I Believe In One God, The Father The Almighty

Santa's Coming!!

http://www.noradsanta.org/en/home.html

Winter Gardening

Sometimes my heart just sinks when the alarm goes off on Saturday morning, quietly but no less insistently than during the week. But I'm supposed to have a lie-in, I think to myself, and curl down even further under the duvet. On and on drones Farming Today. Eventually the thought of starvation forces me to get up and dress up. Cotton camisole, short sleeve cotton tee shirt, long sleeve fleecy zip-up, sleeveless body warmer, by which time I'm in the kitchen making a hurried cup of tea and snatching a bit of last night's takeaway for a breakfast eaten on the way out to the car.

I keep a box in the boot filled with hand tools and at this time of year, a selection of woollen hats and waterproof gloves. I keep my boots and jacket in the laundry room near the radiator, so I start my day warm from head to toe.

What I always forget to remove before stepping out into the winter garden, are my earrings. I have some diamond studs, which pretty much stay on all the time, and don't present too much of an earlobe chill factor. My gold studs are quite another matter. The damned things sit like tiny, invisible detonators waiting for the moment of maximum inconvenience. I was up a ladder on Saturday morning, tying in a fabulously wayward grape vine, day dreaming of Christmas wreaths I'll make with the prunings, when the detters chose to go off. Cold earring-induced earache is horrible. It comes on suddenly and you really can't get your gloves off quick enough. Then you have to go through the business of rubbing your hands together and blowing on them because they're too cold to feel the butterflies properly, and if you drop them when you're half way up your ladder you can kiss them goodbye... Eventually you get them off and zip them away into your inside jacket pocket, pull your hat right down over your ears, glove up and get back to work.

Not that I'm complaining. Pruning that grape vine completed my horticultural year. With both Beloved Firstborn and Merci Beaucoup Enfant Deux at university this year, and two lots of halls' fees, I front loaded this year with lucrative design work. All drawing board and little spade work, and this academic year's halls' fees are now safely tucked up in the bank earning zero interest. So I'd rather forgotten how cold autumn and winter gardening becomes.

Back home in time for lunch, and there's still a bit of lamb biryani and naan. A scaldingly hot cup of tea and a sit down in the kitchen chair beside the radiator quickly restores my inner warmth, and then I begin peeling off the layers.

Image: Winter Mist by Miranda Halsby, on sale at Abbott & Holder

Winter Gardening With Birds

I've reproduced Helen Yemm's article from last Saturday's Telegraph here, because it begins with a question from Faye & Peter Burton, wondering if they added a drop of gin to their birdbath would it prevent the water from freezing over. It won't actually, as I keep my Bombay Sapphire in the freezer where it's remains a deliciously gloopy consistency. Faye would need to make her birdbath 40% proof plus! I like their style. On to Helen's article.

"This query, together with the threat of nasty weather from the north, got me out in my own garden this week. I cleared out the mouldy remains at the bottom of my seed holders, tipped out rainwater sludged up with autumn leaves in the various drinking/bathing places that the birds have found for themselves and generally re-stocked the garden with bird necessities.

"Like many (most, I would like to think) gardeners, I greatly appreciate my feathered garden visitors. And, as we are now encouraged to do, I feed them all year round. To welcome all-comers, I put out an assortment of food. Seed tubes containing peanuts and sunflower hearts, bought as cheaply as possible in bulk and stored in lidded bins in my garage, hang off a high bird table placed close to trees and hedges. These provide cover and perching places (in which, among others, gold and green finches, various tits and even nuthatches queue for "their turn"). But I make sure there is no thick evergreen growth at ground level near the table in which the one or two malevolent local moggies can lie in wait.

"On the ground close to my French windows, I put out different food entirely - mostly apples, chopped, or grated scraps of old cheese or cheap porridge oats slightly moistened with vegetable oil (I mix this up in big batches).

"My ground-feeding birds, among them beady-eyed blackbirds, dunnocks and a pair of softly twittering robins, have become incredibly tame and stay close to me while I am at work in the garden or simply hang around in the bushes waiting for my appearance.

"Gangs of jeering, clattering starlings flock down from the oak tree to splash around the edge of the pond and demolish all available food in seconds, while collar doves sit on the garage roof. It is a wonder I get any writing done at all."