Running to stand still

It is a real struggle to keep up with everything at this time of year.

Clients have their end of year budget to use up, so are sending me work like there's no tomorrow. This is also a busy time for me family-wise, with a whole spate of birthdays coming in quick succession. The Facebook experiment has been declared an Official Failure, so has been shut down to the merest skeleton presence (although it did turn up one friend from university I lost touch with years ago, which was nice).

And the garden is waking up.
Every spare moment seems to be spent digging, and I have only just started to sow my seeds. Normally the windowsills are filling up by now. I feel as though I am pedalling at full tilt, but the chain has fallen off so I am getting nowhere.

So is it any wonder that I have to enlist a little help to get the job done?

Cost-benefit analysis

The streamlining continues.

Yesterday I parted with my stock trailer.
This wasn't as much of a wrench as I thought it would be. I decided to sell it because it is too heavy for me to manoeuvre alone and I just cannot hitch it up without assistance. It also needs a jolly good clean. My original plan was to buy another, smaller trailer that I can easily handle - I only ever need to carry two or three animals at a time - but I have had a couple of offers of loans, so I might not need to at all.

This feels like a positive step. The trailer was just sitting there, slowly deteriorating and turning green from algae, and it was another symbol of the things I could not do any more. Clearing it out felt like a breath of fresh air.

And the best part was that it sold for a tenner more than I paid for it!

I am finding that this acceptance and jettisoning of what I cannot cope with on my own brings a real sense of peace. Heaven knows I have fought against it for long enough.

I was talking to my sister-in-law the other evening. She has some significant health issues, including having had major back surgery. Although she is still working, she finds anything like gardening, which involves pulling and bending, to simply be too painful. Their garden is beautiful, and they put so much work into turning it into a little haven of loveliness. But over the past year they have gradually accepted that she can no longer do what is necessary to keep it looking that way, and have taken the decision to turn it into much more of a low-maintenance garden.

This was a heart-breaking decision for them and is the sort of little domestic loss that needs to be mourned. But she can also see the possibilities that the new garden will open up for them. More time to travel, for example, and certainly not being tied to the place during peak sowing and planting season. More cash to spend on other things, and no longer feeling a need to shoot rabbits from the upstairs windows to keep them off their newly-planted seedlings!

I started feeling the benefits of this simplification process myself this weekend. With just one henhouse to clean out, and no large smelly duck house, I had a lot more spare time. This meant I could make a start on clearing the decks for my new flower cutting garden, and just generally tidying that part of the garden which tends to be the dumping ground for all sorts of things I can't find a home for. The mess around there has been seeping into my consciousness for a long time now, despite my best efforts to ignore it.

The picture was taken last year, so I would like to clear it properly before the nettles and brambles spring back into growth with a vengeance. Then I can perhaps get a path laid and the flower bed edging in place. This will have the knock-on effect of not having to control the triffid-like weed growth in that area during the summer - which will hopefully save me more time.

It is all good.

This little fellow wasn't keen on being exposed though!

To everything there is a season

I guess I have answered one of my "Where do I go from here?" questions.

The box on the table is an old army surplus detonator box. R bought it from a strange little shop at the back of Euston Station many, many moons ago. So long ago that I can't even remember his justification for buying it - possibly just because he liked it, which I guess is as good a reason as any.

For a long time he used it to store part of his burgeoning coin collection, but at some point along the line the collection outgrew the box and I appear to have appropriated it.

For my seed collection.

As that is obviously something that needs to be stored in a detonator box!

Growing things is important to me.
The ground was rock hard this morning, with a delicate white dusting of hoarfrost, but I am already thinking about getting started again. It is time to sow chillis, aubergines and sweet peas, and it is always worthwhile setting off a couple of jars of seeds to eat as sprouts. It would also be good to get the greenhouse cleared so I can start sowing salad leaves soon. The speed with which they grow and are ready to pick is always gratifying, even when there isn't a chance of getting anything started outdoors.

Since R died, there hasn't been a lot of planning going on in the garden. I have just reacted to the changing of the seasons, and simply sown what I had when there was time in which to do it. This inevitably meant poor germination in a lot of cases due to sowing old seed that should have been culled. This is a double whammy of crapness as I never seem to catch up even when I do buy new seed - there simply isn't time to sow them again.

