dear diary ~ time is going quickly now…

We are almost at the end of our time here and winding down on the task list.  There has been rain but mainly overnight and the weather looks set to hold although I think the temperature has dropped a few degrees.

Today I really must prune the apple tree – a job I have kept putting off as I confess I really do not know what I am doing.  I have read up on plenty of pruning advice and watched one or two videos but none of the trees in their pictures look quite like mine and I feel rather daunted by it all.  It is a Braeburn and I have no idea how it is getting pollinated as ideally it says they need two other apple trees and all we have is the large Bramley apple tree nearby.  Surprisingly then, we had a lovely little crop last year.  Now I am worried I might prune off the wrong branches and be left with a framework that produces fewer apples.

We managed the tip run yesterday and the lovely men that work there helped us with unloading the old plasterboard from the kitchen ceiling and then even swept out the trailer – we would not have had that service at home.  They keep the place swept and clean and carefully signed so you know that you are not going to risk getting a puncture there from old nails and broken glass.  Our tip down at home is quite badly run and by people that really couldn’t care less – I am not sure they ever sweep up.

Thankfully, now we have the brown garden waste bin at home to take the stuff we can’t compost we don’t have to visit our tip very often.  When I can I always find homes for any unwanted items rather than take them to the tip, even bits of wood and old tools – there is often a charity that will take odd things or Freecycle. It makes me feel quite ill to see people unloading some quite good stuff from their car into the skips.  It seems criminal to me to see bikes, toys, cabinets etc. being thrown away.  I even saw someone throw away a large plastic dog basket….what would have been wrong about washing it well and passing it on? In Stranraer you can take all these items to the big shed next to the tip where they will sell them on (I believe they repair bikes too).

The snowdrops are spreading around the woodland walk quite nicely now but not as quickly as I would like so I will be transplanting some of them to places new as they are just on the turn and will be over by the time we come again.

We have noticed this week that we seem to have acquired a flock of crows at the cottage – they are being fed indirectly by someone in the village who believes he is feeding the smaller garden birds but the crows are muscling in on the food he puts out and steadily growing in number.  At the moment they are just using our tall trees in the wood to perch on when they are circling overhead but I am a bit worried about them starting to nest there and take up residence.  One of the villages not too far from here suffer with a rather large nesting crow colony and the continual noise they make gets to quite a pitch… and it goes on all day like the Chinese water torture.

I made a large pan of lentil and leek stew yesterday so there is still plenty for today’s evening meal and it means we can garden for that bit longer ……and we certainly need to….I can hear the weeds growing!

Have a great day x