And there was Christmas, gone in a flash; New Year’s Eve ended at 10 ish with an early night with a slight interruption at midnight for some neighbours fireworks, then back to sleep. Ah, the days of staying up to welcome in the coal man, or whatever the tradition was are long gone and fortunately the hangover that went with it.
On some of the dry days, I’ve started restocking the wood piles as the log burner has been working overtime to try and keep the gas usage down – latest bill over £500! Unfortunately, some of the wood was wet, so has had to be separated from the rest as it produces less heat and more smoke. Kindling also helps running low which necessitates foraging for dry wood squirrelled away in the garage. As the weather has been reasonably mild, the grass hasn’t really stopped growing, so avoiding the bulbs coming through, I dusted down the John Deere, trimmed the lawns and did some general tidying up. The stream/brook has quite a collection of fallen trees and branches which has changed the flow slightly. As it’s my responsibility, it looks like a spring job the haul, cut and stack said fallen timber for next winter. I will need help on this an electric chainsaw and wading in a stream are not compatible.
We came home one day at 15:30 from shopping to find a tree blocking half the main road outside our house. Traffic was driving onto our pavement so I thought I would try and move said tree a bit as I only replaced the fence last year. Unfortunately, the tree was rotten (hence why it fell) and as I pulled at the main branch, it snapped leaving me to gracefully land on my rump, imitating an upside down beetle. Did anyone stop – no, but I was probably caught on someones dash cam. Saved for eternity on the interweb. At about 19:00, a couple of council contractors appeared with road signs, chainsaws and the like and proceeded to spend three hours clearing away the debris. The following morning a number of the nicely sawn loss were seen being put into car boots to help clean up the countryside!
Got some thoughts for outdoor lighting following an idea seen on a tv drama. Hoop lighting – it wrap around trees leaving a 6 inch gap. First experiment with U shaped cable trunking failed as it collapsed when heated. I need something a bit more rigid, but bendable and that can be easily fixed. Ideally, a cheap hoola hoop with some metal brackets. On the other hand, it does seem a lot of work for an area which isn’t used at night. The strings of led’s erected a few months ago have already failed, so that was a waste of time with one string short circuit and the other not charging.
I’m treated in the mornings by robins and tits when I take food out for the birds. There are now four area’s that need food to keep the robins from fighting. I’ve noticed at least five distinct robin territories so far. I’ve added another four bird boxes to the collection and after cleaning, painting and hanging them, we now have three for robins and eight for tits. Some tits were waiting in the branches while I was screwing them to the trees, twittering for me to hurry up.
Things are starting to get lively for Emma and Martins wedding in April. My intended speech has numerous restrictions placed on it by Emma to avoid any embarrassment to the woke community, with Welsh jokes and stories of Emma being banned. This could be one of the shortest brides father speeches ever.