And the food I eat has changed dramatically. Much more than I ever imagined it would. These days I barely touch potatoes, the thought of Jerusalem artichokes turns my stomach, parsnips seem to be just for Christmas. Green beans now interest me mainly for the seed inside them. Fruit I enjoy when it is fresh, but R seems to have taken my sweet tooth (such that it was) away with him, so I no longer make pies - or jam or ice cream or even chutney. On the other hand I can't seem to keep up with my demand for green leafy vegetables, tomatoes and curcubits of all sorts.

Then there are the ones that I would love to grow, but that just can't handle the conditions up here, like the sweet potatoes and outdoor peppers. Carrots which do fine in pots in the greenhouse, but succumb to slugs or rootfly outdoors after mid-Summer. Time to either give them up or give serious thought to erecting a polytunnel over some of the raised beds to extend the growing season.

And the flowers.
Megan is right about those. They are not frivolous at all, they are balm for the soul. I think that more time spent growing flowers that do not need preserving or turning into something, and simply give pleasure will be time well-spent.

The seed catalogues have been plopping onto the doormat since New Year, so it is time to set aside an evening in front of the fire to look through the seed stocks and see what is too old, what I may as well pass on to someone else because I know I won't grow it and what, if anything, I need to buy new this year.

It is good to feel a sense of anticipation and growing enjoyment about something.

Yep, whatever the future holds, there will be room for seeds in it.

A year in the death: January

The soup must have worked its magic as I survived the week relatively unscathed. A couple of days in bed sounds quite nice right now - I have a huge backlog of books to work my way through - what a shame it normally means having to be ill to do it.

On Friday, I felt I deserved a day off though.
When R was here, I was able to do this most of the time, and we were working towards me cutting back to three days a week, so I could spend more time on the smallholding. The place looked very tidy in those days. Ah well.

Friday's treat was a trip to the tip to get rid of all the junk in the Land Rover, with a view to filling it up again this weekend. Such is the glamorous life I live these days.
But it did give me a chance to call in to see R for a few minutes. Just to be there and feel close to him.

The contrast in temperature compared to this time last month is quite incredible; +12, rather than -12 C. But the warm front has brought with it high winds and lots of rain, which is the sort of weather that really sends my mood into a tailspin. It brings on inaction and passivity, which doesn't suit me at all, and makes me long for Spring.

But the field has changed very little since my last visit.
The grass appears flat and lifeless and there is not even a trace of the first bulbs. It is a frustrating time, as always. My hands are itching to start sowing and planting again. Even digging isn't possible because the ground is so wet. I know there is life starting again as the moles have started to excavate the paddock, and sparrows can be seen carrying feathers back to their nests. It seems to be light a little longer every evening, yet it still is not really time to start working outside.

I have decided that this will be a quiet year on the animal side of the holding. It would be nice to do more with the garden. There is a patch outside the back door that is a real mess, largely because it has been devastated by chickens - something that used to drive R mad, as they would constantly scrape soil from the flowerbeds onto his lawn! Well now the chickens are firmly under lock and key, and duck numbers will be reduced soon, so it would be good to have some frivolous, non-productive flowers this year - just because. I even have plans to plant a small patch of flowers behind the greenhouse just for cutting for the house. It would be nice to think that will happen this year too.

I may not be able to dig at home, but there was digging occurring at the burial field when I arrived. I had to take a deep breath before walking past the new grave being opened up. Life may be at a standstill for the time being, but it appears that death is still in business.

Tonight

... supper consisted of coffee and chocolate.

This afternoon the pigs came back in boxes. My lovely friends Lynn and David picked them up from the butcher with their own pork, which saved me a trip and gave me the opportunity to sort out the freezer before it arrived.

The last time this happened was around three years ago.
The porkfest weekend was always one of the highlights of the year. The house would be buzzing with people. R would have a list of orders from colleagues at work. I would make up the brine for the bacon, we would chop and mince and season, and then make sausages. A lot of wine would be drunk, and lots of food eaten. It was a celebration of the end of a year of work, of the type that has been held at the end of the growing season all around the world since time immemorial.

This year is such a contrast.
The house was quiet as I weighed and labelled and rewrapped, although I did have a pleasant couple of hours as I drove around the area, delivering people's orders. The meat looks great - a lovely dark pink with just about the right amount of fat on it. After seven years of raising pigs, it looks as though I have finally got the feeding right. The recipients - particularly those who supplied me with buckets of apples - all appreciated their happy pork.

Then home to put the belly pork into the salt to turn it into streaky bacon and make a start on chopping and mincing the shoulder meat. Tomorrow I make chorizo. I also cheated this year and left the legs with the butcher to turn into gammon and ham - I just don't have the energy to do it myself, and he does a great job.

