Zombies and swallows

 Waking early and stumbling out of the van dressed like a zombie dog mum is not one of my finest hours however, the fresh blue skies, the crisp air screaming down to the bottom of my lungs and the promise of a hot brew on my return, makes the first morning piddle walk for Willow (NOT me!) worth it....

Clasping said promised brew, now fully dressed and feeling a little more human having fed Willow who inhaled her food with one undignified dog-slurp, I'm savouring the scent of toast being made.

The breakfast view is amazing. It might not be to everyone's taste, but to us - the marshes rolling gently down to the estuarine tidal reaches of the Lune with the historically interesting village of Sunderland Point perched on a small spit of land just across the waters - is enough to fill our hearts. 

The vastness of the skies and the drifting of whispy clouds fills my eyes as I stare at birds flitting across my view. I am watching out for barn swallows - we'd heard a tantalising warbling trill and started to scan the skies. The males arrive first by a few days - they are identifiable by their longer tail feathers - then the females appear. 

Shelducks, ravens, wood pigeons, egrets, black headed gulls, martins, mallards and the much anticipated swallows fill the skies and marshes in front of us and we find it difficult to tear ourselves away for our walk... but pressed by Willow, we do.....

I want more gentle adventures like these.

With thanks to Himself for letting me use some of his photos - in particular the final one - which is an absolute corker and he is rightly proud of ❤️

Celebrating the small stuff

Up early this morning to see Himself off to work gave me the absolute pleasure of being able to slip back into a still warm bed and catch up with reading or replying to comments on my blog. It was rather fresh first thing when I took Willow out however the dawn chorus was spectacular. I listened with clenched teeth to stop them chattering before returning to the warmth of my bed, but not before I used my bird app to help ID all the birds I could hear. 

I was very happy with that list!

After breakfast, boots and leads were collected and a pathway followed. When I used to walk with Moss, I allowed her to 'choose' the route (within reason) and it would vary from day to day. 

The last couple of walks, I have gently allowed Willow the same freedom of choice (again within reason) and today she took us up and round the village along stony tracks and muddy lanes then through a rough field and a scruffy meadow twice - because she knows she can play fetch with her favourite ball there. 

To do that - she would have had to mentally plan the route to be able to return back through the fields without turning back or repeating a track, either that it was a very lucky guess!!

I recently mentioned my love of punchy home made ginger biscuits and I was sent a flood of recipes - so - today I am going to start experimenting with every recipe offered - it is a mission and some one has to do it!! (oooh oooh pick me, pick me!)

Todays photos a mix of our walk, what we found, in the garden and in the kitchen - I do have quite a long 'to do' list but - hey there is always tomorrow!

How has your Monday been?
Are you doing things YOU want to do or are you procrastinating?

glimmers

I am taking a self enforced rest day today - the last week of joyous sunshine and a happy me working in the garden has taken it's toll on my hands and they are rather painful. I am very grateful I learnt to touch type at school and can type with relatively little hand or finger movement.

So the three of us are sitting in the summer house, Willow napping on her duvet, Pan popping in and out or watching the frogs VeRy.cLoSeLy... sorry frogs - we think she needs specs coz she gets so close to look at them. 

Himself had constructed a little fence to prevent an elderly cat from entering the pond area, but the 'old dear' still has quite a spring in her step and with a bit of thought has found a route in.

One of my jobs this last week was to try and thwart her but have failed..... I have just watched her analyse the alterations, think about it, then just jump over a different way and - with equal rickety ease - jump back out... sigh. Back to the drawing board.

It has been a rare pleasure being able to spend a run of gently warm days in the garden. At the moment I am smiling quietly to myself as I watch all the birds using the bird feeding station I constructed on Tuesday. I had had a rusty metal version up for quite a few seasons and each time I looked at it, I gave it a hearty frown. Tuesday was the day of it's demise. 

All the hooks and tray holders were fine so I sawed them off, drilled holes and used one of the branches left over from the cherry tree removal from last week. I tried to take a flattering photo of the new and hopefully improved feeding station - but I just can't get a good one - so you will have to imagine it!

Something else that has made me smile, is the gentle improvement in cat and dog relations - Pan has lived with two other border collies in her life time so this one is just another inconvenience, however Willow has never met a cat and it has taken some weeks for her to stop reacting as 'sharply' as she has been. 

Today I held my breath as I watched a cranky old cat quietly soothe a scared little dog .... Willow is terrified of large men - especially those with loud voices. Our neighbour is both large and loud and he coughs and clears his throat with the explosive force of a snorting bull. And he does it regularly.

