Winter Aconite

It was very windy last night and is still windy this morning accompanied by rain, as well as torrential sleety rain at one point. The Christmas tree, which is still in its pot waiting to be planted in the garden has been blown over; I have rescued it twice and now it has a substantial amount of bricks and blocks around it so that it cannot fall over again.

Today’s picture is of a lonely and bedraggled Winter Aconite; these are late this year. The ones, which grow in one or our large borders, are nowhere to be seen. This one is in the lawn under one of the apple trees. I was surprised to see it as this is where the deer have trampled the lawn into bare mud and leaves. This one will not be lonely for long there are two more showing, just in the left-hand side of the picture.

Cold, windy and wet, both cats are indoors after a short outing this morning, so I think I will follow their example; I might even do some knitting.

Sharpening Our Tools

I have spent much of the day getting nowhere fast. My daughter and I had our appointments this morning to have our nails done and then we usually have breakfast/brunch/lunch, depending on the time of day. She had several other things to do in town and it was a case of backwards and forwards to get everything done. We had lunch at her home after we got back and then I came home, to find that a lot of progress on the rebuilding had been made while I was out.

Dougal and Florence are not allowed out into the garden whilst the builders are here, but as soon as they had gone and because it was still light they dashed outside. Here you can see them sharpening their claws on the builder’s planks. Florence stayed out for all of about five minutes before coming back in. It is cold and very windy, like me, she dislikes both.

Snowdrops

Progress on our house has continued today despite the rain this morning. More materials have arrived and the man who is making the rest of the doors and windows has been to measure them.

I was going to post a picture of a bigger, better building site, but decided that, although these are not the best specimens, these Snowdrops deserved to be blipped. They have struggled through the broken concrete and rubble in order to flower this year. I will blip them again when they are further open.

Feeding the Birds

My husband had two hospital appointments today one at 1000 hours and the other at 1530 hours. In between we went into Cambridge to have lunch and do some shopping. We had a roast beef lunch in the University Centre and then before retuning to Addenbrookes in the afternoon, we had cake and coffee in The Green Coffee Company.

Today’s picture was taken outside the University Centre and is of someone through food in the air for the birds as well as some in the water for the Mallards.

Building Site

Today’s picture is of a building site no, actually it is part of our garden. The builder himself and two workers came today. Two of them should have been elsewhere fitting a new kitchen for someone, but she had forgotten to order her new units; how does anyone forget to order their new kitchen?

Today our normal bricklayer continued building walls whilst another worker started on the inside putting in the joists for the floor. The owner himself made a start on sorting out our lower garden where a big hole and a huge pile of rubbish had been left previously. It is already looking much better although it will be a long while before it is back to what it used to be.

It was dull and dreary this morning with some rain, but this did not deter them. One was working in the lower garden, in his cab on the ‘Bobcat’, the other two were able to continue on parts of the rebuilt structure, which were in the dry.

I ordered our new patio doors on Sunday and they wanted to deliver them tomorrow, however, as we knew there was a seven day lead in period, we thought they would not be delivered until next week; the builders are not quite ready for them yet, so they are being delivered next week now instead of tomorrow.

The lower garden, with work started to restore it to normal.

January One Tree

Once again it is very cold and dull, but the builder and bricklayer are here and further work is being carried out on the rebuilding of the back of our house.

Today I am starting a new series related to my ‘One Tree’ and my ‘One Street’. I am planning to take a picture of this tree once a month, rather than in the haphazard way I have been doing, so that it can be seen in all of its stages throughout the year. I will be tagging them so that hopefully you the series can be looked at together if you wish. I do not think that I can add links to the original site, although ‘one street’ appears to be in the challenges, ‘one tree’ does not.

I did a little proper work this morning, paid some bills and sorted out the fridge, which was in rather a muddle; other than that I have been sorting out photographs and other papers.

Another view 

Brave

This morning it was very foggy and very frosty; my fingers, in gloves, were soon very cold. The squirrels were not using their own nut box feeder, but raiding the bird feeders so I presumed it was empty. It was half full, but the lid was frozen shut, I forced it open and refilled it as well as refilling and topping up the bird feeders.

The snowdrops are coming through and some have forced their way through the brick rubble where our sacked builders had buried the border under their rubble. They need to be a little more visible before they are blipped so today’s picture shows a very brave little Daisy, in the lawn and covered in ice.

Florence

Today it has been very wet and quite windy, in fact a dull, drab day.

I only did twenty minutes on the Wii Fit this morning as I am building up slowly; it is far to cold and wet to go for a walk. After lunch I did the end of month and end of year finances and discovered that the credit card company had taken the same payment twice in December. That took time to sort out, but the money will be back into my account by Tuesday.

Then I ordered the new Patio doors, which will probably arrive at the end of next week; I could easily get excited about these.

Florence is my choice of picture today; in fact she featured in the only four pictures I took. She went outside for all of five minutes before resuming her current favourite sleeping place, the back of one of the sofas in the dining room, with her back to the radiator; sensible cat.

Hyacinths

We went into Bishops Stortford today to get some bits and pieces, on the way home visited our daughter to deliver a few things she needed.

Other than that I have not done very much, I will like it much better once we get fully back to normal and I have a more structured day.

Today’s picture is of some blue Hyacinth flowers, which we purchased, along with some pink ones, from Scotsdales Garden Centre before Christmas, yes, they are that blue!

Red Rose

Happy New Year everyone.

For 2015 and possibly for earlier years I will post my daily Blipfoto entry here on my blog as well as using the Blipfoto site of which I am a Life Member.

A new year and a new blip although I am still not very enthusiastic with the site, but as we get upgrades and the Apple Apps, I am sure it will improve and we will learn to love it. I will celebrate four years of blipping in May and because I am obsessed with keeping this journal of my daily activities, there can be no doubt that I will continue. As my profile is now visible and seen by everyone much more easily, I think it is time to update that too.

During 2013 one of my subscribers commented that my journal consisted of flowers for 90% of the time. I did some statistics last year, going through my entire journal in order to produce these. During 2014 I tagged the same three categories making them a doddle to count. Flower pictures in 2014 made up 30% of my journal an increase of 3% over those posted in 2013. Cat entries are also up from 7% in 2013 to 8.5% for 2014; bird pictures have decreased down from 10% to 4.5%. The reason for this decrease has been due primarily to our on-going saga of building work making it almost impossible to take bird pictures through the kitchen windows. That means that 57% of my journal is made up of a variety of other themes.

So another day of not doing very much although we visited our neighbours this morning taking chocolates and wine as is our tradition. The healthy eating has started although there is still quite a lot of chocolate and other goodies still to be eaten; in moderation! The Wii Fit was taken out of storage yesterday and twelve minutes of exercise was completed. Not much I hear you say, but I need to build up slowly otherwise my back, hips and joints will protest.

Today’s picture is of a red Rose, still flowering in our front garden. I almost blipped a tiny daffodil flowering in one of the railway station tubs, but decided the rose deserved the honour of the first blip of the year.