And at the end of all this, the last thing I want to eat is meat. I did buy some fish for supper, but I didn't really fancy that either - so chocolate and coffee it was. Tomorrow I can start eating properly again.

I still sometimes wonder what I am doing with all this. What is the point when it is just me here?
I have already decided not to get the ram in this year for my ewes. They were very late lambing and the lambs are not yet totally weaned, so it seems only fair to give them a rest. I shall no doubt regret this next year when there are no lambs bouncing around the field in the Spring. But perhaps there will be time and room for some more pigs.

I think, I hope this is just season-end melancholy. The greenhouse probably holds one last picking of tomatoes, and I have been digging over most of the vegetable beds before I cover them for the winter. There is the possibility of a frost tonight, so I shall probably have to bring in the shelling beans tomorrow as well.

As much as I kick against it, the year is closing itself down around me. Is there really any point in raging against the dying of the light?

Keeping on keeping on

I had to smile when I read about all the salsa-making and pickling going on over at Cicero Sings.

Here the crop of the moment is not tomatoes, but apples - several bagsworth scrumped from R's uncle's orchard last weekend - but the principle is the same.

Peel, chop, winnow out the bad ones, render down for freezing. Nothing goes to waste. I have a willing home for all the peels, cores and less than perfect fruit!

Every night I stand there for an hour or so and peel apples. The kitchen smells of them which is, generally speaking, a Good Thing.

And when this batch of apples are finished, it will be time to start on the courgettes. And then the tomatoes. Perhaps pickle some cucumbers. Then there will be the last of the plums. And yet more apples. Finally it will be time to bring in the beans for drying

Just as I did last year.

And the year before. And all the years before that.

It is just what I do at this time of year. I quite like the repetitive nature of the tasks, and it pleases me to see the shelves and freezer filling up. It is also the reward for all that frantic sowing and planting a few months ago.

But this year I have also spent a lot of time wondering exactly why I am doing it. In my current state of aimless bobbing (thank you Boo!) it sometimes seems rather pointless just for me.
R and I spent so much of our lives working towards the day when we could have our own place and raise our own food like this. And it was so much fun doing it together.
This year, on my own, it feels like much more of a chore, even though I know I will enjoy the end result.

There is also a feeling of, if I stop, what then?
I would then have to make a decision about my future. If I let the garden go, it will be a sign that I am not going to stay here. I would have to decide to make a new life in a different place. And that thought is just too scary to contemplate.

So I keep on doing it, because that is what I do.

When will there be a harvest...

It has been a strange year in the garden so far. There have been several disasters on the vegetable-growing front, but the fruit is just going mad. I feel a little like Marie-Antoinette; the peasants may be grumbling about losing half of their potato harvest, but never mind. Let them eat raspberries!

This is my Merton Glory cherry tree. It went into the ground five winters ago as a 1-year maiden - essentially a stick. This is the first harvest I have had from it. And what a harvest! It has the benefit over the other two cherry trees in our little orchard in that the cherries aren't bright red when ripe. Which means that by the time the birds notice them, I have eaten them.

There was a moment of sadness on tasting the first sweet, juicy fruits.
It was another of those Friday night rituals we had during the Summer months. All week I would check the veg garden and fruit bushes for whatever was nearly ready. When he arrived home and before the mowing started, we would have a stroll around, nibbling things here and there and deciding what to eat that weekend.

He wouldn't have been able to eat many of the cherries, though, as they made his mouth itch during hayfever season. So I don't feel too guilty in having these all to myself.

And this is Harry Baker, the crab apple tree we planted to ensure that all the other apples had a pollinator. It is a fabulous little tree with deep pink blossom in the Spring and good-sized, dark red fruits that look very handsome when Autumn comes around. I have absolutely no idea what I am going to do with them all - there is only so much jelly one person needs - so I suspect the pigs might do well from Mr Baker.

Last on this brief tour of the highlights of the orchard is Tydeman's Late Orange, a sweet, crisp Cox-type apple. I only had half a dozen or so apples from it last year. Now it is groaning with fruit. I hope it lives up to its billing as a reasonable storing apple.

R and I planted these trees along with several others on a cold January morning five years ago. Gardening wasn't his thing at all, but he could always be relied upon to dig a deep hole for me when I needed one, all the more so if it was for a tree. He was very fond of trees, particularly the native British species. Tree-planting is something you do as a commitment to a place. It is a sign that you intend to stay there for years to come, and an investment for your old age.

It breaks my heart that he isn't here to see a return on his investment and to taste the fruits of his labours. Their permanence seems to somehow emphasise his absence more than almost anything else.

