Happy Birthday Vytas.

It's Vytas' birthday today. He's 26, how the years fly by. He lives up in Leicester and is, hopefully, nearing the completion of his thesis for his PhD (physics). It's a long way from the little boy who told his nursery school teacher that he didn't draw people, only rockets. As can be seen from the picture of Vytas, Sally and friend there really was snow in other parts of the country. (I copy all the Facebook photos of the boys so I get to see what they are up to.)
Here the weather has slipped back to grey and nothingness. It was fine for gardening and my weeding is still on schedule. The first area tackled was the hardy geranium bed at the edge of the lawn. The grass had grown into the flower bed and some of the geraniums were making their escape across the lawn. I like an exuberant natural(ish) garden but the lawn was disappearing under some common pink geranium so I ruthlessly dug it all out. Combined with the mole tunnels there and the wet conditions at the bottom of the hill that bit of lawn now resembles a muddy battlefield. The rest of the day was spent hacking/stabbing/ pulling out the big bracken heads growing between the rocks. It's a hard horrible job which probably explains why it wasn't done last year. I have been working further away from the pond so the frogs have been croaking away and laying yet more frogspawn. Over on the lake there has been a lot of quacking from the ducks - today and splashing from the 10 Canada geese - yesterday.
After climbing about on the hillside I finished my day sitting by the scree garden with my book and a cup of tea until twilight and light drizzle sent me indoors.

Back Again.

Yesterday's lack of post was down to my PC suddenly acting weirdly on Monday night. It went on a total go slow refusing to do anything I asked so in the end fearing a Trojan or similar nasty I had to pull the plug out of the wall because it wouldn't close down. Peter gave it a thorough check last night (so useful being married to an IT systems analyst), and he thinks it is just one of the parts of my PC playing up as there was no virus and no untoward processes running. Phew!

At times I felt at a bit of a loss being disconnected from the web but I did spend a lot of time in town yesterday. First I had an appointment with the physiotherapist, his really deep massage of my upper spine felt so good and then I went in to do some shopping. I managed to get 3 hours free parking by first parking in a local road where you can stay for an hour, that gave me time to get to the library and visit the shops at one end of the High st. Then I drove to the other side of town as I needed to go to BJ's where I parked in the Lidl's car park. (2 free hours.) A quick walk over the bridge, dropped 2 frame rucksacks into a charity shop and then some browsing in the shops. I bought 2 more vest t-shirts, a black one in sale and a blue one in a charity shop. (Peter doesn't understand there there are subtle but important differences between all the black vests I own.) I bought lots of other little things that we/I needed including a globe bird feeder to put seeds in. The first feeder I tried let too many seeds fall out when the birds were feeding and was empty in a couple of days. I also bought a camping cooker and some gas canisters for the grand camping trip. I did get some gardening done in the afternoon as well so I didn't miss my PC too much.

Today the weather has been a bit more dramatic. Warm but very windy with the occasional spot of sunshine. I spent the whole day working in the garden and now the heather banks are thoroughly weeded. When I came back from having lunch the frogs were all out croaking away in the pond but my presence sent them under the lily pads. So with me interrupting their froggy antics and both Elwen and Patch slurping up the frogspawn, the frogs were not having a good day.
I have also been messing about with a few thrifty projects. I've had this knitted mohair mix neck warmer/snood for a while. I didn't knit it myself and I'm not sure where it came from, possibly a jumble sale where I was helping out.

Recently I have been wearing it as a soft indoor hat which looked daft but was cosy. So I made a couple of pom-poms and threaded them through one end so that I can pull them tight or open them up to still wear it as a neck warmer, and crocheted a border at the other end.

And now I look like a hippy eco-warrior but I don't care because it is just what I need in these slightly colder days.

Yesterday my shopping consisted of a lot of checking out anything that was still in sale. Sales seem to be a permanent feature these days. I bought this necklace, was £10 reduced to £1. Not my style but I loved the beads.

It was a very easy job to remake them into a pair of long dangly earrings and there are still beads to spare.

It's good when a project turns out right, sometimes they don't or get left to one side. I'm not into following current fashion, but I have my own style and I love to make one thing out of another.

A Weeding Day.

The same sort of weather again today, grey and threatening to rain. I spent the afternoon out in the garden weeding one of the heather beds. It's now had a thorough tidy up and I even managed to remove some of the more stubborn weeds, mainly brambles and bracken, which had eluded me last year. The hillside is now beginning to resemble a garden, albeit an untidy one, more than an overgrown bank with a few bushes poking out. I also removed all the blanket weed that was growing in the rill at the bottom of the rocky bank and at the same time did a general weeding so that is one more area done.

In case anyone was wondering what the anemones we were looking for yesterday are like here are some of them.

