A week for staying indoors

Tuesday saw the first of our winter snow - just too late for us to have a white Christmas. Here in England, despite many Christmas cards and Christmas films featuring snowy scenes, it's fairly rare for us to have snow at Christmas. It's far more common for snow to arrive during the middle or end of winter. 

As it was we only really had a slight covering and, other than on the fields, that didn’t hang around for very long. It was Ruby's first experience of snow but there wasn't enough for it to register on her list of interesting things.

I really feel sorry for the birds when the weather is as cold as it has been. I am really amazed that such tiny creatures manage to keep warm enough to survive.

Rather than hunkering down somewhere sheltered, this wood pigeon fluffed up it’s feathers and chose one of the high points in the garden from which to oversee the comings and goings. At least he or she didn't choose to perch on Martyn's weather vane and disrupt the readings.

Blackbirds take advantage of the suet pellets that we pop on the bird table each morning but they also forage around amongst the leaves, under the trees and shrubs, for tasty morsels. As well as unfortunate minibeasts, they also find anything that the smaller birds  drop when dining at the feeders that hang in the tree.

The feeders were very busy catering for a flock, or more accurately speaking, a charm of goldfinches. The favourite feeder food for many of our feathered visitors is sunflower hearts. Whilst the feeding perches were all taken, others waited in the tree for their turn. Squabbles broke out if an impatient individual tried to nudge its way in.

The goldfinches were joined by one or two greenfinches and various tits dashed in to grab a bite when space allowed. They were too fast to photograph as they were in and off in the blink of an eye.

I wonder whether the birds will stick around during this year's RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch. Usually the birds get a tip off, maybe a tweet is sent out, and make themselves scarce on the day that we choose to count them. 

Other than watching the birds and trying to take half decent photos of them through the diamond leading of our besmirched windows, what else have I done to occupy my time?

We have braved the cold to take Ruby for a walk - we walk and she runs. Whilst we stick to the paths she likes to run in the muddy grass. What she doesn't like is having her legs and feet washed when she gets in. I often end up as wet as she is.

We were concerned that she would be frightened by the barrage of fireworks on New Year’s Eve. This year they seemed to go on from early evening to late at night but she more or less ignored them.

I topped up my Kindle library - I know many people prefer to stick to paper books but for the price of paper books you can buy three or more times the number of ebooks. With our bookshelves already full to overflowing, we just wouldn't have the space to accommodate more. It's also so convenient to 'go shopping' from the house at any time during the day or night and have books appear almost instantly on your device. I also like to think that I am cutting down on my use of paper. 

My latest read was The Moon Sister by Lucinda Riley. This is the fifth book in her Seven Sisters series. I've enjoyed every one so far.

I don't like reading books straight after one another so I intersperse my reading with daily puzzles from an app on my iPad and a Jigsaw puzzle app. I do have actual jigsaw puzzles but it's convenient to have puzzles that I can do whilst curled up on the sofa and I can also make puzzles from my own photos.

Of course, there is the usual cooking to be done. Martyn and I share the cooking so it's good to have days off when my meals are placed on the table for me.

I used the red cabbage that we cut before Christmas to make a batch of coleslaw.

I used some of the savoy cabbage, cut at the same time, along with potatoes and carrots in a vegetable hash. I used stock, rather than water, to give the dish more flavour. You could mix and match various other vegetables in a similar way.

I also made a Mediterranean vegetable lasagne. Some of our onion and tomato sauce from the freezer went into this but I'm afraid that I bought most of the other ingredients so I did wonder whether I should mention it on a blog that is about home grown produce. I topped my version with a sprinkling of parmesan.

On a cookery related theme; I really used to hate using my previous garlic press so I thought that I'd share with you one of my favourite little kitchen gadgets.

It's more accurately a garlic crusher rather than a press. I hope the pictures are self explanatory. The clove of garlic is popped into the bottom half of the crusher. The top half is pushed on and the two halves are twisted a few times in opposite directions. Hey presto, the teeth crush the clove ready for use with little effort and the crusher, unlike my old garlic press, cleans really easily with just a swish in soapy water.

I'd be interested to know whether anyone else has a favourite mini gadget. I've a couple of others that I'll share in later posts.

To finish, I can't avoid mentioning the thing that is occupying so much of our collective minds at the moment. I'm guessing quite a lot of you are now in the new tier four restrictions. As I write this, here in Yorkshire we are still in tier three but I guess that could change within minutes but let's look on the positive side. The Oxford vaccine has now been approved in the UK so we now have two weapons in our arsenal with which to fight this scourge. The fact that this vaccine doesn't require storage at impossibly low temperatures means that it will be easier to distribute and the roll out is due to start immediately. I think thanks should be given to the scientists who have been working so hard on our behalf to achieve what was thought to be an impossible task. Now we all just have to wait for our phone call. On Twitter, a doctor asked if people would attend appointments at 2:30 a.m. if the vaccine was distributed 24 hours a day? Too right I would - the sooner the better!

‘Til them stay healthy, stay safe and keep smiling!

Copyright: Original post from Our Plot at Green Lane Allotments http://glallotments.blogspot.co.uk/ author S Garrett