Family Journal.

As I watched the bare branches of the trees blowing in the wind against grey misty backdrop this morning I listened with a little envy to reports of how warm and sunny it had been yesterday in the rest of the country. The temperature had been up to 18C and people in London were walking around in t-shirts and shorts. Then gloomily the weather man said that the cold weather is on its way back. It was another drizzly day so it wasn't until late morning that I was out in the garden. But finally I can say that the main winter weeding is all done. Lots of little bits to keep an eye on and I plan to do some hand weeding in the lawns too. There is one other job that I started today which is cutting the grass in the wild flower meadow. That's a posh name for a patch of ground that I leave to grow wild each year. It is amazing how effective having neatly mown paths around long grass looks. It is very low maintenance and so long as I clear most of the grass each winter, is full of flowering wild plants such as clover and vetches. It would be fairly easy just to strim it but I fear for all the small creatures living under the matted grass so instead I get down on my knees and cut it with a pair of hand shears. That way anything faster than a slug, which I don't mind chopping, can get out of the way and is not in danger of being sliced by the strimmer. I got half of it done today and there were many little runs and tunnels amongst the grass roots. I saw a couple of possible nests but they were empty apart from one. As I moved aside the dry grass lining the burrow I thought I had found an early nest of some small creature but it was only a small brown toad. I carefully covered him up again and marked the spot so that I wouldn't kneel on him on my next line of cutting.

To end my afternoon I made a cup of tea and took it and a book up to the scree garden where I sat under the shelter and enjoyed the peace of the garden. The mist/drizzle had filled the valley and I could hardly see the trees across the field or on top of Paul's hill. Noticeable was the lack of traffic sounds as the mist was absorbing the noise I usually hear from the roads that criss-cross the area. All I could hear was the rushing of the stream flowing down the hill behind me, the drip of water from the trees onto the dead leaves and several birds singing merrily. Unable to go out first thing this morning I occupied myself by looking back through my blog.
6 years ago I decided to use one of these lovely hobbit journals to keep a general record of our family life over the years. 3 or 4 times a year I wrote a summary of the things we all had been doing. But then I started working full-time and somehow I didn't keep it up. This morning I started going back through my blog so I can bring this family journal up to date. Even though it only goes back 6 years I find the journal fascinating to read as I find it hard to recall when events happened and skimming through the notes brings everything back. (I'm not one of those people with perfect memories.) It was also fun reading through the blog, I may look into printing the blog out in book form, anyone got any good tips for that?