
In the corner
After a visit to the barn
For stored onions, potatoes, leeks
A bounty for winter pots of soup.

The rain gauge is full of snow -
Does snow thaw count?
It sits near the barn arch
Where the cutting wind races through,
Covered in drooping and tatty-edged ivy
Smelling of old wet dust and ivy-ness
Holding heavy heads of black seeds
And the leaden, malevolent
Shot grey-sepia sky
Promises more snow for tomorrow.

crepuscular I love that word; it has all the resonances of that time of day. The French is "le crepuscule" (la?) isn't it?