welsh hills again

Today I have a heavy head cold.  I woke this morning to light snow on the hills and in the garden.  I had a hammering headache and streaming nose and eyes.  This was not a day for venturing out.  It was a day for sitting by the stove, snoozing, doing a little comfort reading.  I couldn't even find the concentration to knit.  But the day has passed away in a warm and comforting way because of our woodburning stove. We have been using this stove for three seasons a year for nine years now and I could light the fire in my sleep. I start with quite a bit of scrumpled paper.  We use a broadsheet newspaper and I use about eight sheets.  I am pretty sure Ian uses fewer than that but that is what works for me!  Then kindling.  The kindling here was bought chopped during the period when Ian was languishing in bed with flu.  Normally he chops all ours.  How much kindling to use depends very much on how dry the logs are that we ...

Sometimes it is the simplest things that make you feel good if only you can slow down enough to really notice them. A still clear morning, trembling with dew.  That stillness and sun has all blown away now in a gusting cold wind, but it was there, for a day. A visit on Monday from some blogging friends, mountainear , snailbeachshepherdess , bodran and bluestocking mum - tea, cake, more tea, even more cake and vast amounts of talk and laughter.  Things have not been easy for everyone over the last year or so and yet there seemed to be nothing we couldn't talk about or laugh at.  It doesn't happen more than twice a year but it's amazing how easy it is to catch up and how our lives intertwine. The sight and size and gentle furriness of the quinces which Felicity brought for me.  Aren't they beautiful? A full log basket and a fire in the woodburner. A full glass. Three perfect eggs from the Light Sussex hens. A video of my two year grandson sitting ...

Time for an update on the huge variety of projects which have been going on around here, quickly or, more honestly, slowly. The roof was finished in January.  What kind of fool has his or her roof reslated over winter?  Well our kind, obviously.  The roofers did a great job.  Many days there were three generations of the same family working on our roof, the father coming out of retirement because it was an interesting job to do, his grandson now the fifth generation of his family to be a roofer.  Slate is a beautiful material.   I took this one before the scaffolding came down.  Beyond the house you can see one of the yew trees.  It almost makes you wish you could live up on the roof. Ian built a lovely set of shelves which make the curved end of the worktop in the front kitchen.  Work on the back kitchen has stalled since my father in law came to live with us as the scale of the upheaval would be a bit daunting but the front kitchen is ...

Well here I am with another evening on my own and this time I am up here without a car. The wind has been battering the house all day so inside has been the only place to be and here by the woodburner the wind is blowing in the chimney and making the flames leap higher. All day the wind has shouted and shuddered and thrown great showers of rain at the house. Astonishingly the hens, who have been shut into the run all week while I have been away visiting my daughter, were so desperate to get out that they have spent the day being buffeted about the garden, their feathers blown inside out like a bad hair day, struggling against the wind and rain, hiding in the bottom of hedges but determinedly not going back into the henhouse until nightfall. I, by contrast, have been huddled by the fire, half watching the rugby and half reading the paper. I decided that a good use of a few hours being shut in against the weather would be to make my Christmas cake and Christmas pudding so all day the rai...