…winter’s grand entry…

Little robin redbreast fluttered across the icy white frost like little flame bursts of energy against the pellucid Hoare.  

Kanga, munching snap frozen tips of grass, decided that our seedling Eucalypts would make a tasty snack…”nope we’ll spit that out, all but the new succulent leaves…and then, just for good measure we’ll toss it around a bit!”

Poor little trees…nature can be rough…healthy kanga though! There are a  lot of babies again this year…all legs and playfulness; then there’s the fox still dropping by….she sits outside the bathroom window and I always know she’s there long before I actually go to look…I swear I can hear her in my head. The crazy raven still visiting too, muttering from the roof in her guttural raven tongue…sometimes I think I can almost hear words…at least most of us can relate to talking to oneself.

Post Samhain…time to sit and observe the years passing from one season to another before the first seeds are sown in trays in the propagation house. The cuttings from Roses, Lombardy Poplars,  Silver Birch and Pussy Willow are all rooting and sprouting…Pussy Willow, cut down in her prime for daring to spread her roots too far into the underground water pipes, right on Lammas too. She would be proud to see all the stripling, born from those now dead branches, the rest having gone to the Samhain pyre.

 I’ve mourned her 14 year presence after the plumber, ‘took her out,’…what a shock that was, to come home and find her gone.

The Wrens, Little Jacky Winter, Finches, Sparrows, little orange beaked Blackbirds, Grey Thrushes and Rosella still fly to where her ‘etheric outline’ can still be seen; they come to a screeching halt and land on the ground instead. I wonder if her energy will last as long as we keep the memory of her…personally I’ll never forget her red tipped buds in late winter, that burst into soft white furriness in early spring. Thee little babies grown from her limbs will be a living testimony to her memory.

Planning time and for the preparation of soil and mulch for the new veggie beds…the chooks are about to  have a ball in the greenhouse…’de-pesting’ the ‘bum to bum’ bugs and aphids that have taken out the tops of some of the sprouting broccoli…(we’ve never had aphids before so I think they must have come in on the seedlings I was given…grrrr). They’ll enjoy digging over the old dead growth of Pumpkin, Zucchini and Brassica leaves that add nitrogen to the soil… just add  chook manure…seaweed and a pile of mulch and we’ll be all set to rotary hoe.

Onions, garlic and leeks are all well on the way…time to make some horseradish relish to keep away the winter chills…soup weather’s here and the pumpkins are ready…they’ve been drying off on the deck since Samhain…mmmm…off to the kitchen we go…blessings…silver