| Thu 1 | Today is Imbloc, or St Brigid’s Day, depending on one’s belief system. It was originally a pagan, Gaelic festival which marked the mid-point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. Imbolc holds significance in various modern pagan and witchcraft practices. It represents the awakening of the Earth from its winter slumber and the anticipation of the coming spring. It is a time for focusing on new beginnings, creativity, and personal growth; fostering a connection with the natural cycles of life and the energy of rebirth. As befits the day our weather, although chilly, was full of bright sunshine. |
| Fri 2 | After a pagan festival yesterday, today is the Christian feast of Candlemas, or the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple. In Biblical times this occurred 33 days after a boy’s circumcision and is now set as the fortieth day after Christmas. In some traditions Christmas decorations are taken down on this day, as opposed to Twelfth Night. |
| Sat 3 | We had the weekly supermarket delivery today, instead of yesterday. And it has completely thrown me. Today seems to have been some combination of Friday-not-Friday-not-Saturday-not-Sunday-maybe-Sunday, while at the same time being some inglorious admixture of them all – sufficient that my mental calendar is completely addled. |
| Sun 4 | Squirrels like avocado, but who knew that foxes do too – or at least they consider it a trophy? |
| Mon 5 | Having spotted the first mauve crocus a few days ago, we now have an absolute drift of pale mauve flowers throughout the lawn. I know we planted quite a few bulbs some years ago, but they must be spreading. Oh and the pink hellebore is now in flower. |
| Tue 6 | I don’t quite know where the money has gone in the last month, and it isn’t the hangover from Christmas. But at least we’re still solvent, and may even be able to save a bit extra. |
| Wed 7 | Well that scuppered that. We should have been having an outing this afternoon to the dentist for check-ups etc. But N wasn’t feeling well, so she cancelled it; and I had to nip to the doctors with a sample for her. I must say I wasn’t heart-broken not to be wasting an afternoon – much as we like our dentist. |
| Thu 8 | Good grief! That never happens. A day when I didn’t have to do any work for anyone. So I actually managed to do a couple of hours on my family history – not that I made any progress |
| Fri 9 | In the open porch at our front door we have a woven coconut fibre doormat; it’s been there for some years. Very recently something has taken it into its head to attack it, and has been pulling it apart so there are lots of broken and loose threads. The mat is too sturdy for it to be a cat, so one suspects fox; I don’t think even a bold corvid would come that close to the door for the time which would be required. But why would a fox do this? I can think of three reasons: (1) it could be territorial; either marking its territory or trying to remove the markings of another. (2) It fancies some (all?) of the material for lining its den. (3) It fancies the mat as a trophy – we know foxes like trophies – but it would be quite large and unwieldy for a fox to carry away! |
| Sat 10 | Oh happy days! Afternoon spent setting up the mail merges for literary society membership renewals. Still at least I have all the skeleton documents and know how to do it after 20+ years! It’s just a tedious job, so you always miss something stupid which you don’t see until too late. It’ll be good when we can get the new website etc. completed, when with luck it’ll be a job that’s automated. |
| Sun 11 | Spring is definitely on the way. Lots of stuff in the garden is beginning to move. I spotted breaking leaves on some of the roses, lilac, an ornamental crab apple and even the liquidambar. But not yet any sign of movement on the silver birch, oak, ash or hawthorn. |
| Mon 12 | What a lovely sunny day – when I should have been out taking photographs. Especially as yesterday I noticed our small ornamental crab apple is growing a really superb crop of lichen – nothing very special I think, but remarkable that it’s there, so prolific and looking so good. |
| Tue 13 | So today I was going to photograph the lichen I mentioned yesterday. But instead of being nice and sunny it was dull, grey and raining all day. Even the wildlife stayed hunkered down and out of sight; scarcely a pigeon, parakeet or squirrel to be seen; cats likewise. |
| Wed 14 | It’s Valentine’s Day, and an excellent example of how to get the day buggered up! First comes the gardener, which is always disruptive. Then the doctors demand to see N today, to which she wants me to accompany her. We spend around 40 minutes with the nurse – never let it be said you don’t get the time when you need it! It turns out they’re being rightly cautious given that she’ll have surgery coming up – and it was useful for me too. But it took out a large chunk of the afternoon. |
| Thu 15 | And the medical stuff goes on. My turn today with an audiology appointment. As I had a couple of errands to do on the way to the hospital, and they took a lot less time than expected, I was very early for my 12:15 appointment. Astonishingly I was seen almost immediately, so I was ringing for a cab to pick me up by 11:40, and was home about 12:20! Result! What wasn’t a result was that I got a tea on my way into the hospital; it was so hot that even with a carrier I managed to spill a bit and burn my thumb! By the time I’d finished my appointment it was still too hot to drink! Luckily it cooled down enough in the 20 minutes I had to sit in the sun waiting to be picked up. |
