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| My Daffodils breaking through. |
I can’t believe it
has been nearly a month since I wrote anything on here. Even longer since I
posted a recipe on the Cheap Meals Blog.
What have I been
doing in that time. You may be thinking - Digging beds, sowing seeds,
rebuilding walls, cleaning plant pots, washing the algae of the poly-tunnel,
re-potting the strawberries, pruning the fruit bushes, forcing the rhubarb. I
wish!!!!!
These are all things
I should have done and haven’t. I can mainly blame the weather. It has been
atrocious here, as it has for most of Britain. We have not flooded again, so I
can be thankful for that but the ground is so waterlogged I can’t even walk on
it let alone dig it. It has not even been that cold this winter; the occasional
cold spell but hardly any time below freezing at all. What is preventing me
getting out and about is the wind. It is worse than usual this winter. Not
destructive storms force winds but almost a constant gale force. It is all
people seem to talk about when you go down town. It has been really hard on the
shipping this year and affected freight and ferries alike.
Today is so different
– not much wind and dry and even a bit of sunshine. I have managed to go out
and do some cleaning in the hen houses and have a good wander about looking at
things.
The bulbs are doing
well in the poly-tunnel. I thought I had lost them to rot when it was flooded
for a while but some of the daffodils are so advanced they are showing flower
buds and today I even spotted the first tulips and hyacinths poking through the
soil. I can’t wait to see them in bloom. Am I sad to get excited over the
prospect of flowers?
We need to be
despatching some more cockerels soon as the poor younger hens are suffering
from their advances. As for the older hens – they have become complete hussies
since Ant died and follow poor Dec around constantly. All of them fawning in
front of him, begging for food and chasing any younger hen away who might
compete for his attention. He almost seems eager to escape them at times.
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| Sadie |
Sadie has been very
unsettled by the wind and barks at anything and everything and is driving us
nuts. As usual the cats do not seem perturbed at all – except to throw Sadie a
dirty look when she disturbs their siesta with another bout of barking.
So what have I been
doing this last month? Well I have joined a couple of online writing groups.
These groups pay you a few pence here and there (if you are lucky) when you
post articles, and more if people click the like button. One of the sites
InfoBarrel is a little more high brow than the other and the articles I have
written there are mainly about the sites to be seen on Orkney. Bubblews is much
less formal and people write anything from what they had for breakfast to in depth
articles on the meaning of life. Very different from each other but they have
certainly helped to pass the time during this winter. I am not sure how much
time I will be able to devote to them once the garden gets going though.
If you would like to
see what I have been up to then :-
Here is a link to my
InfoBarrel stuff -
And here is one for
Bubblews -
