Tag Archives: weather

If I Ruled the World

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According to the song, if I ruled the world every day would be the first day of spring.

Looking out of my window I’m not sure that would be a good thing. I’ve been looking forward to Spring, but I’d rather assumed it would feature flowers, blossom and warm weather. Currently, we are about four hours into Spring (which officially started at 10.28 am GMT) and the cold rain has only just stopped. I’m still waiting for the sun to break through, but I fear I may be waiting in vain.

The rest of the week looks equally miserable (and so do I).

For those of you reading in the Southern Hemisphere, congratulations on your Autumn Equinox, and apologies that the rest of it may make no sense. I suppose that somewhere down there you must have cold rain and cloudy skies, but I find it hard to imagine.

However, back at the opening sentence, if I ruled the world things would be different, even if if I couldn’t control the weather.

I won’t go into detail, because the sun has just emerged unexpectedly and I’m off out. Here are a few photos to put you in mind of Spring.

See you later. 🙂

Alder catkins and cones
Snowdrops – Arnot Hill Park
Spring at last!

 

 

Julia’s New Project

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Julia’s first project of the year was to make me fitter and thinner. I’m going along with it because it’s easier than becoming industrious and efficient.Two months in and I seem to have lost half a stone without inconveniencing myself too much. I can also walk significantly further than I could at Christmas, and my joints are feeling better.

So far it’s down to eating better, rather than eating less. The next stage is to start reducing portion sizes too. You will have to imagine the expression on my face as I type that last bit.

Storm Doris is currently whistling round the house so I’m cutting back on the walking today. I’m in the middle of an Amber Weather Warning at the moment, with gusts of wind of up to 80 mph. That’s the magic of the information age. When I was a lad “windy” would have been the only word I needed. I was certainly never on first name terms with the weather.

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Squirrel stealing bird food

Anyway, now that exercise I am (slightly) smaller and fitter she is transferring her attention to a new project.

The Danes have hygge and the Norwegians have Friluftsliv . Even the Germans have Gemütlichkeit, and they aren’t a famously cheerful nation.

Julia’s new project is to discover a suitable English equivalent. We have mindfulness, though I’m not sure it’s quite the same. I incline to morosity myself, which is about as opposite to hygge as you can get. Yes, it is a word. More than that, it’s a word I’ve never used before.

Looks like we need a new word for English-style happiness. I favour something with a Scandinavian twist, because they seem to be the leaders in the field.

Julia favours something more domestic, something along the lines of “middle aged man snoring in front of the TV, which sounds more like the basis of a haiku to me.

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Can you see it now?

I have translated  “middle aged man snoring in front of the TV” and my favourite (“ducks and sunshine”) into various Scandinavian languages.

English: Middle aged man snoring in front of TV – ducks and sunshine

Danish: Den midaldrende mand snorken foran TV –  ænder og solskin

Norwegian: Middelaldrende mann snorking fra foran TV – ender og solskinn

Swedish: En medelålders man snarkningar framför TV – ankor och solsken

Is there anything there we can use, do you think?

Julia doesn’t seem impressed; she’s just wandered off muttering “idiot with a laptop” and I don’t think it’s a suggestion for translation…

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Julia hiding in shrubbery

Photographs have been selected to show examples of things that make me happy. I don’t have a picture of ice cream.

 

A very strange day

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Time marches on.

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The day started with a visit to the farm – we are still tidying up as we had an enforced rest over Christmas due to my infection – and continued with a visit to Men in Sheds. They made us tea and offered to share their Lincolnshire sausages. We declined the offer, but donated half a dozen pullet eggs from the bantams, who seem to have sprung into laying action while we’ve been away.

Frying sausages
Adjusting the lathe
LIncolnshire sausages

On the way home we dropped in to feed the ducks at Rufford Abbey, which was the fun part of the day, and pottered home as the light faded. That was where we got our big surprise.

Julia opened her emails and was rendered speechless.