A post of two halves

At this time of year it appears to be traditional for widows' blogs to have a post whining about mowing the lawn.

Consider this my entry in this vein.
I am now officially fed up of cutting grass. It feels like painting the Forth Road Bridge with a watercolour brush.

There seem to be two alternatives. One is to spend the whole day mowing grass, trimming edges and cutting the veg garden paths. This is visually satisfying as, once done, the place looks great for a few days at least. It is also very, very boring and I spend the entire time drawing up mental lists of all the things I would rather be doing instead.
The other is to do a portion each day over the course of three or four days. This is a lot less tedious, but it does make the job feel never-ending, and it doesn't give quite the same satisfaction of a job well done.

I suppose another alternative would be to let it all go. Indeed I have neglected one out-of-sight area that is in danger of reverting to jungle, but if the rest goes the same way, it will just be too depressing for words.
Or I could get off my behind and fix the tyre on the big mower. That would speed up proceedings no end, but I am having a big fit of the "don't wannas" right now - it's not my job, and I don't see why I should do it. Particularly on my own. Even though I am only spiting myself and I will have to do it in the end.
I know how childish and petulant this sounds, but I am having problems leaving this attitude behind at the moment. At least the current dry spell means that the grass isn't growing quite as fast.

Right.

So now I have that out of my system, let's have some piglet photos!

The two chaps have discovered the big outside world.
As they had previously spent all their short lives indoors, it isn't too surprising that it took them few days to get used to the idea.
They also discovered that they rather like sweet potato!

Moose is totally obsessed with them.
The sheep can pass by within a few feet of him, and he won't even take his eyes off the pigs. I think I could leave him here staring at them all day.

The porkers seem to enjoy the company though.

Pooped!

It has been a good weekend.

These days, being outside in the sunshine, working hard and tiring myself out, is probably my greatest source of pleasure. Digging over the veg beds, pulling weeds, sowing and planting. Heck, even mowing that darned grass. It is all good. Getting hot and sweaty, scratched by brambles, stung by nettles - none of that matters. I can lose myself in the sheer physicality of it all.

This weekend I had a lot to do.
On Tuesday I am flying to Berlin for a few days with R's Dad, brother and sister-in-law. I have been so looking forward to the trip. (There's that 'forward' word again!). I haven't seen R's Dad since before Christmas and he is not very good on the telephone, so it will be a real pleasure to spend some time with him. It will also give me a boost to set down my scruffy gardening gear and put on my respectable clothes for a few days, and get a quick city fix.

I love travelling, and always have. It has been a little strange planning this trip with R's family, though, as their idea of what constitutes holiday preparations is very different to my own. They normally go on package-type holidays, where they know exactly where they are going and where they will be staying, whereas R and I would simply buy a plane or ferry ticket and worry about accommodation when we arrived in the country. I think this makes a trip more interesting, but you do have to be prepared to spend the odd night sleeping in the car when things don't work out. Given that R's Dad is in his early 80s, I relented on this occasion and booked us a nice hotel!

Even though the trip is only for a few days, I still felt that I needed to get all the seedlings out of the greenhouse and into the ground before I went. And cut the grass, clean out the hen houses and generally tidy up. It did strike me as a little daft that the garden would be looking great while I wasn't there to see it, but I know that coming back home to a mess will be too depressing for words.

What I hadn't bargained for was just how much there was to do. So now I am totally pooped and haven't managed to do any ironing or packing. The spirit is willing, but these tired muscles just aren't cooperating. Doubtless I shall be running around at midnight tomorrow trying to pack and remember everything I want to take - but that is sort of traditional around here.

And at least the garden looks good!

Compostville

In our little village we have a table tennis club that I help to run with two friends at the Community Centre. This started up a couple of years before R died and, as he was away during the week for much of the year, he very much encouraged me to get involved.

We run the club from September through to Easter. It all started as something for the village kids to do on a Wednesday evening. Then a few adults turned up for a bit of a knockabout after the children went home, and it has gone from strength to strength to the extent that we started playing in the local league this season.

It was probably the first social thing I did after R died - the club started up again no more than about 5 weeks after his death. I don't know why I felt I could do it. Possibly because I realised that I was now on my own, and needed to get back out into the world, even though I really didn't feel like it. Or possibly because the kids didn't ask any difficult questions, so it was a non-threatening way to ease myself back into the world of people. It certainly wasn't for the table tennis at first as I had all the concentration of a demented butterfly at that time; my game was shot to pieces and remained that way for months.

