January news

Toadlet started the month and the New Year with another migraine aura. She went to lie down straight away and managed to avoid the follow through sickness. We've visited the GP and she has some pills to take as soon as her eyes 'go funny'. So far she hasn't needed them. 

Foul, clashy weather today so after some other chores, I finished this temari

Without flash, bit fuzzy

With flash, too shiny

a sister to this one that I made recently for a friend

I also made one containing a rattle – an old film canister containing some rice grains – commissioned by a friend in France who is awaiting the spring birth of a grand-daughter. She mentioned spring flowers and I was thinking "bright spring star" as I made it. The slight egg shape that you can see in the second and third pictures is caused by the film canister. I was worried that I hadn't got the ball spherical enough but then it occurred to me that egg shapes are very appropriate for spring too!

If your brain works like mine, you'll agree that it can also be seen as a somewhat curvaceous Platonic solid – a dodecahedron.

Most of January seems to have been fairly soggy. This is not unusual here. Between showers/downpours I've continued shredding the leaves and small twigs of the eucalyptus tree. There's still a bit to go but the end is in sight. The slices of trunk have been split (by Toad – too much at once so he did his back in and is still recovering; no archery for him tomorrow) and stacked (by me). I've a few small branch pieces still to split and then we'll cover the top of the pile with a groundsheet and let all dry out.

A local builder came and looked at our leaky wall and assessed what needed doing. He's planning to come and do the work in May or June. It will involve scaffolding and, possibly, knocking down an old stone gatepost so that he can get his long wheelbase van up to the house without having to do several to and fro manoeuvres. The post has been moved before (not by us) to widen the gateway but since there is no gate now it's not really necessary.

All in all January has been a trundly (trundley?) month with us just trundling along doing what needs to be done. Slowly, slowly the light increases. We have a few snowdrops and I brought in and bejugged a branch or two of forsythia to get some early flower sunshine.

Here is a link to my niece's Peruvian newsletter

Digging a wee drain

I've been digging a wee drain this morning. This picture, taken in December, shows how soggy the back terrace can be when there's a lot of rain which, since this is the west of Scotland, is a lot of the time. Technically, the terrace is gravel but you wouldn't know! One of these years I suppose I should hire a digger, scrape all the many years' accumulation of gunk that natural hill drainage and seepage brings down through the holding wall, and start again with the gravel idea.

So here is my boot and part of my drain. The significance of the hose pipe is zero. It just happens to be there. I used it when I'd finished mudding about to clean my tools.

Water trundling down the hill. I used the mud and stones I dug up to pack around the base of the Green Cone. We think a rat got in there and that one of the local cats got the rat.

Here you can see how a kerb stone/doorstep was blocking the drainage on that side of the terrace. I dug down to make a gap. It should help. If not, I guess I'll need a pick-axe or sledge-hammer to break a bit off the stone at that end.

Paused for a break. It's a bonny day compared to the solid wet grey we have been having recently.

Drainage past my new wood pile. It was tramping about here to make the pile that made me realise how badly a bit of drainage was needed.

The almost but not quite finished eucalyptus (and a bit of cherry) wood pile

30+ things from the top of a bookcase

Here is what I found on top of a bookcase that I decided to sort out because I want to move it:

1. 2 heavy duty 60W bayonet fixing lightbulbs. What are heavy duty lightbulbs? Oh... ones that get heavy use I guess.
2. sodium bicarb ear drops
3. Toad's Nikon camera charger. He's been using mine; he claimed mine as his but I disabused him of that idea and painted my initial on mine with some of Toadlet's silver nail varnish so that there could be no mistake ;-)
4. fountain pen ink cartridges in these colours: mediterranean, passion red, umber, monaco red, teal, woodland green, prussian blue, majestic blue, orange, jet black
5. 2 clunky containers for CD-Rs containing, between them very few discs. Shoved them all into one container. The other will be recycled or upcycled into something else useful.
6. squirrel keyring
7. some bubble wrap
8. an empty computer keyboard box
9. a computer keyboard that doesn't fit in the box
10. a rubber keyboard skin, not used, that changes the key layout, and which doesn't fit either of the above.
11. 7 books of Essential Irish Session Tunes (flute)
12. an unused, as yet, Chemistry Lab set for ages ten+ Must play with this soon :-)
13. a megadusty flute cleaning cloth with dangling weight. Moved to laundry basket.
14. a 75ml bottle of purified linseed oil for art purposes. Moved to art stuff shelf on another bookcase in another room.
15. a square basket containing:
16. some lens cleaning tissues so ancient that the packet shows the old 4-digit Oxford area telephone code. To Toad camera bag.
17. 'Krammers' (pinkporcupine.com) 'study' cards, subject line marked "Latin" (7 out of ¿100? used). Purloined for some other useful purpose.
18. a small, useful belt bag for holding small useful things. Purloined. It contained a travel bottle of contact lens cleaner (unless wrongly labelled). To bathroom cabinet.
19. an old candle of sentimental value (first present I gave Toad)
20. Kark-eze (cork-ease) for the flute
21. a flat stone on which Toadlet had painted a boat half her life ago.
22. a bottle of oxblood (ink)
23. a piece of charcoal
24. a kerbigrip
25. a roll of micropore tape
26. various random bits of plastic and/or metal thingummibobs
27. a piece of liquorice root wrapped in black tissue paper, both now several years old. Compost.
28. a small shackle from the boat Toad used to sail
29. Fluffy-coated gun microphone. The fluffy coat cuts down wind noise when you're recording sound with film/video.
30. Circular polariser (for a camera lens).

