~of mirkwood days~

today started out so promising with blue skies and sunshine.

i wish it could have stayed that way.

yesterday we finally made a start on our dreadful back garden, clearing and chipping and digging~yes its so bad it needs digging over. but we keep having a case of 'rain stopped play'

swampy has just gone off to return my mum's chipper and bring back our trailer (which mum kindly keeps safe on her driveway when we are not using it) to load in bags of chipped and non-chipped greenery as well as a bag of rubble that whoever built this house just dug into the back garden rather than remove!

as it started to rain...again...i came in deciding to visit blogs and post myself...however even that is impossible as we seem to be experiencing Internet connection problems.

i just get the feeling that everything is telling me to give up and just sit with a book and a cup of tea!

...as i write there is a huge downpour of not just rain but sleet.

oh, i am getting so tired of this weather, i am an autumn~winter girl but at this point in time i am longing for endless days of blue skies and sunshine~not hot days, ones like we had last week were just perfect.

i find myself thinking of days spent in the finally finished garden, or up the allotment or even better of days where we take off in pippin to some solitary place~i have an inkling to spend some time in wales.

but first we need to finish the garden and get the allotment sorted~to say nothing of finishing our decorating here in our 'forever home'

~of short journeys~

we have been out and about this week~popping into lymington for some supplies and saw this dark green relation to 'pippin' sitting at the side of the road, its name painted on the side is 'twiggy'...there is quite a nice write up on lymington here

dont forget to click on photos for a better view!

heading to the farm shop yesterday we saw smoke rising as we passed under the bridge that takes us out of our hollow in the forest...
then flames...

no panic, its the controlled burning that takes place every year~november to march...


we could feel the heat as we passed

heading back the locally named 'lymington flyer' trundled by heading into the village. it spends its days going the 5-6 miles to lymington and lymington pier. it's made up of three of the old fashioned carriages with slam doors and those little tiny tables set between the seat (who in the uk remembers those?!) its also painted a nice vintage green.

one of the local donkeys~some have been taken off the forest or a week or two to have their foals

these have their foals already

we bought another clematis for the empty side of our arch. the little plant that you can see creeping up and along the bottom of our door comes out in tiny blue flowers, we have no idea what it is but love how it looks and so took up a clump and planted it the other side too...today i am hoping that we are going to get started on our dreadful back garden.

the feeling of summer seems to have left us for the day, its grey and breezy and the old rhyme my 'gramps' hawkns would recite every year comes to mind...

'march winds & april showers bring forth may flowers'

~arghhh~

anyone out there chronically shy?

i just mentioned it to a friend via e-mail, there is a gathering coming up that i really want to go to...but don't because it means meeting new people...in a group.

i am bad enough with meeting one person~a group?

*good grief*

i am one of those people who don't need (or is that don't like?) lots of people around me and when there are i find it hard to follow conversations and don't really join in.

when we go camping with friends they usually all get together in the evenings, that's when i usually vanish into the camper with a book and my radio, for what i call peace.

i have always been shy, school was a nightmare...especially being pale, red haired and having what was considered a boys name!...children can be so rotten~ but funnily enough college was great~there were other shy people there and you could be 'different' without being given grief.

the odd thing is people dont think of me like this because my outward appearance is quite outgoing and i am good at hiding it

*oh well*

totally off subject i have just made a rather nice smelling meatloaf for our dinner tonight, which is now sitting in the oven and will be ready to be served up with a nice pile of veggies about the time my evening tv session kicks in...'ballykissangel' is on at 7 each night and i just love it, it fills in the gap left by the ending of the present 'larkrise to candleford'...so yes i will be sitting with my dinner on my lap, wearing my cosy pyjamas and enjoying 'ballyk'!

~strange days~

well what a weekend~ireland won the six nations grand slam for the first time in 61 years~although in my heart i wished both ireland and wales could have won~for once i was strangley quiet during the game.

now it is all over and its another 45 weeks until it starts again, although there is the lions tour in the summer~yes i really am a rugby nerd.

yesterday was a wash out as i felt so ill, i spent most of the day feeling sick and nursing a hot water bottle and all i could eat were shreddies with no milk~today i dont feel too bad, drinking lots of lemon and ginger tea to keep it at bay but feeling strangely 'evil' and out of sorts~must be the hormones~if you know the song 'strange days' by the doors...well thats how i feel today~ever so odd...