But whatever the reason, it quickly became the bright spot in my otherwise grey week. It got me out of the house and forced me to think of something other than my grief. I think that that the kids taught me to laugh again.
And the adults who came along to play have formed the core of my unofficial, but unswervingly loyal support group within the village.

Take Brian, our coach, for example. He and his wife Janet are blow-ins to the village like R and I. He is now in his early 70s, while his wife is a few years younger. For some reason, they 'adopted' R and I as surrogate children (despite already having four of their own). Janet, in particular, was devastated to learn about R's death, and they have been so sweet in the way they have unobtrusively looked after me ever since, both emotionally and with practical support.

The latest example of this came this weekend.
When we moved to this house, I built myself a set of compost bays behind the barn. This was a rather Heath Robinson affair, created out of old fence posts and pallets. It didn't look too good, but nevertheless served its purpose well for 6 years. This year, however, it had started to rot and totally fall apart, and some serious repairs were needed.

Sad, isn't it?

I can't remember exactly why I came to show Brian the parlous state of my composting facilities, but when I did, he said that he had exactly the solution to my problem.

And so this morning we built this:

Amazing what you can do with a couple of pieces of rebar and some old corrugated sheet!

Good days

Despite my recent period of introspection, the good days come along much more regularly now.
I won't say perfect days, because those don't happen any more, but cheerful, bustling, busy days when I get so absorbed in what I am doing that there is no time to be sad, and my end-of-day body is virtuously tired. When I can look back over a day in which things have been achieved, progress made and a little more chaos turned into order.

As I sat eating my breakfast this morning, the early Spring sunshine was pouring in through the kitchen window.
Or it would have poured in if it wasn't for the parlous state of the glass.
Window-cleaning was one of R's jobs. Not because it had been officially allocated to him, but because his love of light meant that he always cracked first when it became too dingy in the house for his liking. Another reason is that I really don't like heights and climbing ladders very much - the last time I did the job, the upstairs windows were left uncleaned and things were getting pretty dark up there.

So it was the perfect opportunity to deploy what was possibly my favourite Christmas present last year and the perfect tool for the widow with no head for heights. A 3 metre extensible pole! All the window-cleaning attachments fit it and I can now reach the upstairs windows without having to leave terra firma. (It will also allow me to paint ceilings without too much of a struggle).

With the house windows all clean and sparkling, I moved on to R's chilli house.
This was the little greenhouse he bought himself when we got my big one. Quite extraordinarily we managed to erect it without a single argument!
I'm not sure how it acquired the title of his greenhouse seeing as how all the plants were sown, potted on, planted out, harvested and cooked with by me. He may have watered them once or twice but - whatever - it was his chilli house!

And it is now clean and ready for the next crop.

After lunch the sun was amazingly still shining, so it was time for some sowing.
There are few things that make me happier than sowing seeds. I love the regular lines drawn in the freshly-raked earth with the sprinkling of potting compost on top to show where the seeds are. I love the lack of weeds in the recently-sown area. I love the promise of good things to come.
This cold frame is full of my second sowing of heirloom lettuce varieties - mostly the cut-and-come-again types. From May until practically the end of the year there will be salad on the table at least once a day. The least I can do is to grow pretty varieties.

The other cold frame is now full of brassicas - cima di rapa, cavolo nero, quick-heading broccoli and mustard greens. There is nothing fresh in the garden right now apart from a few parsnips, leeks and artichokes - the wait is driving me mad, and it will be at least another month before the first salads are ready. But in the meantime the constant round of sowing, potting on and planting out will take my mind off things.

Sadly it wasn't such a good day for this little fellow though. He must have flown headlong into the greenhouse and broken his neck.

He is now residing (very well wrapped, I hasten to add) in my freezer!
I mentioned it to a friend whose brother is a wildlife artist, and she told me that he could use it as a reference subject for his work. As most wild birds in the UK are protected by law, apparently painters and taxidermists are desperate to get hold of suitable subjects by legal means.
Being turned into art seems a fitting end for such a beautiful creature.

I get by with a little help from my friends

It was R's birthday last weekend.

Just like last year I had decided not to make a big thing about it, but some weeks ago his brother and sister-in-law arranged to come over. And asked if they could bring some friends. Trina is a garden designer and Simon can turn his hand to pretty much anything. They said they were coming here to work!

I have already moaned about how with all the snow and work and everything I have been unable to get the homestead knocked into shape this year. This time last year I was totally manic and full of adrenaline, which enabled me to get most things done. The fact that I haven't been able or haven't had the energy to do it this year has been getting me down so much.