(last two items not in the small square basket)

By this time it was nearly three o'clock in the afternoon and my stomach was demanding lunch. I had spent most of the morning splitting and stacking logs, chopping thin branches into stove friendly lengths, hauling a new recycling bin up the hill after a phone call from the wheelie-bin man that it was at the bottom. They always say they can't find our house. This could well be true although we are visible from the shore road in winter when the trees are unleafed. However I sometimes think they look at the hill's gradient and think "Bugger that; it'll burn out the clutch!" (it has been known) and just telephone instead to, ahem, 'find out where you are' to which I kindly reply: "Just leave it at the bottom. I'll come and get it." I also thanked them for bringing it. I only ordered it via the council website a couple of days ago. Impressed! This is the first time I have been impressed by Argyll & Bute Council, especially where computers are concerned, because it takes them just as long to put school dinner money on Toadlet's cashless catering card as it does to deliver a wheelie-bin. No, I don't understand why either and I have wondered aloud, so to speak, to them about this.

We needed a new recycling bin because a wheel came off the old one. We did a temporary and very Heath Robinson repair but it wasn't going to survive many journeys down our bumpy lane pulled by hand to be emptied and back up our bumpy lane (empty) towed behind the Rattletrap.

Here is a pic of the candle of sentimental value. I wasn't a temari-maker when I bought it but  I now see that it does have a temari quality to it. It has burnt down so I put a tealight in it. When not lit, it looks almost just black and white. When lit you see the colours.

Unlit

'Temari' candle lit

The light has been grim for the last few days but there has been the occasional sunbeam and there are small signs that spring is on its way.

Early morning sunbeams on sitting-room curtains.
Not much but how I love it when this happens after the dark days.

Snowdrops. The two tallest ones were in flower but got eaten, probably by roe deer.
They like a flower or two in the late winter.

The only primrose yet flowering out of several hundred.
Photo taken from above it as it grows out of the steep front bank.

Winter gold – Spiraea twigs in the rain

Winter copper – old leaves of the moss
Polytrichum commune / Common Haircap Moss
(also in the rain)

A winter bouquet.

Friday afternoon blues

Triteleia, perennial sweet pea, and the irrepressible rose

After doing some more eucalyptus shredding and stick piling, I wandered around looking for early signs of spring. People are talking of snowdrops and primulas. Our wild snowdrops and primroses are still keeping their heads down for now. I've still only found one very sheltered clump of snowdrop shoots in the north-west shade of the terrace dry stone wall. I found a few other spring plant signs though and a lot of roe deer spoor.

Triteleia shoots showing

New Hard Fern (Blechnum spicant) on the front bank

A cypress tree on the front bank. I'll have to dig this up.

New moss (Polytrichum formosum) among the old. Also on the front bank.

The first sweet pea shoots (Lathyrus latifolius) by the dry stone wall.

The irrepressible rose growing out of a fern stump

Toadlet's old bench

And I enjoyed the cold, diffused, afternoon light on the loch through the trees

Wee wallop wood splitting

Happened to see a short video of a woodworker splitting wood recently. He had an axe head or equivalent embedded, blade up, in a work bench. He held in place the piece of wood he wanted to split and gave the top of the wood a sharp whack with a hammer. It looked effective and simple so I though I'd have a go today while splitting some of the smaller eucalyptus logs.

Axe head wedged between rocks 

Log tapped into place and beginning to split

A wee sharp wallop and bob's yer uncle

                                                                           

Even worked for hard cherry wood – the licheny one. 

Icy wood

Ice rings and tree rings

Ice bubbles

Ice bubbles and cracks

Ice cracks and bubbles

Ice patterns

He said they were splitting themselves! That easy ;-)

Sunrise Sunday 12 Jan

Cold wind so came down for a coat and caught the reflection in the kitchen window

Back up the garden again. Fading fast 

A January day waking up around the boggy brae

Time now to get sorted for Toadlet's riding lesson and then archery practice for Toad and me.

Oh, before I go... Saw three roe deer charging around the field earlier. At first I thought they were fleeing something but then, as they didn't leave the field, it seemed they were just having fun. There was a buck and two does, one of the does smaller than the other (last year's faun, perhaps). the smallest deer was charging around like a kid in apparently random directions. The larger two looked on for the most part from either side of the field, occasionally joining in with a mad dash or two. It was fun to watch.