| Fri 16 | A surprisingly quiet day, and not because I left my hearing aids out; just not a lot happening. And yes, I was wearing my hearing aids, which are much more comfortable having had them adjusted yesterday – although I’m noticing I need them turned up a bit more now. It’s good wearing them; everything is very dull without; but it is nice to take them out at the end of the day! |
| Sat 17 | For the first time in some years we had a total reorganise and clear-out of the bathroom cabinet. No, we didn’t find a pile of expired drugs (a) because we don’t have expired drugs and, (b) most drugs don’t live in the bathroom cabinet anyway. There were a couple of ends of ointment that were consigned to the bin though, as well as a certain amount of supernumerary crap – but nowhere nearly as bad as I had expected. The first aid box – which is almost never used! – got turned out too. |
| Sun 18 | Dear God, we had some rain last night. It must have been throwing it down all night. This morning we have standing water in the garden, on the path by the pond; an area of about 6m x 1m! I know the water table is high at present – the gardener reported on Wednesday that it was only a few centimetres down – but I think this is the worst I’ve seen it (except when next door’s kiddo leaves their garden hose on). Not that the wildlife is deterred: as I type this there’s a pair of magpies ripping twigs off the silver birch; squirrels and parrakeets hopping about everywhere. Well it’s better than that because the magpies have decided to build a nest almost at the top of the silver birch. |
| Mon 19 | So how much worse does it have to get before it gets better? Everything’s going to the dogs in a handcart – or is that going to Hell in a dogcart? Either way there seems to be no chance to jump off and run away to sea. |
| Tue 20 | Went with N to her hospital appointment this morning, which as usual turned into a 2½ hour marathon – consultant, samples, bloods, pharmacy, nurses … it seemed never ending – and apart from 15 minutes with the consultant all I was doing was sitting around. The waiting area we were in was heaving; hardly a spare seat. There must have been 50 patients/hangers-on all the time, plus at least 20 staff of all grades. Out of all those, at no time were there more than 5 mask wearers; and the air quality was dreadful. This in a clinic for people at high risk if they get Covid. Boy, was I glad of my well fitting N95 mask. Needless to say we escaped to the fresh, but cold, air as soon as possible. |
| Wed 21 | What a dismal day, so no surprise that very little got done apart from the supermarket order. So I really cannot blame the gardener for not coming today. The weather was absolutely filthy. It had clearly been raining most of the night and was peeing it down until gone lunchtime, then on and off. Nobody would want to be out working in that, especially as everything is so wet that it goes audibly “squelch” under foot. And the weather people all seem to be predicting that we’re in for at least another two weeks of mostly wet, wet, wet. I think by then we might all have drowned! |
| Thu 22 | Arrggghhhh!!!! My main email worketh not. Two ways to access it, neither works. Everything else is OK, including lots of other email accounts. Oh, N’s email is dead too! After much head-scratching the guys at the ISP find that there’s something misconfigured at our end (how?) which is causing our IP address to get blocked – but only for those email addresses. Seems all to be OK from soon after lunch – now to read the influx of 50 emails since last evening. Later I checked over N’s email and found a misconfigured server address. |
| Fri 23 | One of the few perils of having a cat flap is that the local bovver-cats think they can come in; mop up any spare food lying around; and generally make themselves at home. But they soon skedaddle when we appear. Mind in this weather who can blame them. Oh, and by the way, it is Saturday isn’t it? |
| Sat 24 | Something must have happened today, but if it did it passed me by and I have nothing to show for the day other than writing one of my monthly blog posts and then getting depressed. |
| Sun 25 |
04:00 Thick fog, and yet the full moon was visible. 07:00 Fog cleared, heavy frost. 11:00 Bright and sunny. 14:00 Dull and raining. |
| Mon 26 | Well the magpies seem to have abandoned their nest building in our silver birch tree. Although a couple of days ago I did see one of them “paddling” in what little they’ve built, I’ve seen no activity, and there’s been no obvious construction since the day they started. But then we know that many birds will start several nests before settling on which they prefer. |
| Tue 27 | Luckily it was dry, because the gardener came by. He spent the whole time from 11:00 to dark rise, pruning and cutting back shrubs etc. Then after dark spent an hour sitting nattering – once he starts it is almost impossible to get him out the door to go home! |
| Wed 28 | So the magpies have obviously come into some funds, because they’ve restarted construction work in the silver birch tree. They were around a bit yesterday, but there’s been more activity today. Mind you they need a good Clerk of Works or QS … Several times today I watched one of them trying to magpie-handle a twig twice it’s own length, held cross-ways in it’s beak, into the nest and wondering why the twigs of the tree were getting in the way. They mostly succeeded, but knowing how cunning they are I’m surprised they didn’t work it out faster. |
| Thu 29 | It’s Leap Day. We haven’t had one of those for a while. In fact it’s been four years since this happened. That calls for a celebration and a bottle of Champagne – after all we may not live to see another. And I’ll leave you this month with a picture of my Dendrobium orchid, which chose today to burst into full flower.  |