Willow was startled, sat up trembling, and Pan came into the summer house, went over and booped noses, stood near until the dog stopped quivering and lay back down, then she went back into the garden. Situation defused.

I can't ask for any more than that...............

well, may be one more thing -

a dog that does not think that walking at full steam-train-speed is 

The.Only.Way.To.Go

What gentle gems - glimmers - have lit your day?🩷💚

How is your gardening growing?🌱🪴🌿🪻🌷🌹

Here is to a lovely weekend - long may the springy weather keep on springing ☀️

Early morning

 We set off a little earlier today, lots to do before visitors later. Although term time, it is quiet, the village school is stuffed full of mini students. We cross the cobbles and slip around a traffic free tarred road. The muddy puddles reflect the silvery blue sky and I swear I can no longer smell the metallic scent of winter rather I am picking up the delicate green fragrance of growing grass.

The sky is a soft blue, still fresh and clear and the trees are filled with birds trying to out sing each other - in places they are almost deafening.  Trialling - with my heart in my mouth and my hands ready to grab - Willow off lead. She trots ahead on dainty collie feet, her nose just millimetres off the ground as she inhales her route. Suddenly a 'stickier' smell stops her in her tracks and she stands taking in the odours and their messages.

At a particularly muddy field partially swimming beneath huge puddles, she is still off lead. I whistle and she returns, I praise, she trots off, I whistle - she returns. We repeat this recall along the boggy reeds and sunken pathway until we meet another walker with her dog. So many of the village walkers are women and it seems we have been chatted about on the doggy-grape-vine. They comment how good she is behaving, how well she is getting on and what a lovely girl she is. I swell with pride at my silly dilly foxling of a dog.

Having slid and sploshed our way over the wet field, we meet another track, this time crunchy with loose stone and sticky mud. Again she is off lead, again recall, praise and release, recall, praise and release. The lane turns into a sunken holloway with chicken pens on one side and high hedges with sheep fields on the other. Water trickles noisily down through the stones and birds rustle and sing through the scruffy hedges of hawthorn, bramble, blackthorn, holly and rowan. The lane is cooler, the sun is yet to reach the ground, however shafts of soft light stream through the higher branches.

We turn on to a little lane which narrows down to not much wider than a pack horse and I call Willow back and signalling silently to her to sit, I slip her collar on so we can cross the village road.  Back down in to the village and another very short stint off lead with a recall, silent sit and replaced collar - homeward.

My heart is singing. This little dog is blossoming. 

Now - all I have to conquer is Willow trying to round up the cat ..... the cat is not keen on being thought of as a lamb. She prefers to be thought of as a Polar Bear (she has the temperament on one TBH)

The Polar Bear in question

Bird brain

I lifted my head when a bird song which had been going round my head suddenly made itself heard. Flipping back my fringe - it is getting too long, I listened again. I was on all fours laying a pathway through the dahlia bed - as you do....

I'd been so engrossed with my fingers in the soil, placing slabs in a winding path when I heard, but not listened to the twittering.

With my  neck twisted up, craning it to see if I could track who was singing in the bare sycamore trees behind the glasshouse. I knew the song - the churr and chirrup belonged to one of my favourite birds. The Long Tailed Tit - the 'flying teaspoon'. My eyes flitted across the branches and suddenly I caught their movement. A family cluster of may be eight or ten birds tripping through the twigs hunting for insects.

Like a cat I watched their every move until they came to the edge of the trees and swooped off in a twittery churring wave - gone.

Back to work.

Oh, and the painting I did the other day? Another of my favourites - the Curlew.

Observations

Most of the droplets glisten when they capture the meagre early morning sunlight, others appear opaque. The window pane is littered with static rain beads giving the appearance of pockmarked glass. Then when the fast moving grey clouds curtain the sun, the droplets become almost invisible allowing my eye through the distraction. I now watch the trees in the garden are dancing in the brisk breeze, it fluctuates from a gentle flip of the lighter branches to whole tree contortions. 

We have a stained glass plaque in the window and at the moment, brief flashes of sun sing through the colours scattering speckles of colour on the glass.

Himself left for work while it was still the last drifts of darkness leaving the cat and me in bed, his parting shot - I'd stay there if I were you. So we have. Although I suspect I will be up long before the cat.

The hyacinths in the lounge have both decorated the room and the air with their delicious scent and blue flowers however they are beginning to fade and I am sorry to see them go. It will be another ten months before we have them up on the mantel and in the window again.  Primula have been brought in to fill that hole.

