First Frost

Wow, it's cold outside. I know that I shouldn't be surprised because after all, it's almost December but it's been so mild here in Cornwall that it makes it all the more of a shock to the system when the cold weather finally hits! This morning when I got up, there was a hard frost. Everything sprinkled with a generous coating of sparkle turning the whole place into a glittery, albeit totally freezing, magical place. I love cold frosty winter mornings. Despite the numb fingers from having to break the ice on the llama troughs and the chicken feeders and the permanently red cheeks and windswept messy hair I seem to have between November and March, I still prefer cold and frosty to mild and wet. 

This morning, after I fed the chickens and the llamas, stuffed the field shelter full of hay and filled up the hay nets, I grabbed my camera and set off in search of some frosty pictures. I know all my neighbours already think I'm nuts and I can only imagine what they think when they see me flitting around all over the place snapping frosty foliage with merry abandon. I always find it very difficult to capture the sparkle of the sun on the frost but nevertheless, I will keep trying and hopefully one day I will snap the perfect sunny, frosty, glittery winter photo. 

Luckily, just before the weather turned cold, I finally got around to having my chimney swept. Something I had neglected to do last year and after a hair-raising episode with some burning soot falling down the chimney last march, the open fire was abandoned until I could get it swept. Obviously, being the super-organised person that I am, (NOT) I again forgot to get it sorted throughout the summer and it was only when I realised that I was going to need the fire as soon as the weather turned cold that I finally got around to booking the chimney sweep. A very nice, very efficient young man arrived and managed to sweep the chimney in under an hour making less mess than I do when I clean out the ashes! I can highly recommend him if you need your chimney sweeping in the Plymouth/Cornwall area. They are called Vivid Clean Sweep and you can click on the name to go to their website. 

(Please note, this is not a sponsored post and I paid for the chimney to be swept, it was not done for free but I always believe a good job should be acknowledged so I asked him if I could mention him in my post)

And one final thought, I am definitely going to have to do something about those leaves in my gutters. Not much point just yet though because there are still loads of leaves still on the trees so I shall wait until the last of the leaves are gone and then try and figure out a way to get rid of them ...... so far I have got 

1. A ladder - probably not a good idea because I don't like heights!

2. A net on a long pole so I can stand on the wall next to the road above the house and scoop them out - it's going to have to be a very long pole 

3. And my personal favourite ........ pay someone else to risk life and limb climbing up a bloody great ladder to get the leaves out of my gutter! 

Sorted :-)

A Cold and Frosty Morning

This morning, once again, I had to go and thaw out the ice in the water troughs in the field. The llamas, otherwise known as "The Boys" because ....well..... because they're all boys, were happily lying in the corner of the field munching on some hay enjoying the early morning sunshine. You would think that in this weather they would be huddled up in their nice warm field shelter but they actually don't use it very much, they prefer to sleep outside, under the stars. With their thick, dense coats, they are perfectly insulated from the cold, but, just in case, as well as filling up the field shelter with hay, I usually put down a thick layer of hay in a corner of the field for them and they are more than happy to just chill out and munch.  In winter, they also have a combination of alpaca pellets and goat mix along with their hay and they can hear the rattle of the buckets even before I get to the field gate. They come charging over to say hello, humming softly while I give each of them a bucket of feed. I have had The Boys for almost 9 years now and they are absolutely lovely animals to own.

Anyway, although it was absolutely freezing this morning, it was beautifully sunny with crisp, clear blue skies, so when I went to feed the boys this morning I took my camera along with me. 

As the sun hits the pond it starts to steam

My rose bush is still flowering 

Any way, after feeding The Boys, I decided that as the weather was so nice, I should have a bit of a tidy-up. It's amazing how many plant pots and bits and pieces have managed to accumulate in the garden since the end of the summer. I filled two black bags with broken plant pots, bits of plastic, old plant labels and copious amounts of pink twine from my bales of hay. I risked life and limb clearing the leaves out of the porch roof guttering, re-stacked the logs that had been scattered about by the pheasant that was being chased by my neighbours cat and repaired the gate latch that had worked loose and which meant that the gate didn't close properly. All in all, a good mornings work. By lunchtime though, I was freezing and ravenously hungry, it must be something about being outside it the fresh air that does that to you, so it was back inside to sit by the fire, thaw out and have a lovely bowl of home made chicken soup ....... Yummm

The First Frost of the Year and a Garden Tidy-Up.

Where I live, in Cornwall, the weather so far this year has been all over the place. The summer was a total washout, it rained almost non-stop from about April to September, caused by the shifting Jet Stream (you can read about it on my post here), the garden was so full of slugs and snail that all my vegetable patch ended up being was an a la carte picnic for the greedy little buggers and now, when the weather should be turning wintery and cold with sharp frosts and air cold enough to make your nose go red, it's been just dank and grey and drizzly and not very wintery at all. This morning, however, I got up to a lovely crisp frost and piercingly blue skies with a lovely glimpse of the sun. I love days like this. I don't mind the cold, in fact I prefer very cold and sunny to damp and dismal because at least I can get out into my garden and attempt to put right the months of neglect caused by such an awful summer.

My garden is a mess. That's the only way I can describe it. I follow some fabulous gardening blogs and I'm a member of UK Veg Gardeners, a brilliant site for all things garden related and full of people with the most amazing gardens and allotments and when I read their blogs I just have no idea how they do it. It should be so easy for me to keep my garden tidy, well maintained and weed free with so much time on my hands but in my defence, it's very difficult to mow the lawn in the rain with my teeny tiny electric lawn mower without risking life and limb and electrocution. There is also only so much gardening in the pouring rain that I can tolerate before I give up and go inside for a cup of tea and a cake! Rain dripping down my neck while battling enormous, slimy molluscs is not how I like to spend an afternoon in my garden!

No rain today though. So today is a gardening day. The inside jobs will have to wait. While there is sun in the sky and it's not raining I will be pottering in my garden trying to take back control of the chaos and get it back to how it was before the summer.

I did get slightly side-tracked by the gorgeous frost covered plants though :-)