Joys of Winter

I did thanks

Hope you enjoyed jeni.

lovely colourful and soundful picture, jess.

That's wassoll fer ya!

nice words dudes.
I did, Jeni even before you asked.
It was market day and I never got to the gallery. Had a very reassuring trip to the planning dept (they were so lovely and no, there is no site access to new bungalow across the end of the drive here) and bought a skirt in M and S (the staff are so lovely. It is not M and S that is the problem it is MK!)
I heard black country accents along with Punjabi and other Asian languages.

I also saw:

Apartments blocks muscling up around the canal basin
Fine buildings turned to bars
Pawnbrokers and slot machine arcades
A wide hipped church with a coffee shop
A fine Victorian arcade with fishmongers and and a fancy tea room
A Unison branch in the high street
A market bustling with Friday shoppers
Cheap new clothes at £2.99
Sad old clothes at £2.99
The bright splash of a sari stall
A Romany Gypsy waiting for business in her tent
Scots Bonnet Chillies and yams alongside cabbages and beets

Today
is a red-letter day
THE cats have come home!
Mother and her girls
crouching low
pretending to be invisible
inside the cage
delivered to our door.
They have survived
an ordeal
as indeed have we -
but here they are
ready to return
to their forest home.
Slowly but surely
the cage is opened -
for a heartbeat
they remain frozen
eyes wide
and then...
all three make a dash
through the fence
into the wood -
fast-beating hearts and
little legs carrying them
to well-deserved
freedom...

bagitha I'm with you. Your word-picture is perfect.

Butter lots of love and every good wish coming your way from a misty-calm Kintyre. ((hugs))

jessmgive Walsall my love. I used to live in park rd off the greatbarr rd!

The steep hill on which my house stands
Required a chunk to be cut from it
And built into a flat terrace –
Flattish, at any rate; the cellar
Has a stepped and sloping floor.
The front terrace, they tell us,
Used to be cinder and gravel,
But now it is green with moss and winter grass
Growing in decades of compacted wormcasts.
I always think of Darwin's discovery
Of how worms increase the soil
When I go out there.
The dry stone wall along the terrace edge,
Preventing tumbles down the hill,
Has little 'doorways' all along its base –
Very visible at this time of year of slow growth –
Bank vole and wood mouse
Entrances and exits
From their little wall and terrace
Domain.
And on the other side
Where the steep bank falls away downhill,
The snowdrops are opening,
Crocuses peeping through,
And daffodil leaves are shooting up,
Gathering their strength
For flowering.

It'll soon be behind you butternut and you'll be enjoying your walks again x

Enjoy your walk today Butter, and good luck

Well I hope you have a lovely walk and that the next one will be a spring walk.
Hope not too long indoors. Just the time it takes to get over anaesthetic. Try to drink plenty to flush it out of your system.

I am in the west mids this weekend. Very mild weather. Trotted past some suburban gardens in Solihull yesterday (we don't really do those in mk) and saw lovely snowdrops, loads of those tender washed-purple crocuses , some bright yellow aconite and a lovely lovely witchhazel in bloom. Hamamelis mollis. Lovely golden fuzz. Going into Walsall today to visit the gallery.

Yeah, in-sprit-ation should do it!

I will look for some inspritation, specially for you, butty. Good luck with the tiresome stuff!

I'll be having my last winter's walk this morning, for a bit. Not being able to get out into the countryside is going to make me very crabby, so I shall look to the J. of W. to cheer me.

DD2 got sick of fieldfares when she lived in Sweden. She says they are very noisy and rather like feral pigeons over there!!

Gosh, never met anyone who didn't like parsley - were you force fed lumpy parsley sauce at an early age?

"Parsley
Is gharsley" Ogden Nash

And I agree - ugh!

I've had lots of redwings and fieldfares together in my garden over the last week.

And, I picked a few beautiful hellebores this morning and have them in a tiny cut=glass vase by the sink.

We get fieldfares whenever it snows and are always amazed. We've got very short memories.

My surviving herbs are lavendar, parsley, two thymes, rosemary, chives and the tarragon is looking fairly healthy.

All the best Butternut

Strange bird in my garden when I got up this morning. I consulted the expert (the concierge for my work building) turns out it was a field fare. Never seen one before.

tough bunch in the main.
basil worth growing on windowsill in summer.

That's handy to know Jess. I love parsley. I've had a look for survivors in my herb garden today, and I've got chives, rosemary, lavender, parsley, sage and the remnants of some lemon thyme.