The cat is rhythmically snoring beneath Himself's aged lumberjack shirt - one reserved specifically for gardening and tucking around a cold sleeping cat.

I can see, but not hear, the wind chime in the garden twirling around in the wind. It is an elegant spiral of tubes which normally share a gentle chime as they tink against each other. Today I suspect it is more of an angry clash than a melodic background sound. The blackbirds do not seem to care. They are busily foraging around the plants and bird feeder breaking off only to chase each other around and across the garage roof.

I plan to paint once I have posted this. I  can feel the compulsion to sketch and run a watercolour filled brush across paper. It sometimes feels like a rising tide which I used to suppress - somehow 'adulting' seemed more important - but now I heed that urge.

Life is for living.

If Winter comes Can Spring be far behind? (Percy Bysshe Shelley)

Stepping in to the garden this morning was like stepping into an energy field. The air was crisp with the lightest of airy blue skies and I was surrounded by the sounds of blackbirds quarrelling, robins singing and the neighbour's hens making happy hen noises.

Leaves and twigs were brushed with the lightest of frost and in the sunlight they sparkled and twinkled catching my eye, filling me with joy. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly my spirit is lifted by days like these.

Whilst I was out, I fed the birds and cracked the glassy lid of ice on all their watering holes. I knew I was being watched as the trees rustled with blackbirds leaning forward to see what I'd left for them.

The cat has remained in bed - as is her want - she is a a bit of an 'old dear' and likes her creature comforts and usually I want to do the same, but not today. 

Today is too beautiful to miss.

A thorny issue

The garden was quiet again this morning once the storm had passed. There was a certain stillness - almost a sigh of relief - a moment's breath. The birds were flitting back and forth, making up for lost time I suspect. Today we'd planned to do the Big Garden Bird Watch ,  something we've tried to do annually for quite a while now. However, instead of sitting down in the summerhouse, notebook and mug of tea to hand, we were having to wrestle a 20 year old climbing rose who'd succumbed to Éowyn's howling winds and was now lying prone across the back of the garden in a very sorry state.

Himself and I armed with not mugs of tea or binoculars but with loppers, secateurs and the shredder got to work soon after breakfast. Metres and metres of heavily thorned and tangled rose branches were first lopped then shredded into piles of chippings. As we worked, the woodshed began to reappear from behind the unforgiving tangle.

To be brutally honest, I was not sorry the rose had to be reduced to a pile of wood chip. It had grown so big that the flowers - as beautiful and as scented as they were - were beyond our reach. We estimated it had grown over 12 metres (40 foot in old money) and was truly a monster. Now, hopefully it will recover and flower again in a year or two but at head height.

Did we still manage to see a bird or two? Well, surprisingly so - yes, many. They were so busy being birds that our shenanigans with the rose did not seem to bother them. 

Gentle Sunday nothings

A small downy white feather was lightly drifting on our pond. The slightest of breeze gently twisting it around - a little swan in it's own little lake. 

Although still, meteorologically speaking, late winter today felt a bit like spring. When the weather is quiet, with a muted air about her, Spring has a certain stillness that feels clear and fresh.   

With a sense of anticipation. 

Snowdrop and daffodil leaves have pushed through the decaying leaves left by autumn promising much - just not yet.....I will have to wait a little longer.

The birds have been singing their little hearts out - Robins, Coal, Great and Blue Tits, Blackbirds, House Sparrows and both the Gold and Bullfinches. They are also celebrating that the seasons are turning and each day further from the solstice is a day nearer spring.

In the greenhouse I'd left an untidy mess from an end of year pruning of the vine which - to my shame - I never cleared up. However just by a lucky turn of events, I am now to teach a Spring Wreath workshop and the once discarded vines are now twisty hedgerow wreaths ready to fully dry and then be decorated with hand made nests with faux eggs, moss, feathers and ivy.

karma

It is early morning, the snow has all but gone, replaced by a gentle dull drizzle and drifting grey coloured mist. The brightness and clarity of the last few days has dissolved into the more usual leaden hues of a northern winter.  Everything is coated in a fine mizzle with jewel like droplets at the end of each branch. And it feels cold.

There is a whirling flash of wings flying back and forth past the bedroom window. 

The starlings are back. 

Our neighbour's bathroom roof has a conveniently starling size gap beneath the slate tiles and the millstone grit stones. It used to be inhabited by a garrulous family of house sparrows until the starlings in a rather nasty take over bid killed all the fledgelings and hounded the adults. It took nearly nine years before the sparrows returned to our garden.....

I digress. The present incumbents - the starlings, have raised between two and three broods every year for over a decade now and seeing that in the wild, starlings live between three and five years, it does mean several generations have passed beneath those slate slabs.

