This being after some minor fiddling with the template. I did not like the blue and I found that I could make the blog a bit wider. I had thought the left and right hand portions of the screen had been reserved for advertisements - should I want to go down that road - which I don't.
Plus a few snaps from the back garden, on our return from having spent Christmas and New Year elsewhere.
Curiously, the oak tree has now lost nearly all its leaves, but most of them, rather than sitting on what is supposed to be the back lawn and blocking the sun, have blown out to the margins, including here the garage where quite a few have blown in. Furthermore, there seems to be a tendency for fallen leaves to gather in heaps. No doubt something to do with the air flow.
And the micro-ponds are now full, something they have not been for some months now, with my having stopped filling them up from the tap. Left to myself, I dare say I would let them go now, maybe planting pampas grass in the holes. As things are, I do enjoy the plants in them but they are more bother than they are worth.
The dwarf cyclamen down the bottom are making a better show with their leaves than they did with their flowers..
The bluebells, also down the bottom, are poking through, rather early. Maybe a January frost will have them.
Our No.2 Christmas tree from Sainsbury's did not make it indoors this year. Maybe getting a bit heavy to move about anyway. It looks quite well where it is, but is it destined for one of the pond holes?
The jelly lichen doing well too.
Our first proper meal for a while. Including a turkey mince meat loaf and a good dose of stewed celery.
An hour from the off, melt an ounce of so of butter in the saute pan. Add the celery.Add a little water, maybe a quarter of a pint. Half an hour later, add some onions. Ten minutes from the off add the carrots and a tomato (to provide a little more colour). Very good it was too. Something that we have not done for a while.
An excellent wet complement to the rather dry mince meat loaf - the turkey mince being a very low fat quantity.
Followed up with a little light gardening. That is to say clearing up the twig fall with the new-to-me litter picker from Blenheim Road. A good deal more effective than the one that I had bought previously from Screwfix.
Furthermore, there did not seem to have been any further fox action in or around the big compost heap. The tyres and boards - a tyre is visible left - seemed to have protected the vulnerable spot. I wonder now how near the surface of the heap roots from neighbouring trees have grown? Last time I dug out the small heap, the were a lot of such roots, spread more or less through the whole of the bottom half.
My first guess was adventitious roots, but checking suggests that the term I am looking for is fibrous roots. See reference 1.
And so closed my first day back in the garden. Maybe back in the street on the day to come?
References
Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibrous_root_system.
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