no snow here....

recieved these in an email from a friend, so theres always snow at Christmas somewhere!!

hope everybody has a good holiday season!!

the birds too!!

wishing for summer

I've just put this on my laptop as the background, as an antidote to winter gloom!! its the solstice and shortest day tomorrow so its all light from here on.....
the greenhouse showing between -5 C and 15 C. chilly...

laughing out loud

more animals at the LOLcats site

by the light of the Fiesta..

last night, going up to bring Smokey in to his stable after work, it was pitch black and some of the stable lights are not working. I couldn't see to read the code to open the padlock to get Smokeys breakfast ready for the following morning, he does not 'need' this feed or the treat of apples and carrots he gets for his tea, but.....how could you dissapoint the poor horse? so I reversed my Fiesta round the barn, avoiding building materials etc. and used it as a torch...don't know what the farmer would have thought of this and I'm not sure you are allowed to take your car round there. just to point out this car is 10 years old and sooooo reliable its amazing. just realized i don't have a picture of it, will try to take and post one today sometime.

and here is my wee garden robin, unfortuately I have had resisdent robins before, one was dispatched by the cat downstairs and another by the cat next door. my cats have yet to be accused of murdering robins, Tansy has had a couple of sparrows and a bluetit. Daisy has never caught anything as far as I know and I have seen birds hopping round her as if they know she is not a threat.

brrr......

late afternoon and the ice has not melted from the leaves of the purple sprouts(em, no sprouts actually just leaves!) the greenhouse temperature gauge showed a minimum of -5 C and a maximum of 18 C. it was a really sunny day so I did think it might have been a bit warmer in there. not sure of the outside temperatures, it would be interesting to have an outside one to compare.
this is the icy surface of..
this perfectly clear circle...
of ice formed in a bucket!
Katie eating hay, they eat out the centre and put their heads right in it. notice the rug is no longer clean, it still luminous enough to pick her out from a distance.

barefoot in the snow

just a barefoot baby horse.....I had my wellies on!!!

searching for colour

theres not much happening in the garden now, a careful search found very little to photograph, a late flowering borage, suffering a bit round the edges from the frosts.

the pernytta gives a good display of berries, the birds dont seem to eat them. we've had some snow but it didn't lie for long.

winter tidying

I've started to move the pots off my doorstep and put them in Billy's coldframes to keep them through the winter, if it gets really bad I can out their covers on for extra protection.

my leeks are doing good and there have been some nice pots of soup already, thanks Wildside for the seeds!!

a little rose doing its best in the sun, its blown away now...

a collection of autumn multi-coloured leaves, its a never ending thing... I used to keep them separate to compost but am too busy just now so have stuffed them in with everything else.

Ardie says...

o hai

winter time

Katie in her new winter coat.

"winter time" seems to have arrived promptly on top of the swift autumn wet, following the summer wet. we have had some stunning weather this week, freezing cold and bright sunshine. wrap up warm and be glad of the blue skys!!

I realise I don't update the blog as often as I used to, and while it started off mainly as a gardening diary it seems to have become more of a log for my journey with horses. mostly the weather is to blame as it really has been too wet this year to garden much, and half the time I will not even take my camera out with me so it does not get ruined in the bad weather. horses do not care what the weather is like and demand to be fed every day so you cannot put it off!

the lack of posts is also due to a lack of time, since last winter I have been working at two jobs, the receptionist post and the horses at weekends. so life is a bit full and not always nice. difficultys with office hours and office people are never ending, also there seems to be some 'subterfuge' happening, where there are factions and side and secrets? there is a very strange atmosphere. I can only long for financial security and the opportunity to have dirty fingernails all the time, and its really difficult to find a nail brush that will get that weekend dirt out!!
today I have a rare day to myself and its a beautiful day, so the I'm off into the frosty garden to see what jobs can be done today, the camera can come out too so hopefully a post soon with some plants in it.

white when washed

Smokey, he loves the mud. seriously, when he is washed he comes out white with a silver mane and tail.....which will now need to wait till next summer when its warm enough...

new wellie boots!!

whoohoo!! warm feet for the winter!!

