welsh hills again

I was on a real high after run two of week five, having achieved two runs of eight minutes each.  The next run was meant to be twenty minutes long.  How could that be?  And yet while I was daunted I was also really interested to see whether I could do it.  The Couch to 5k programme hadn't let me down yet so maybe, just maybe, it was doable?  After all they would hardly set people up to fail would they? So I was all ready for Thursday last week and what felt to me like the breakthrough between trying to learn how to run and actually running. And then it snowed. It looked very beautiful but it did not look like the kind of conditions I could run in. I thought I should do something to try to keep the fitness going so I had a go on our exercise bike.  I only managed about ten minutes.  I don't know what it is about the exercise bike but I really hate it.  I find it intensely boring and it feels intensely useless.  If I am outside...

Well the weather is not playing ball with the one hundred day project.  It is snowy and rainy and slushy and cold and there is not one single thing I would want to do in the garden even if I was not feeling sore throated and sore chested and sorry for myself. And we are not talking crisp white stunning beauty snow. It does not look like this.  We are talking mush and slush and grey and rain on top of snow and a deep desire to hibernate or live in the South of France.  It is April.  It is Easter, no more snow for heaven's sake. So I have decided that making a list of things to do in the garden will have to be my task for today.  Now this could be a mammoth list which really could only be followed by moving to the south of France.  There is so much to do out there that a counsel of perfection or even a counsel of mediocrity could produce pages and pages.  I have decided that what I need is a list of no more than five things, of which two must b...

There was an awful lot of snow.  When the great fall came we spent two and a half hours digging ourselves out.  And now, nearly two weeks on, there is still quite a bit lying. The wind piled great drifts, as high as the stone pigsties.  The kitchen garden was one great surging sea of snow.  Usually it looks like this, in fact this picture was taken a couple of days before the snow hit. Today it still looks like this. Ian spent hours and hours digging and shovelling and hiking in and out of here over and through the snow to the hens.  They spent the worst of the days confined to their house and then nearly a week with access only to the enclosed run.  On Tuesday Ian and a friend's son dug out the deep drifts which had buried the fencing for the larger run and reinstated it. It's a good job that only the large house at the end is in use at the moment as the two smaller houses which we use for younger birds had filled right up with snow. ...

A couple of weeks full of family and travel and no blogging!  This last week we have had younger son and his wife here with their black labrador.  Son and his wife are both keen cooks and lots of fabulous food has been cooked and eaten.  It has been great just to have time to catch up and to chat, to sit by the woodburner and drink tea and wine and talk and read and snooze. Chris has never been up Snowdon so on Tuesday we decided to have a go.  Snowdon, for anyone reading outside the UK, is the highest mountain in Wales at 1,085 metres or 3,560 feet.  If you live in a mountainous part of the world this might not sound like a big deal but Snowdon is a true mountain, the highest in the UK outside of Scotland, and people die on it every year, mostly by making mistakes about weather conditions.  In fact there was a rescue only yesterday. The Welsh name, Yr Wyddfa, means the tumulus.  The mountain is within the Snowdonia National Park , a spectacular m...

OK, that's enough now.  It has been beautiful and hard work, not quite in equal measure, but just tipping the scale on the side of beauty.  But now I have had enough.  I want to be able to go out without fear of slipping and sliding on the snow.  I want to see green instead of the endless stretch of white and black. On Wednesday it was sunny and we made it up to the top of the hill.  Snow and blue sky is a lovely thing but even so, time for a slightly easier life I think. When I am cold it is hard to remember how it feels to be warm and when the land is bleak and empty like this it is hard to believe that only last year there was colour and light and warmth and growth.  I have been looking back through my photographs.  Even last year when it rained so hard for so long, sometimes the sun did shine. There were primroses. There were pulmonaria and red tulips and the great fat upsurge of old fashioned peonies. There were tulips, in...

So the snow came, not bucketloads of it, not as much as in parts of South Wales, but enough to keep us inside.  On Friday there was a driving wind which scoured the snow from some parts of the garden and heaped it in drifts against the kitchen door and the kitchen garden walls.  The wind was so hard and cold it snatched the air from your lungs when you ventured out for yet more logs.  Yoga was cancelled and we stayed warm and snug by the stove.  I was glad Ian had made it back from Devon the day before, beating the snow home. Today was still.  Yesterday the wind continued but today, although it snowed gently for much of the day, it was a cold, calm day.  The snowdrops all along the bottom of the wall have disappeared under snow. There is enough snow for sledges and to make the hens miserable but not enough to transform the world. But there is enough for tracks to appear all over the garden.  Badger and fox I recognise but what are th...

All week the news has been full of pictures of snow:  snow in the East of the country though, not here in Wales.  I have watched the weather forecasters dither with whether the snow will hit the West and now, this morning, the forecast has plumped heavily for a large snowfall on Friday.  What do you do in the city with the prospect of snow?  I think I used to dig out my slightly furrier boots, hope that the traffic wouldn't be too awful and go to bed.  Up here there is more to think about. Today it is iron cold but with no snow yet.  I go down to the chickens to break the ice on the water and give them some extra corn.  I put some more shavings in the house and wonder what else I can do before the snow comes.  Not much, I think.  Chickens are not keen on snow and will stay inside if there is much snow on the ground, occasionally coming out for a petulant peck and scratch before retreating to the house again.  Hens are not bothered huge...

I love the seasons. What would it be like to live in a constant temperature? A constant spring? An endless summer? An everlasting cold? No, I love the change. And here in the UK the seasons themselves are mutable. Summer is often not hot and dry. Spring might not be an unfurling of life but icy, cold and wet. And this autumn has not been damp and blustery but long and warm and mellow as caramel. Winter has come now but how different this mild late born winter is from last year's lion's grip, the whole world stilled under his heavy paw. This is the 5th of December last year, steely under snow, and then the same date this year, all sun and silhouetted trees. This year there are marigolds still throwing out flowers. A year ago today the field was blanketed under snow. Green and gold fennel this year and monochrome hedges last. Rose hips and snow. I love seasons.

And the world glistened white and shining.  It is cold as cold but the sky is vivid and the air sings with cold.  The birdfeeders are thronged with birds who fluttered and twittered in the trees as I filled them.  Even the woodpecker has been swinging and tapping on the peanuts all day long. The valley is perfect and untrodden.  If you watch for long enough you will see a quadbike making its way along the other side, down the steep slopes, a bale of hay strapped to it .  You will see the sheep gathering or the sharp black shape of a horse moving across the field towards the black shape of the woods.  A tractor makes it way along the road in the bottom of the valley but no cars move.  No post comes. The hedges are works of art. We have spent the day shovelling snow, bringing in logs and kindling, tramping down to the pumphouse which controls our water supply, checking and sorting, feeding the chickens and the cats and the peacock.  The weath...