These are the Gem anemones (I think). They are quite inconspicuous almost looking like part of the rock.
I took photos of all the specimens that we found and it wasn't until I looked at the photos that I saw some of them did have their tentacles out, like this one.

This Strawberry anemone was on the side of a rock and was one of the biggest anemones I have seen. It must be enormous when the tentacles are extended.

Some Gems, Strawberries And A Gurnard.

It was rather grey and dreary today so for our walk we decided to go to Barricane beach. When we arrived the tide was out so we walked along the cliff to the next beach, Coombesgate and then had a rock pooling walk along the beach to Barricane. I love the way there seems to be a separate world in each pool as you look down through the crystal clear water.

As a result of my enquires about the Daisy anemone I had been told about a couple of other less common species of anemone so our time was spent looking for Gem and Dahlia anemones. Peter was the first to find some Gem anemones and we found about 10 in all as well as another Daisy anemone, some strawberry anemones one of which was 10cms across and some grey anemones. I've sent photos to the nice chap at the Marine Society and I'm sure he will be able to confirm what they all were. There were a lot of people around especially down at Woolacombe as it is the start of the half-term holiday and the surf was reasonably good.



These are the common Snakelocks anemones.




Hardly any of the rock pools have stones to hide under so when I found a large flat stone in a pool I lifted it off carefully and found this 12cm grey gurnard. When we were rock pooling on Lundy a member of our party found out that these fish bite. After taking a photo I put the stone back to keep it safe from the seagulls until the tide came in.



We dropped in at Tescos as it is on the way home and by the time we got home it was raining gently so no chance of any gardening. Supper tonight is ham & cheese tortellini for which Peter will be making a mushroom sauce.

Time To Garden.

It's been a bright day, fairly chilly but not so cold that I couldn't get outside for some gardening. Peter's day started much earlier than mine as he had to be at the boat shed by 7.30 to go rowing on the river. They are now training in earnest and by half-way through the session steam was gently rising from their bodies while the poor cox shivered in a bundle of coats. My first plan today was to begin weeding the heather banks as the winter flowering heathers are starting to be covered in their tiny flowers but I was getting cold in the shade so instead I chased the sun around the little pond as I weeded the circular path.
The effort I put into weeding the path at the end of the summer paid off and for the first time ever I managed to weed the whole circle in one day. I was also able to weed a lot of the planted margin apart from the side that was truly frozen and drag out the grass that was still growing in the water.

I was on such a roll that I then went on to weed the whole of the heather bank that is under the trees to the side of the pond. I cleared this bank some years ago and planted it with heathers. Unfortunately a couple of hot dry spells in the last few years (always during term time), caused about half of the heathers to die off. The bank is 100% clay and the heathers were competing with the mature trees at the top of the bank. I'll put in some more heathers this year and hope that they survive as the other heather banks look really colourful in late winter.

School moment from yesterday - small child telling 'news' to the rest of the class about her Daddy's birthday. "How old is he?" asked another child, " I think he's 98." came the reply. There was an indrawing of breath as most of the rest of the class of 7 year olds realised this was .... unusual. I gently enquired if the girl was sure and her reply was " I think he's actually 96." I wonder how old she thinks I am?

No Snow.

After all the dire warnings all it did rain the whole night through. Things would have been very different if it had been 1 or 2 degrees colder. The child in me would have loved to have woken to a blanket of snow but the sensible adult was grateful that travel on the roads was safe. There is snow in the rest of the country and right up to East Devon but just cold rain here. My car did get flicked with salt as a gritter passed me on the way home. I'm now on our half-term holiday for the next 10 days so if it does get cold I can hide under the duvet.

I've been at school all day but the heater was a bit erratic and the classroom (hut) wasn't always that warm. I felt the teaching went well today as we went back and consolidated some of the work started yesterday and finished things off properly instead of a mad rush to get the next task started. I had to stay later than I was expecting to wait with a child whose mother didn't come to pick up her child even though everyone had been informed that there was no gymnastics club. Now I'm back home, wrapped up in fleece clothing and looking forward to a week of gardening and possibly sleeping.

Is Snow On Its Way?

It felt rather silly to be wrapping my car up and leaving it out on the road this evening when the temperature was not even 0C but there is a strong chance that the weather will get much worse tonight. The sky certainly looks like a snow sky so if the temperature drops by 2C we could be in for some snow. Metcheck has a red weather warning up with sleet & snow predicted for all night turning to snow tomorrow morning and continuing to snow all day. I have to be off early in the morning so I don't want to get up there to find that snow has blown across the fields into snow drifts on the road making the 100 yds from the usual gateway parking spot out to the road impossible for my little car.
Walking down the hill I saw that Paul has been thinning the trees on his boundary. I don't have to worry that he will chop them all down, as farmers round here tend to do, because he likes to keep trees around his fields. He has a wood burner in his house so no chance of free wood for us.