After the flurry of raising fledglings until the last minutes of summer, the starlings suddenly vanish, turning from parents to small dots within those magical murmurations. Then, as autumn begins to soften then decay, they return. They (are 'they' the same birds from summer? without ring ID - who knows?) return and begin prospecting, researching nest sites for the coming spring. 

Winter comes and goes, or lingers depending on her mood however the starlings have a fixed schedule and for the last three or four days the birds have been flitting in and out, squeezing below the snow melt to investigate their potential nesting spot for 2025.

The roof space above the neighbour's bathroom must be filled to the rafters with decades of nesting material. The previous owner, an older lady who although she owned the house for around ten years only really lived in it for about four as she suffered ill health. She was quite happy that the birds lived in her roof saying she was more their landlord that the owner resident herself. There are now new owners, a young couple who have been rebuilding the entire house for the last 18 (very long and dusty and noisy) months who I made aware of 'our' starlings in their roof and until today I thought the birds would be safe for another season. 

Today I heard work starting in the bathroom. I might gently remind them about the birds in the roof or suggest to the starlings that their residency, like the house sparrows they evicted, has now too come to an end.

           

Surround Sounds

  A personal challenge - try and write something every day for January 2025 

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I have a busy brain. It chats happily to itself and to me, organising, discussing, replaying, planning, making lists and anything else that it fancies to annoy me with. For a few years now, I have been gently practising the art of silencing the incessant chatter.

Some days it works and others - not so much. I have learnt and regularly practise ... to just listen. Listening to the sounds around and not letting my busy brain discuss them. Listening in silence.

The tearing of the wind as it rustles through trees.

The crackle and bursting of air bubbles when a river tumbles over the rocks.

Birds singing for territory, for mates, to impress.

The sound of boots slurping in mud, crunching on frosted snow, clipping on tarred pavements, scrunching on pebbly tracks.

The drag and whush of the retreating tide on a rocky beach.

The crisp sound as a page is turned in a new book.

The clink of a paint brush as you swirl it in water to clean it.

The quiet breathing and sometimes the deep snoring of a fast asleep cat.

That deep chest thudding roar of rain swollen rivers as they crash down a ravine.

......and just a gentle enquiry - how many of you heard the sound as you read the words?

Before winter really arrives

A personal challenge - try and write something every day for January 2025 

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There is a crunchy crispy note to our footsteps as we walk up the side of Dewbarrow Ridge.  Puddles are lidded with a layer of ice and the air although cold, feels and smells earthy and fresh.  It is really good to be out. Snow and icy conditions have been forecast to start this evening - winter is on her way - so we are out on the hills making the most of the lull before the storm.

Although there were several cars stashed here and there along the lane, it appears we are the only ones up in the woods. 

Some walks, I come home tired but happy, others I need to recover before I can appreciate them, but today's.... today's five miles have left me feeling elated!

***********************

Birds either spotted or heard:

Buzzard, Rooks, Nuthatch, Yaffel (Green Woodpecker), Greater Spotted Woodpecker, Crows and the most beautiful of Barn Owls.

'Keewik keewik'

A personal challenge - try and write something every day for January 2025 

***************

Carrying a small tub laden with toast crumbs, dried sultanas, cold bacon fat and cake, as well as a full kettle of not quite boiled water, I carefully picked my way through the garden to the bird feeder. The Robin was giving running commentary and a cluster of Blackbirds were loitering by the pond watching me with bead bright eyes. 

The bird snacks were emptied into two trays and the water used to help dissolve the thin layer of ice in the water bowls in the garden. 

The sky was the thinnest of clear blue with ragged white contraflow criss-crossing the expanse. In the distance a barrage of shooting - a 'side effect' of living in a village on the edge of privately owned moorland......

Suddenly the female Tawny Owl whistled a plaintive 'keewik keewik' triggering the garden birds to send up warning calls and flutter nervously through the trees. 

I retreated back to the house, more layers needed as my fingers and feet felt lumpen and cold. I returned with my camera and snapped a few photos of frost covered leaves with daggers of ice acting as temporary armour.

Vinca leaves encrusted with sharp stilettos of ice

I recorded the garden birds - Robin, Blackbirds (male and female), Dunnock, Jackdaw, Mistle Thrush, House Sparrow, Great and Coal Tit who were all still grumbling defensively about the now silent Tawny Owl.

a watercolour of a hen Blackbird from my #perpetualjournal - 

ignore the dates, I wrote them incorrectly, I have since amended them.