Cold Winter Sunshine

If only we lived in North Yorkshire, then we might see a bit more snow from these pesky Northerlies and North Westerlies. It's snowing today on the east Coast but here inland we're sheltered from the North by the Pennines.

All I can do is watch from afar, the snow falling in Scotland on Traffic Scotland. Still, second best to snow is glorious winter sunshine and it's looks as though it's going to be like this all day, although it's still bloody freezing!

Paul.

Roses & Heather

The garden is still looking like a building site, we’ve not had time this weekend to get out there and do some digging.

We have, however, been to the garden centre and bought some heather, mini roses and daisy’s which we’ve planted in the boarders.

It’s still looking a little bare at the moment but things should start spreading out once they get going.

I think we’re doing quite well to say that we’re still in the depths of winter….until Wednesday that is ..lol..

Paul

Surprise Snow

When I took the dogs out at 6am this morning it was raining, then when we came downstairs at 6.30am, it was snowing! It just kept on coming until about 8am by which time we had a good 2-3cm of lying snow. The minor roads were a nightmare and main road was at a standstill but luckily not in the direction we needed to go! Here's a few snaps taken on the mobile this morning...

Paul.

Brokeback Garden Through The Lens

Debbie wandered around with the camera last Saturday afternoon and here are the results.....

Sunrise outside our home.

Back breaking work in the garden!

Off we go with another load.

The old tree in bits at the top of the garden.

Lucy, ultimate poser!

Some new heather Debbie has planted.

Cute!

Big Ears!

Dopey!

Toddy, not hiding very well!

Blooming spring is on the way.

It's me, thinking about a nice cold pint!

Paul

Touch Of Snow

We woke to a light covering of snow this morning, sadly it's turning to sleet and forecast to turn to rain soon.

He ho, maybe there's still time for a blizzard and 3 feet of snow to fall.......well I can dream lol.


Paul.

Brokeback Garden

It's been one long hard slog this weekend, those pesky pebbles are chuffin heavy when you get to the 50th barrow full! I got them all shifted though and we're now ready to start preparing the ground for our new lawns. At least I've got a week to recover before getting stuck in with the fork, turning over all the soil.

The cats enjoyed being outdoors over the weekend, well Toddy here and Eric did, Misty spent most of the time watching from the kitchen, he doesn't do cold weather!

We had our first butterfly of the year in our garden which seems a bit early to me.

Hopefully, with the new lawns and flowers this year, we'll be seeing plenty more butterflies through the spring and summer months.

Happy Valentines Day!

Buttercup

Hope you've had a grrrrrrrrrrrreat Valentines Day!

Yorkshire Snowman

X X X

Snowbabies On Ice

The days are getting longer now, it's light when we leave for working the morning and it's only just gone dark when we get home, although, today, Crunchie Day, finishing early means we'll be leaving the grindstone behind before it gets dark. As we move into mid February, there's still no sign of any snow but at least we've had a little bit of sunshine over the last few days.

Earlier in the week we got a flyer through from the Sheffield sports summat or other, with vouchers for venues around and about. One in particular took our eye, for the new ice rink, Ice Sheffield. I used to go ice skating years ago every Saturday night and hugely enjoyed it. We tried it a while ago at the ice rink in Doncaster but the skates were unbelievably painful and the split level ice rink wasn't really suitable for learning on although it might be quite interesting when we can skate properly and in relative comfort.

When we've got the garden licked into shape, we'll pop down to the shop down at the rink, Ice N Easy, and see if we can't find a comfy pair of skates that don't cripple you as soon as you try to stand up. That's if we aren't already crippled by digging over the garden this weekend!

Paul.

We Can See Our Garden!

First thing on Sunday we got the required chainsaw oil and raced back home to get stuck in. First we used the strimmer on the few bushes that were staying, getting them all nice and tidy. Then out came the chainsaw, first we practised on a couple of pieces of the trunk we felled last summer, it was a doddle and we wasted no time in making a move on that giant half way up our garden.

I got one piece off with no trouble at all, then Dad arrived to give us a hand. After twenty minutes discussing where to cut the thing, I cut the wedge as requested and then we got stuck because it didn't want to fall where we wanted it to. We got the top bit off in the end and wasted no time in taking out the rest of the tree.

We're not sure what to do with what's left yet, we think we'll drill some holes in it and use some root killer to finish the job off. With the big tree out of the way, we then took down the tree that's doing battle with our Christmas tree, this took all of 3 seconds! The final job of the afternoon was to dig out some of the smaller trees from the flower bed, one of which took the best part of an hour with the roots being so deep.

Looking up the garden as we were packing up, we were amazed at just how much everything has opened up and how much we've achieved this weekend. All we've got to do now is remove all the pebbles, reposition all the roses so we can make the flower beds narrower, dig everything over, lay a patio, sew a new lawn and sew a load of flower and vegetable seeds. We're just hoping the weather is kind to us next weekend so we can get stuck in once again.

Paul.

Armed & Dangerous!

We’ve been DIY shopping again today a bought a wheel barrow, a shovel and an electric chainsaw! Yep, those pesky logs and tree stumps are going, along with the tree that’s growing too close to our Christmas tree. We would have got started today had we known we needed to put oil in the chainsaw and charge the trimmers for 5 hours. We’ll pick some oil up tomorrow before Dad arrives to give a helping hand in exchange for Sunday dinner.

We’ve still got loads done though, the massive pile of branches in the middle of the garden and the branches and leaves a foot deep all the way up the garden path have been transported by wheel barrow to the top of the garden out of the way.

We can’t wait to get stuck in again tomorrow, the garden will be transformed and ready for operation ‘prepare for new lawn and patio’ to begin.

Paul

We're Back!

To be fair to BT, we did get the correct disk through the post but it turned out that our modem was faulty so we had to order a new one. As if that wasn’t enough, the computer ceased working altogether, it had been switching itself off all week and finally gave up the ghost on Tuesday.

So with 45 minutes to spare before closing, we raced off to PC World and bought a new one, which turned out to be cheaper that the last one we bought 3 years ago, even with the extra 512 meg memory we added on top of the 256 meg onboard.

We picked up the new modem from the post office yesterday morning and installed it last night. The BT installation disk was great, completely idiot proof, guiding us through the connection through Ethernet instead of USB which I wouldn’t have known we could do. Our connection was quickly restored and we’ve loaded everything we need to, Firefox, Google Talk and the printer.

One last thing we need to do is get all the disks together and put them in a very safe place!

Paul