I've treated myself to a new pair of Muckboots, neoprene lined comfy wellies, no more damp cold feet out doing the gardening or the horses. I sold a load of cross-stitch kits on e-bay to raise the money, I probably bought them off e-bay in the first place and I am not going to have time to do them.

on a comfy seat

here's Katie, wearing the saddle I sold my kayak to buy... its treeless and fits virtually any horse/pony. so far its been on Katie, Robbie, Smokey and Duke.
its a Barefoot Cheyenne, used with a Grandeur Saddle pad. it has a fiberglass form over the pommel and the rest of it is mostly padded foam, soooooooooooooo comfy.
it can make a real difference to the horse too, Duke in particular is a 20yr old thorougbred, dancing about on his toes and making his new owners nervous. I sat on him for about 5 seconds and decided his saddle was hurting his back(yes he was trying to politely tell them this, considering what he could have done!!), so I put my saddle on him and rode him and he turned into a different horse, quiet, responsive and kind. his owners have just ordered him a Barefoot after seeing him ridden in it a few times, good!!

autumn closing in

This is Ruaraidh, his mum Sally is starting a new blog called Ruaraidhstails. Sally has been a great facilitator for Permaculture in Scotland, organising courses and keeping tabs on us all.

this is a 'gone to flower' red lettuce, it makes for an attractive plant but is now bitter to eat, I give them to Bella(the guinea pig) who is staying while my mum is on holiday.
how different this red sprout looks to
this one which is in a different bed....the caterpillers liked this one!1
my pumpkin harvest!
and the forlorn empty greenhouse!! it's still to get its good clean out and most of the pots/trays will be washed in the bath and then go into my attic till spring when they are used again.

I have just had soup made with homegrown veg, potatoes, onions, turnip, parsnip, carrots and leeks. so that was good!!

ta-dah's

this photo won 1st in the amatuer photo at a local horticultural show
this one was second in the novice. I was really pleased and there was prize money too!! I've put it towards new re-chargable batteries for my camera.
and this is copy of my 'blue ticks', which means passes, for the Quantum Savvy Level 1 which I am working on with Smokey, whoohoo! just two to go, but I will need to borrow a horse trailer for no.3, and that might take a while! this is me and Smokey, its a bit blurry as its taken from the wee movie I sent for Assignment 6. he's a good boy!! thankyou Smokeys mum!!

er...tomato!!!

from the top the usual 'catface' of the Purple Calabash tomato
underneath its a sort of tomato mutant!!

I'll give it another couple of days to ripen up on the window sill and then see how it tastes, probably great!

poppy volunteer

in amongst the leeks! one of the joys of not being a great weeder is having lovely things like this appear.
the weather can only be described as 'continuing dreich', I cannot even cut the grass and am having to pay somebody to cut it regularly, and I like cutting grass and can't really afford the extra expenditure, thats how bad it is!!

waiting for some sunshine. . . .

slowly ripening black Nyagous, mmmmm......
this is a tomato called Purple Calabash, er, not the most attractive tomato! its very tasty, I had some last year.
not ripe yet but just to show the lovely heart shape of the Oregon Cherry tomato, the seeds for these were a gift from Wildside. they are very tasty, I have harvested and eaten quite a few of these, none lasting long enough to get their picture taken.....
this gladioli has been coming up for a couple of years now, the original corm handed in from a neighbor.
and one of three surviving sunflowers, I think I planted about forty seeds, and none of them have reached over two feet high, this flower is about two inches across, thats because we have had no sun.

whoopeee! pumpkin stew!! one of these is Small Sugar and one is Invincible, labels lost so not sure which is which!
and the other green one, this is as close as I could get through the tangle of plant.

whooohooo!!

clutched here in my grubby hand is lovely black tomato called Nyagous. very tasty it was too!!

days go by

well the days seem to be flying by, a lot of it seems unproductive. think I've seen about three days of sun this 'summer'. its a bit depressing!! harvesting: potatoes, carrots, beetroot, lettuce, peas, mange-tout, courgettes, tomatoes, beans, onions. in flower: lavendar, goats-rue, monarda, sedum, geraniums, pelargoniums, begonia, hostas, sweet-peas, lychnis, marigold, diggers speedwell, cone flower, carnations, astrantia, clematis, persicaria and the tall purple thing, sure it has a name! also the yellow thing, which begins with a p. . . .ha. . memory loss. . .
I have just spent a weekend with Katy at a natural horsemanship clinic run by Quantuum Savvy from Australia, what they must think of our summer weather I don't know! it was freezing last August when they were here. I have learned so much my brain is a bit fried now.

awwww...

more cat pictures

sweet tooth?

this is my gooseberry crop, variety something with red in the name, I think it looks like a bowl of glass marbles. they've been simmered down, and I add a can of condensed milk and a tub of double cream. gooseberry fool. yum.

update on mystery volunteer

ta dah!!! and here is the flower from my mystery plant, correctly named as dactyloriza by my dear friend Francesca.

this holiday

a few days off work, nice and dry today so I'm not so much gardening as waging 'damage control' on borders and spaces which have not been weeded since last year!!!!
vegies being overgrown by 'italian aster', a lettuc left to go to seed, but I didn't realise it would take over!!
still, out from underneath things, the produce from a bucket grown potato, yum!