It’s quite strange seeing Julia speechless. she impersonates a goldfish and emits tiny mewing sounds.

I waited patiently, and after she recovered the power of speech she read the email to me.

When I recovered the power of speech she told me off for using bad language.

It seems that one of the teachers who has been visiting the farm has arranged to rent land on the farm to start a group using horticulture and animals for therapy. Sounds vaguely familiar. Also seems like it must have been organised during the time we were being thrown out.

What really stopped us speaking though, were the words “As I understand it, the timing was right for change for all of us”. The timing, as you may recall from previous posts, was not right for us, but was forced on us. However, it seems to be a growing belief within the farmer that he did us a favour as we were working hard and not making a living from the project. That, of course, makes him feel better at throwing the group out. It also highlights the difference in our approaches, as we don’t need a lot of money if we’re doing something worthwhile.

Anyway, now I have recovered the power of speech I’m not going to waste it.

The lake at Rufford was still partly frozen, providing hard standing for a variety of birds. We had bird food with us and, as you can see from the video it inspired some enthusiastic feeding.  The light was fading, so we restricted ourselves to the lakeside. I did try a couple of photos of squirrels under the trees but the light was so bad that camera shake rendered them useless.

I’m currently trying to improve my bird identification skills so I had a good look at the gulls and was pleased to find two that were different from the mass of Black Headed Gulls. They were both immature birds so they have lots of brown feathers and their beaks and feet are different colours from the mature adults. I took plenty of photographs and checked them against pictures on a gull ID website. Yes, there are such things.

greylag Goose
Black Headed gul
immature Common gull
Immature Herring Gul

One of the gulls seems to be an immature Common Gull. As you may gather from the name, it isn’t a rare gull. The other is an immature Herring Gull. They are even commoner than Common Gulls. It would have been nice to have spotted a rare gull but at least I managed to see them amongst all the others.

 

 

It rained, we made pom-poms and played balloon ball

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It’s rained all day, we don’t feel like using the kitchen because of the internal politics and I’m not eating biscuits.

So what do we do?

Well, we have to feed and water the chickens whatever the weather.

We also had a good moan about various things (centre left in a mess, one of the new toilets out of order, someone has thrown some of our stuff out of the kitchen).

We did a stock take of what we have left in the kitchen.

We picked the last of the chillies and the cape gooseberries

We made pom-poms. I managed 14 today. I explored a method I found on the internet – using a fork to wrap the wool round. I hope these photos explain it. It’s tricky getting it tied tight enough and fitting the scissors in, but it seems to work OK for producing small pom-poms.

A fork with longer tines may have been better (as would sharper scissors) and I’m just wondering how much wool you’d need to wrap a garden fork…

Then we played indoor balloon volleyball/tennis. It’s a game  we invented last year using a large balloon. The rules are not fixed, the umpiring is abysmal and the scoring is random, but it seems to work. So far nobody has died playing, we’ve had no tears, and we haven’t damaged the building (though as we’re under notice to quit I’m not sure I’m bothered).

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Indoor Balloonball – just look at the speed of that serve!

 

As we told the group – only boring people get bored.

 

Bollywood and black skies

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Today we had Bollywood dancing, chickens and black storm clouds, just to name a few things. And pom-poms. They are becoming the bane of my life. Julia says we need 20 per wreath and as everyone will want to make a wreath that’s 140 pom-poms. While Julia and some of the team were out measuring climate data (our penultimate session) I was left in charge of the pom-pom squad. I made six. The other three broke the plastic rings several times, failed to achieve pom-pomness in  a number of different ways and, finally, managed to break the only one they actually made.

Yes, they broke a pom-pom. Not the plastic ring, an actual woolly pom-pom.

That sound you can hear is my spirit breaking.

In the afternoon, with a squad of three, Julia managed four pom-poms.

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Proper free range chickens

The chickens are looking good – we finally have a distinct farmyard flock – feathered in a variety of blacks (from their Minorca fathers) and with a selection of head feathering from their Polish ancestors. They are looking quite distinctive, though they could probably do with a bit of new blood in the coming year as they are all the offspring of one hen and (possibly) two cockerels.