*strange days have found us

strange days have tracked us down*

~of big skies, clematis & exam results~

driving back from the farm shop this week the skies were starting to clear, leaving us with the blue skies we have been enjoying~this the drive down into the hollow where our village lies, nestled in the forest

the forsythia in our back garden, which for some reason has been grown into a small tree. we had no idea what it was when we first moved in, but the buds started to emerge a few weeks ago and it was last week it burst into bloom~looking better with each day that passes.

i have been looking for an evergreen climber to put out the front ever since we moved in and at the farm shop they had this a nice four foot one~and as it was the only one i grabbed it! its a clematis armandii, which is the only clematis with any scent, apparently it smells of jasmine so i am really looking fowards to it in full bloom~and i just love those long leaves, makes me think of the elves in the LOTR!

well i bought the climber~but needed somewhere to support it, so pushed caution to the wind and bought a simple archway for over the door and moved the basket on the left to another area. from where i sit at my desk i can see the top tendrils winding their way around the arch~fingers crossed the farm shop will have another next week for planting the other side of the arch.

another new buy, which is on one of the walls in the back garden...

along with the bird house my mum gave us when we moved in and one of my green men.

the aim is to get another armandii for out the back. our neighbour jackie has one that goes all around her little cottage and looks lovely~so fingers crossed in a few years we will have a nice green and shady house!

i had some god news today, i have passed both of my courses that i took last year. so another step closer to my masters!

~feels like summer~

the new forest has been basking in the most glorious sun for some days now and waking up to more blue skies and the same sun today has put a smile on my face.

at night we are having slight frosts, so the seedlings go onto our warmest windowsill at dusk, stay there while the sun is on them and the garden warms up, then they go to sit in the garden until dusk again~i am just hoping it continues like this.

although i am a real autumn/winter girl i am finding i am stretching towards spring like a seedling, wanting to peel back these layers and enjoy the warmth at last.

*well, this week we went up to our allotment and ended up there nearly all day*

swampy digging away like a good'un

five mature red current bushes~yippee!

parsnips still in the soil from last year, when the old chap who had our plot still worked it~i roasted them with carrots and a little olive oil then for the last five minutes cooking time added a little honey~

our neighbour had a three week start~luckily the soil here is lovely and easy to dig



the view from the back of our plot~this end is shaded by a lovely oak, so to me its even more special

nice little shed, a water butt we are are going to adapt with a tap at the bottom and place on bricks for easy access and make a lid for it. there are also a good selection of glass panes to make a good size cold frame

yours truly

~an Irish day~

although obviously not a fan of st.p himself today i celebrate my Irish roots!

even more so as i recently discovered my great gran on my dad's side was Irish~all i now need to find out is why she ended up in durham married to a Welsh man!

so Irish on both sides

i am starting to think its time to start saving and have a nice trip over there.

well today the new forest is basking in glorious sunshine with not a cloud in the sky and shortly we will be going down to check out our newly allocated allotment! yes the parish council phoned up and have given us one with a small shed, next door to the badly overgrown one we were originally given, so we still have access to the well.

of course i shall be going armed with my camera, paper, pen and a tape measure to make plans for what goes where.

swampy bought me a really nice 'beginners guide' to allotment gardening, which has a nice little layout of an allotment which doesnt look far off the size of our plot so i think it will be a useful guide for our plot.

well i hope you all have a great day and the sun is shining wherever you are

~catch up & contemplation~

i have been tied up with my latest essay on medieval history and what with my laptop deciding to crash i have been all a muddle and out of sorts.

today however, with breaks in between to enjoy the sunshine (we have had the most glorious day here in the new forest!) i have pretty much done a good 95% of my work~i just need to spend tomorrow getting it tidy.

i have actually been really tired and exhausted for about for days so not even had the energy and inclination to sit at my lap top, today however i am feeling brighter.

i think last week was difficult as i had what i call my diabetes 'MOT' and it could have been a lot better, then i had to go with swampy to the dentist where he had a crown removed, only for the dentist to find an abscess under the crown so he took out the rest of the tooth, then on the strength of my MOT i was summoned to my doctor for a 'diabetes review' which ended up with an increase in my medication and being told i am anaemic and so now have to take tablets for that.

so all in all it was a stressful week and my m.e does not deal well with stress!!!

so i promise that at some point this week i shall come by your blog for a visit!

~oh dear~

yesterday~and it would have been friday 13th~normally i don't go with the whole superstition thing, but now? well!

my laptop crashed yesterday and while swampy was able to rescue enough and store on his hard drive i lost my complete contact list from outlook.

i am seriously miffed about this as there were a few contacts, old friends, for who i only had the e-mail contact.

so now i am wondering what to do~i think it may be the case of just waiting and hoping they e-mail soon.

plus everything looks wrong and i have to do some serious re-arranging~oh well.

so my lovelies~if you are one of the folk who contacts me on my e-mail can you please e-mail me so i can put you back in my contacts!

thank you!!!

oh and i will catch up with your blogs soon~have a 20th march deadline on an essay!

~signs of spring~

it is chilly but quite spring like here in our corner of the new forest and we have a welcome burst of color from the plants that survived five years of neglect~although i have had to rescue a few daffodils that were trampled by great lumbering paws belonging to a certain black and white whirlwind who has not yet realized the flowerbeds are out of bounds!

because we were over run with daffodils and our neighbour janet who lives in a really cute little cottage has none, swampy is at this moment out planting the rescued daffoldils, which he left in a nice protective ball of dirt, all along her fence~so in aweek or two they should be out in all their glory.

our soil seems to be quite good but we thought we would give it a spring boost so we have decided to buy some 'zoo poo' from a local nursery 'otters' that comes from paignton zoo