So the bargain was that I would keep them stoked with food and ply them with beer in the evening. When they arrived on the Friday it was too late and too dark to do any work, so we had a leisurely meal and caught up with all the gossip from the last few months.

Saturday morning though, Simon was itching to get started.

The thing I really wanted to achieve from the weekend was to set up some chicken pens to stop my birds marauding all over the garden and digging up my seedlings. So while he was measuring up and seeing what materials I already had in the barn, the ladies got to work on the vegetable garden.

Driving down to the timber merchant with R's brother gave us a good opportunity to talk on our own. Jon has had a rough year for various reasons - he has lost a lot of weight and seems to have aged a lot. We talked about R, of course. I think we are both in a similar place - we are getting on with our lives, can cope with the day-to-day of his loss, but still feel it to be such an outrage that he is gone. After all the anguish and raw emotion of the previous months, what it all boils down to is that It. Is. Wrong.

He should be here pounding in fence posts with us, chatting about work and family, setting the table, opening a bottle of beer. He should just be here. That's all.
And he isn't.

But while we were away buying chicken wire and nails, Simon the Human Dynamo wasn't resting. No. He managed to get my Landrover working again. And performed the same miracle on the bench saw that wouldn't start for me. Relaid some wonky flagstones. Mended a couple of the chicken coops. When we returned with the pen-building supplies, he was off again.

As long as I kept him and the others fed with tea and cake, they kept working!

After two days of this, I had a pair of orderly chicken pens.

They will need some netting over the top to stop the hens flapping out, but otherwise the two pens will allow me to rotate the birds between the two and keep the ground sweet.

And I have an empty, washed and dug over greenhouse.


And a totally cleared vegetable garden, with hedge cut, beds dug over, cold frames washed, broad beans, onions and 1st early potatoes planted all ready for the spring frenzy.


I also seem to have acquired a new sawhorse and all the odd pieces of seasoned tree trunk lying in the barn are now neatly chainsawed to size (I was made to promise not to use the chainsaw on my own!).

On Saturday evening we all raised our glasses and wished R a happy birthday. Not too many tears, but a missed presence in the room.
He would have so loved the weekend.

For WitM

Some flowers for you.
Just to tide you over until yours appear.

I love snowdrops.
They are so delicate and yet incredibly tough. They appear to withstand almost anything nature can throw at them, and seed themselves with total abandon. The ground is rock solid at the moment, yet here they are.

This variety with its pretty green frilly edging is my favourite. I can never have too many.

They last and last until the daffodils appear.

But judging from this little lot, they are going to be late this year. I hope there will be at least a few in bloom by R's birthday later this month.

Have a nice day!

Pedicures

In the past I have always enjoyed Winter.

I like cold, crisp days and have never really been affected by the lack of sunlight.

But this winter has been different.

On my Welsh hilltop, Winter normally means rain. And lots of it. It always comes from the West and lashes horizontally against the side of my house.

For weeks on end sometimes.

This year it was replaced by snow.

Snow which has done its best to wreck what remains of my social life. It has sometimes felt that every time I have invited someone over, the snow has fallen. The latest was last week when my friend Rosie spun her car on her way over to supper. Fortunately she was OK and is made of sterner stuff than many other people, so she made it all the way here, we had a lovely evening and she stayed overnight until the snowplough went through in the morning.

I can live with the quiet evenings, but the ground was frozen solid which has meant that I haven't been able to get outside to do all the tidying that I would have normally done by now. Not to mention all the Winter chores that R used to do like cleaning out the gutters.

So I guess the snow did me a favour when it brought the guttering off the wall and sent it crashing through the porch roof. Having that repaired is a bill I could do without, but the lovely man who is doing the work is also doing a number of other little jobs that needed doing and I was unlikely to get to any time soon, like painting a couple of windows. And as the exterior is going to look so much smarter, it has inspired me to start cleaning up the inside of the porch as well - another job that is long overdue. I have been a regular visitor to the tip this week, and it has been good for the soul!

But it still bothers me that I haven't been able to dig over the vegetable garden or sort out the greenhouse. The garden has been so far from my thoughts that I haven't even ordered any vegetable seeds yet. Normally by early March I have already sown the first peas, sweet peas, broad beans, cabbages and leeks. The salad crops and oriental greens are starting to come up in the greenhouse. I might not have managed to dig over all the raised beds, but at least some should be ready by now to plant onion sets, garlic and shallots. I should be itching to get the heated propagator running with the next batch of seeds, and the annual clearance of space on the windowsills should have begun.