Weather has been iffy, as you can see from the photos, though it hasn’t broken yet, there are still a few autumnal leaves about and our Albanian taxi driver brought us some lemons picked from his father’s orchard when he visited last week. They always look much nicer than shop lemons, which I suspect are selected for thick skin and travelling qualities.  The Albanian lemons always seem thinner skinned and better-flavoured.

Autumn Colour
Mixed weather over Screveton
Statue with storm clouds

Finally, dancing. The whole group is practising for the dance at the Christmas Party. They are full of determination and have been watching instructional videos to get more moves. You have to admire their perseverance and work ethic. Originally just two of them were going to dance, after doing some belly-dancing at a project they attend on Fridays, but it has now spread so we have five dancers.

What with dancing and our rendition of I’ve got a lovely bunch of Coconuts this is going to be a party to remember, even before we get to the song about the coat of many colours.

Dance rehearsal
Bollywood style
Jai Ho

As you look at the dance photos hum the tune of Jai Ho.

Now try to get it out of your head.

I think my work here is done…

Peacocks, birds and Painted Ladies

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I could have added Red Admirals to the title, to make it a tale of Communist Naval Commanders dressing up to attract women of a certain sort. Bit I didn’t, so it’s just about butterflies. And a bit about birds.

A week, they say, is a long time in politics. Five minutes, as I was to discover this morning, is a long time in butterfly counting.

It was a glorious day this morning and I would have taken some photographs but I got caught up with something else, we had chickens to look after, then a visitor called and we didn’t get on with the count until lunch.

As I stepped out onto the decking I knew we had a problem. It was cool, overcast, and the numerous butterflies I’d seen in the morning had all gone. I suppose the totals were more typical of the actual activity of butterflies, as we tend to count on good days, when there are plenty of butterflies about, thus manipulating the figures by accident.

Count 1

12.30 – 12.45 Monday 1st August.

Temperature: 19 degrees C

Wind: 6 kph from the SSE

Red Admiral – 1

Peacock – 2

Small White – 2

No sooner had we finished than the sun started to break through, the temperature rose noticeably and, though the wind remained gusty, the butterflies emerged.

It was like one of the those Old Testament moments in a black and white film. There was no pointing finger and no portentous music, but there was a definite change in the sky and things started to happen.

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Count 2

12.45 – 01.00 Monday 1st August.

Temperature: 21 degrees C (may have been more at one point, but that’s what it was by the time I got back to the weather station display.

Wind: 3 – 9 kph from the SSE (that’s a guess, but it was both weaker and stronger than during the original count).

Red Admiral – 3

Peacock – 6

Small White – 2

Large White – 5

Gatekeeper – 1

Small Tortoiseshell – 1

Painted Lady – 1

That’s quite a difference, in numbers and variety. If it had been a more gradual change I’d have missed it by going inside for dinner before the activity started.

Birds have been gradually coming back with goldfinches and blue tits on the feeders and pied wagtails on the grass. There are wrens and Green Woodpeckers in the trees. I have a picture of an immature bird that I thought was a dunnock, then a robin, then…

The immature ones can be tricky.

I’m going to take a chance and say it’s a dunnock.

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A matter of Loaf and Death

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It’s hot (29 degrees C according to the weather station) and it’s still (wind between 0 and 2 mph). Fortunately I bought a fan that works from a USB port whilst in Scarborough last week. As a result I am not actually a lot cooler (what do you expect for £2.99?) but I am quite smug.

So, sitting here smug but warmish, what am I going to blog about today?

How about telling you about my plans for the afternoon? As I was in the shop this morning I looked longingly at the cider section, imagining the bottles lightly jewelled with condensation from the fridge. What could be better than an afternoon spent in the shade sipping cold cider?

