15.01. It's not raining!

It’s not raining today! Yeah! Well, small things make me happy :-) I have been outside in my garden for over 2 hours today, clearing up mostly, and I have managed to get almost half of the long beds done. I have taken out dead twigs and leaves from last year’s plants, and thrown away all the other strange things I find in my flower beds. Today I found: 4 vertebrae of different sizes from an animal that can only be a cow or something of similar dimension...don’t ask me how the cow got in my garden...I assume it didn’t climb over and die here, I haven’t found any other leftovers...so I guess I have to blame those bloody foxes again, for dragging their dinner into my garden. Somewhere in the neighbourhood, someone is either feeding the foxes or being rather casual with their rubbish. I also found two cable ties, something I find quite often in my garden; usually the ones made of metal, but today they were black plastic. It is the birds that bring them into the garden, they use them to build
their nests, and the shinier the better it seems! And sometimes they drop them, or they fall out of their nests, from the two tallest trees I got, and from the roof where there are several nests every spring. The result is that I get a steady supply of cable ties all year round! So where do they get them from you might wonder? Not  sure, but I guess they pick them from building sites round the area, or from skips and landfill sites where building material has been dumped. Last year I had a whole bag full, probably more than 50, which I threw away in my household rubbish in the autumn. I should probably have written my name on them and seen if any of them ever came back into my garden!

Here is today’s catch, cable ties and bones, before it went in the rubbish bin - I expect to find more tomorrow, if the weather is holding up and I get a chance to continue tomorrow. I haven’t been doing anything in my garden since early November, that’s unusual – and it shows. There are a lot more leaves to clear up than I would normally have, and almost every bush that is still above ground needs pruning, now or within the next 2 months or so. I prune my roses last, usually late march, so they don’t get fooled to start sprouting too early and get caught on another wave of frost which we might very well get. I found several plants in flower today, some according to plan, some surprisingly early considering we have just had 6 weeks of the coldest weather since record began. Tomorrow I will get my camera out before it’s starting to get dark; today I was too late and before I knew it, it was too dark to take any pictures.

But, enough about my garden, if you read my post on the 2^nd January, you might remember that I was a bit coy about what I had been doing that day, and said I was working on a project that I would be revealing later on...well, today I can tell you what it was about! It was my 4^th book, which is a book about Adrian, the grandchild of a friend of mine in Norway. My friend, Eva has taken pictures regularly over the whole year and sent me, and I was to make a DVD with them, with background music, for her and her daughter. But neither of them knew that I made a book of all of the photos too, and that was the surprise. I have had a very emotional 'thank-you' text message from them today, as they have received the parcel from me and seen the book and the DVD. It is very nice doing things like this when it is so very well received. You can see the whole book as a PDF file and read about the process HERE ON MY WEB-SITE, or go to THE AMERICAN COMPANY BLURB, who print my books, and view my books there. I am working on book number 5, and number 6 is already on my ‘virtual drawing board’ i.e. in my head :-) I like making books; there is something about getting the book in the post from the printer and putting it in my bookshelf, among all the other books, knowing that I made that one, and that one...and those two...very satisfactory, a very different feeling than making another section to my web-site.

I didn’t put a picture of my cat here yesterday, did you miss him? I took a picture of him last night, looking extremely relaxed; he often sleeps like this, as if his spine is twistable like a cork screw. He was asleep when I approached him, but anyone who’s got a cat at home will know that cats sleep very light and will open their eyes if you get near them, certainly if you intend to take a picture of them when they are asleep! But he is cute anyway, eyes open or shut, isn’t he? 

I think that’s it for today, dinner, TV and bed for me, I can feel my 2 hours in the garden in my back already, and tomorrow morning when I get out of bed I will most certainly feel them in every inch of my body...still, I enjoyed getting out there and get started, it’s the beginning of spring! Take care, I’ll be back.