And on the animal side too, I have only been doing the bare minimum - cleaning out the henhouses, feeding everyone, going out several times a day with warm water to replenish the frozen waterers.
I haven't yet built the chicken pens that will keep the birds from marauding round the garden and digging up what I have just sown. There are still several Muscovy drakes and a couple of cockerels that really should be in the freezer. I haven't sorted out the floor of the pig ark, so I won't be ready to go if a couple of suitable weaners become available at short notice.

And most depressing of all is that my sheep have been surviving on a régime of benign neglect.
I have two wonderful neighbours who have been towers of strength since R died. They have made sure that the sheep are up-to-date with their vaccinations, brought their ram round to visit my ladies and best of all have helped me with the foot trimming.

But I can't keep relying on them to essentially do what is my work. If I am going to do that, I should be entirely honest about it, get rid of my own sheep and simply allow them to graze theirs on my land.

And while I'm being honest, if I don't keep the garden going, what is the point of having this land? I can barely justify having a house that is more than twice as large as I need as it is (we had plans to turn part of it into a holiday cottage or possibly a bed and breakfast), so the sight of the garden getting away from me and starting to look so messy was really getting me down. To the extent of wondering whether I should simply give up, sell the house and buy somewhere more sensible.

Fortunately the sun came out this weekend and I was able to get outside and do some proper tidying in the garden.

Most importantly of all, I had enough get-up-and-go to take a good look at the sheep. A couple had been limping slightly, which is a sure sign that their feet need trimming. If you are a strapping chap like my neighbour Dave, foot-trimming means grabbing a sheep, turning it onto its bum and holding there while you wield the clippers.

If you are considerably smaller than that, female and your sheep aren't known for sitting meekly while you trim their feet, then you need a cradle. This is essentially a sloping metal box that you up-end the sheep into and it is unable to get up until you let it. This is a job that R and I used to do together, and one which I had been putting off trying because I knew that, if I couldn't do it, then I would have to stop keeping sheep.

So this weekend it was make-or-break time.
For once, the sheep went easily into the corral and I decided to give it a go.
I managed to get the little one into the cradle without any problems and gave her a much-needed pedicure. She has a hint of scald - an infection that will clear up quickly after an antibiotic injection - but otherwise it went fine. The next one was a bit heavier, but she is my best behaved girl and it all went OK.

Then came grandmother. She is the biggest of the three and had absolutely no intention of lying on her back in a metal crate! When I finally got her pinned in a corner and up onto her back legs, we then danced a bizarre tango while I backed her into position. A final burst of effort got the stubborn little madam on her back. Even then, she struggled and wriggled throughout the entire procedure to the extent that my back was screaming with pain by the time it was all over.

But I did it.
On my own!
I can't put into words how triumphant I feel about it.
It means that I can do it on my own. I can stay here without everything falling apart. The place may not be as tidy as it was, or at least not yet. But if I put my mind to it, I can do it.

It somehow seems disloyal to say that I can do it without him, and maybe that thought has been holding me back all these months. Perhaps I just need to change my emphasis and convince myself that I can do it for him and keep our dream alive.

Checking in

Not having a great week, but holding on by my fingertips. The Anniversary is looming, and I just don't seem to be able to stem the tide of tears.

So I go back to first principles which, for me, means rushing around doing stuff and being physically active to the point of exhaustion. I'm sure it's just displacement activity, but I know that if I'm knackered, I sleep.

And at least the grass looks good tonight, the compost bins are variously emptied, turned or refilled, the house is clean from top to bottom, all the ironing is done, the raspberries are harvested and in the freezer, the winter brassicas sown and the hens have nice clean houses to sleep in.
Phew! No wonder I'm pooped!

(And Mother Hens are very much appreciated around here).

Garden philosophy

Sowing seeds is an unspoken acknowledgement that there can be a future.


The emergence of the tiny seedlings a few days later is confirmation.

It's like a jungle sometimes

The sun came out, so the winnowing had to wait!

I went outside with every intention of putting in the few last bedding plants, but then I wandered down to this corner of the vegetable garden to check the lie of the land. Most of it was in reasonable order, but down at the bottom end I practically needed a machete to get around.

As a wildlife habitat, it's great. As a productive vegetable garden, it's a disgrace.


On the left is my embarrassingly overgrown soft fruit bed, while the bed on the right is supposed to contain root veggies. Part of it does, but not so as you'd notice.

How on earth could I let it get into this state?

