It seems a long time since the last entry, even though it is only a month or so. I have sold a few jars of honey at work but due to the cold weather and dark nights, haven’t been down to see if the bees are ok for a couple of weeks. I’m sure they’re fine, they have plenty of stores and they’re in a sheltered spot. But I should still go, just to make sure.
Work at the allotment has pretty much come to an end. Poor organisation led to there being nothing to plant or, worse, harvest and the experiment of putting some salad and a few extra beans in the unheated greenhouse has come to nothing. In order to try and avoid this next year, I have been checking the catalogues and deciding, in discussion with Agnieszka, what we should try and grow next year. In addition, I have been steaming through a few books now that the nights are dark and there’s not much to do other than huddle round the computer.
From several days the weather has been dull, damp and foggy. Standard summer weather Agnieszka thinks. But yesterday it was bright and sunny, as well as extremely crisp and cold, so we went out for a walk. We ended up in Blackrod, on a walk we’d done before. Nothing too energetic, just a five-miler round the fields and along the canal. After the fog, there was plenty of hoar frost giving grass and trees an almost cartoon-like foliage, making rose hips look like candied peel.
Spiders’ webs were strings of ice crystals and along the road and through the wood there was the constant slithering sound of ice, melted by the watery winter sun, dropping off the branches onto the floor.
In the sun it was relatively warm, but once we’d got into the woods and down into the valley to cross the River Douglas, it got terribly cold. Emerging on to the canal bank later, a sheet of ice covered the water, broken with a sound like an Arctic ice-breaker by a passing narrow boat. The crew, two men and a woman, were bundled up in coats, hats, gloves and scarves but, despite the cold, looked like they were enjoying themselves as they chugged sedately on down the canal in the direction of Liverpool.
For once the walk wasn’t a mud-fest and we managed to get round without getting too spattered. The ground was fairly solid and the paths firm. A robin sang at us as we crossed a bridge and we could hear the wheezing of some geese in flight. Two hours was enough though, and it was back to the warmth of the house and a cup of healing barszcz – surely the best soup ever invented.
Work at the allotment has pretty much come to an end. Poor organisation led to there being nothing to plant or, worse, harvest and the experiment of putting some salad and a few extra beans in the unheated greenhouse has come to nothing. In order to try and avoid this next year, I have been checking the catalogues and deciding, in discussion with Agnieszka, what we should try and grow next year. In addition, I have been steaming through a few books now that the nights are dark and there’s not much to do other than huddle round the computer.
From several days the weather has been dull, damp and foggy. Standard summer weather Agnieszka thinks. But yesterday it was bright and sunny, as well as extremely crisp and cold, so we went out for a walk. We ended up in Blackrod, on a walk we’d done before. Nothing too energetic, just a five-miler round the fields and along the canal. After the fog, there was plenty of hoar frost giving grass and trees an almost cartoon-like foliage, making rose hips look like candied peel.
Spiders’ webs were strings of ice crystals and along the road and through the wood there was the constant slithering sound of ice, melted by the watery winter sun, dropping off the branches onto the floor.In the sun it was relatively warm, but once we’d got into the woods and down into the valley to cross the River Douglas, it got terribly cold. Emerging on to the canal bank later, a sheet of ice covered the water, broken with a sound like an Arctic ice-breaker by a passing narrow boat. The crew, two men and a woman, were bundled up in coats, hats, gloves and scarves but, despite the cold, looked like they were enjoying themselves as they chugged sedately on down the canal in the direction of Liverpool.For once the walk wasn’t a mud-fest and we managed to get round without getting too spattered. The ground was fairly solid and the paths firm. A robin sang at us as we crossed a bridge and we could hear the wheezing of some geese in flight. Two hours was enough though, and it was back to the warmth of the house and a cup of healing barszcz – surely the best soup ever invented. 
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