"Baby, it's cold outside!"

Brrr! For three days now the outside temperature has hardly risen above freezing. The birds are once more creating Heathrow-type activity levels at the feeding station; and even our Riverford* man came to the door in a woolly hat this morning (and he is no wimp when it comes to cold weather).
However, we have no snow - yet. They say we should expect some at the end of the week. I wonder if we shall have a white Candlemas? How romantic that would be!

*Riverford is an almost-nation-wide organic vegetables-and-meat delivery company.

"Let's start the New Year right..."

"Let's watch the old year die, with a fond good-bye, and our hopes as high as a kite;
How can our love go wrong, if we start the New Year right?" 
                                                                                        - Bing Crosby song 

I have decided that Candlemas should be the true New Year. The first of January didn't feel in the least like a new year to me, and as to having the end of the old year on one day, and the beginning of the new one on the next, I find it incomprehensible. Such a rush! It hardly leaves time for the soul to turn round on the spot, let alone change gear. Last year, therefore, I decided to bid farewell to the dying year on Hallowe'en, and now I prepare myself to welcome in the new 'living' one on Thursday, which will be Candlemas*.  

Not that there has been much 'dying' around here. Today I saw National Trust advertising Snowdrops in February at one of their properties, but I shall be surprised if there are any snowdrops left by February. Despite the two cold-snaps we've had since Christmas (the second of which is still upon us), and the traditional show of bare, spidery trees displaying their naked silhouettes against slate-grey skies, the last few weeks have seen the coming of what feels suspiciously like Spring, and the flowers are coming on like Billy-o. Only the other day I noticed a new peach rosebud in the left-hand flower bed, and the yellow aconites and purple periwinkles are making a fair show at ground level. The snowdrops, of course, are abounding, and everywhere their little white caps crowd together in little clusters amongst the grass.

And as to the daffodils! After that day a few weeks ago, when I counted fifteen of them outside the post office, I gave up altogether... 

*(Which probably means I ought to make some New Year's Resolutions. Only I can't think of any. Is that a good sign, or a very bad one?!)

"It might as well be Spring..."

The birds are singing fit to burst, the sun is shining, I counted fifteen daffodils by the red telephone box outside the post office yesterday, and the first bumble bee of the year just bumbled passed my window. Even the sky is looking higher today.
I would say all these signs point to spring being firmly established; only I have just heard that they are predicting a cold-snap for tomorrow - and what will cock robin do then, poor thing?

"He'll hide in a barn, and keep himself warm,

with his head tucked under his wing, poor thing."

"I think it was the wind," said Piglet. "I think your house has blown down..."

"Oh, is that it? I thought it was Pooh."
"No," said Pooh.
"If it was the wind," said Owl, considering the matter, "then it wasn't Pooh's fault. No blame can be attached to him."
With these kind words, he flew up to look at his new ceiling...
                                                                     from 'The House at Pooh Corner'

We had a tree blown down in the great winds earlier this week. I hope it wasn't the home of an Owl, though no doubt it was home to many creatures.

"Tree, road!"

We were sitting in the End Room, having elevenses, whilst the winds raged around the house and the rain lashed at the windows, when we noticed a car sitting in the lane outside our house - not parked, you understand, just sitting there. After ten minutes or so, a man got out and came to the front door. His accent betrayed him as Polish, and he said: "Tree! Tree, road!"
So we got bundled up in raincoats, and went outside to have a look, and there! covering the road almost from side-to-side was the top half of one of the trees from opposite, very dead-looking, and covered with ivy. Just as my father and the Polish man were standing round observing the mess, the postman came up in his van (which had been parked right under where the tree fell, only ten minutes earlier). They all three waded into the pile of tree, whilst the rain continued to throw itself down, and a great brown river swirled beneath their feet. My father, being the only one of the three to live close by, was the only one with a saw; so while he sawed small branches, the other two broke anything the could, and they all carried the twigs and branches up our drive and began collecting them in a pile.

Fortunately, the postman had had the sense to go first to his friend the farm manager, who lives just down the lane, and who soon arrived with a chain-saw and a couple of lads (and later with a tractor and trailer, to cart the wood away). After that the work went much more quickly, and in just over an hour the lane was free once more...