Well it's understandable really. For obvious reasons, the Autumn tidy-up just didn't happen, then Spring came along and I was simply distracted with everything else that needed to be done. Then we had several weeks of alternating rain and sunshine and the results were inevitable. A burgeoning crop of creeping buttercup!

Two hours and six wheelbarrow loads later, it is looking a little more respectable.


It's a start at least. Now I can dig over the rest of the bed and sow the rest of this Winter's root vegetables.

I'm not going to be winning that best-kept garden award any time soon, but at least I will be able to eat!

The Widow's Cookbook #2

After R died, some online friends had a collection so that I could buy bulbs to plant at his grave. In the event, they sent so much money that I could probably have covered the entire burial field with daffodils, so I spent a lot of it buying plants to create a small memorial garden in front of our house.

As I was putting in these plants one afternoon, a neighbour stopped by for a chat, and I explained what I was doing. "That's a lovely hydrangea," she said. "Did R like them very much?" "Ummm." I replied. "Actually, he hated them with a vengeance and always pulled a face when I suggested planting one in the past. So I thought I'd take advantage of the fact that he isn't here to argue to have one at last."
At which point she gave me a rather odd look and went on her way.

I have been taking a similar approach to my food lately, and have been eating things that don't bring back memories.
R was wonderfully non-picky about eating, and would happily tuck into most of my culinary efforts. But he wasn't at all keen on risotto, accusing it of being nothing more than a savoury rice pudding. And not in a good way, either. So I rarely bothered making them. I mean, who wants to spend 30 minutes stirring if there isn't going to be fulsome praise at the end of it?

I, on the other hand, love risottos. I received a posh bag of arborio rice and bottle of truffle oil for my birthday, the freezer is full of good chicken stock and the garden is starting to produce at last. So the choice for supper tonight was made for me.

I am particularly proud of my baby leeks. In early Autumn last year I found a pot of plantlets that for some reason hadn't been planted out. I put them in the greenhouse when the tomato vines came out, not really expecting them to do much. But they have done me proud this year.

So, the chopped leeks are softened with a little olive oil, then in goes the rice. Stir round until everything is nice and shiny. Add a glass of dry white wine or the first ladleful of hot chicken stock if feeling abstemious. Stir until absorbed.

Keep adding stock and stirring until the rice is just al dente. Throw in some leftover chicken and add a last ladleful of stock. When this is almost absorbed and the risotto is looking beautifully creamy, season with salt and pepper and add a good handful of freshly-grated Parmesan. Serve with the salad you made while the rice was cooking (you did remember, didn't you?), top with some chopped parsley and a generous splash of truffle oil. If you didn't receive any truffle oil for your birthday (and I do recommend that you put it on your list) a knob of butter would be nice too.

Tastes wonderful, but darned difficult to photograph satisfactorily.

Happy hands

I seem to be entering a new phase.
After nearly 9 months, I was starting to get used to the rollercoaster ride, or at least learning how to handle it.
But now I appear to be cycling between euphoria (Look at me! I can do this widow thing) and complete despair (Look at everything that needs to be done. How can I possibly do this on my own?) at such a rate that it is making me dizzy.

So today's post could just as easily go either way.
I think I will go with a happy one.
R used to say that he could tell my state of mind from the state of my fingernails.

This, apparently, is a good sign.

New season, new soup

At last the garden is starting to yield some produce other than parsnips and Jerusalem artichokes.

The new season kale and PSB are exciting enough, but the first picking of mustard greens from the greenhouse means one thing, and one thing alone.

Noodle soup.
Noodles and R went together like, like.... Well, they just went together.

When we lived in the city, we always headed to Chinatown for noodle soup after a post-work beer or six. After we moved away from 'civilisation' it was often his first choice for a birthday treat, and was what I cooked for him when he was feeling down.

Good stock, noodles, of course, spring onions, garlic, ginger and star anise. Plus the all-important greens and topped with the protein of choice. Crispy pork belly is good, so are chicken, prawns or beef in their own way. But for preference it was always duck. However, as it took us a couple of years to start rearing our own ducks when we moved here, we had a long wait before it returned to the menu.

But so worth the wait.

I don't recall ever cooking it for anyone else, though. It was one of our guilty pleasures together. Soup, spoon, chopsticks, dish of pickled vegetable. Then silence punctuated only by happy slurping.

It is a dish that is so bound up with R that I haven't been able to eat it since he died. But the new mustard greens needed to be celebrated, so I took a deep breath and broke my duck, as it were.

It was as good as I remembered.
Quack quack!

(This is one of my girlies. She will never be soup.)