Imagine that the picture goes wavy now, as my dream disappears and reality takes hold. Instead of sunbeams, dappled shade (even a touch of boskiness) and a cold cider, we are left with reality. That reality is sun pouring in thorough windows in the stuffy communal room at a local care home.

There will be tea afterwards, and though I am quite fond of tea there will be preliminaries. These include making dough, loading it in the car and travelling to work in a strange kitchen, knead dough and turn ovens on to bake bread. Yes, my picture of cool perfection is replaced by one of hell.

Don’t judge me, I do like the ladies in the care home, and I do understand that they need something to keep them occupied. I just don’t want to bake on the hottest day of the year. Actually I don’t want to bake at all in a borrowed kitchen with limited time and resources.

It’s Julia’s idea. You may notice a pattern emerging here – any dull, grinding, boring, hot, virtually impossible, ill-conceived idea that needs putting into action usually comes from her.

Any dull, grinding, boring, hot, virtually impossible, ill-conceived idea that becomes reality is usually as a result of me getting bored, hot, annoyed, homicidal…you get the picture.

Yet she is the one with the reputation for delivering difficult and innovative projects.

She has just told me to man up and get on with it. She says that nobody has ever died from baking bread, with the implication being that fatality is a distinct possibility if I don’t do what I’m told.

 

 

Rain, robins and roosters

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The Met Office misled me. I was expecting passing showers, but instead we had a prolonged hammering from hail.

Despite this we did manage to get some of the Kew seeds planted.

More lambs today, but no photos in case any of my you start to suffer from cuteness fatigue. I’ll post more on Wednesday. You will have to make do with a picture of a robin singing in the barn. No, I’ve never seen one singing inside either, but as the front is open it’s easy to get in and out.

The final batch of ewes were due to start lambing today, but let’s face it, when do sheep ever do what they are supposed to do? It doesn’t matter, because we’re still knee deep in lambs from the main group, and have plenty more still to come as some of them are showing no urgency about giving birth.

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The poultry emerged after the rain, as did the sun, so it ended on a positive note.

PS: Yes, I do realise that the title is both inaccurate (rain) and Americanised (rooster) but Hail, robins and cockerels just didn’t sound so good. Oh, and I just realised there was only one robin…

Time passes, things change

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Returned to work today, to find that the view has changed slightly after the high wind at the weekend. The Neighbours are now Man leaning on fence and Woman lying down.

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Me trying to be arty
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That’s a job for later, as it’s all about lambing on the farm at the moment.

If we put her back up all will return to normal, but if not you will be able to date pictures of the farm to pre- and post- Easter 2016 depending on the number of statues you can see.

A windy night and a storm with a name

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We had high winds last night, strong enough to be named Storm Barney. No, I don’t know why we’ve started naming storms, and if I had my way I would ban the naming of weather. It’s OK for hurricanes but 85 mph winds that rattle a few roof tiles don’t need names.

As a result we turned up at the centre to find we had a polytunnel that looked a little like a burst balloon, with a selection of tears and slack plastic flapping in the wind. Fortunately the problem is mainly cosmetic and now we have secured the covering it looks a lot better. There are three minor holes that need patching but nothing of any importance, so it’s a lot better than we first thought.

We knew we were close to having to replace the cover and to be fair we should probably have replaced it this year. In the end we fixed a hole, replaced some hotspot tape and gave the whole thing a wash. It’s still better than some covers you see, but it is in a windy spot and getting a bit brittle. Tempting as it is to try for another year it looks like we’re going to have to grit our teeth and buy a new cover.

Half of me says we should make it last as long as possible because it’s a better sustainability option (and because I’m tight). The other half of me is afraid of turning up one day and finding plants and hoops standing there with no cover.

It’s secure for the moment, with all clips in place and weights all round as an extra precaution. I say “weights” but it does look a bit like someone has sprinkled the contents of a skip round the outside of the tunnel. We have used some old sinks we rescued from a skip so it’s not an unfair comparison. As long as it lasts until spring we’ll be OK.

So if any of you are passing by next spring we might have a job for you…