Winter 3

Season’s Greetings!

Thursday, 24th December, 2015.

Last week I was thinking about the way that gradual change tends to pass almost unnoticed . . . even important things like our children growing up and the days lengthening or shortening.

In November we drove to the Cottage Hospital for Tim’s monthly blood test and the sun had already risen over Maughold Head while I was waiting in the car park.  In December we drove there in the dark.  There was heavy cloud so I wouldn’t have seen the sun rise even if we had been there at the right time.  The only sign of the approaching day was when the car park lights switched off . . . and the sky gradually turned a slightly lighter shade of grey.  While I was waiting, I saw two small birds swoop past and a little later there were some larger birds circling overhead.  It wasn’t light enough to see any more than their dark shapes but they were probably herring gulls riding the air currents over the Mooragh Brooghs.

I am not religious but it seems to me that the time of year in the northern hemisphere when the days start to lengthen again is significant (even if we don’t notice it) and really deserves to be celebrated.  The correct time this year would have been at 04-48 on Tuesday December 22 but there is no point in quibbling about a few days when it is easier to go with the flow and sacrifice the traditional turkey on the 25th.

So Happy Winter Solstice/Happy Christmas/Happy festival of your choice to all our family, friends and any unknown friends out in the blogosphere!

Winter 2

It is really starting to feel like winter.

Saturday 12th December, 2015

This morning I am happy that it is raining again - the more rain and the harder the rain the better as far as I am concerned.  It is not that we need any more rain.  It is more a question of schadenfreude.  A few minutes ago I saw a convoy of pheasant killers driving up the glen and anything which spoils their “fun” is fine with me.  

We have had another two and a half inches of rain since the end of last week but it has fallen in bits and pieces with almost dry days in between so there hasn’t been any major flooding although reports are coming in this morning of minor floods in the south of the Island - and snow on the mountain road.

I even managed to get some work done in the garden during the week and we took a load of garden refuse out to the tip on Friday morning.  I have also been collecting more wet leaves and piling them into the big leaf mould container that Tim erected at the bottom of the garden.  The trees have dropped all their leaves now although there are still a few left on the clematis and some of the shrubs.  

My main task involved the climbing rose by the summerhouse.  I have been thinking about tackling this rose since September when I took this photo hoping that it would help me to work out a plan.  

I decided that I needed to tie ropes  to a branch on the hawthorn, which is growing on the bank above the summerhouse, and then attach them to the trellis at the side of the summerhouse.  After that I could tie the rose to the ropes and hope that it would eventually grow tall enough to tangle itself up in the tree.  The main snag was that the only suitable hawthorn branch was rather high and I don’t like heights - so I kept avoiding the problem until the situation became critical after the gales last week when at least half the rose was blown free from the trellis. 

I didn’t want to tie the ropes around the hawthorn branch in case they chafed the bark.  During our shopping trip to Ramsey on Tuesday morning  we went in search of some tough cord/rope and a couple of sturdy plant straps to fix around the branches.  On our way up Parliament Street we inadvertently disturbed a young herring gull that was sleeping on the grass near East Street. He didn’t seem to be at all perturbed and after standing on one leg so that he could have a good stretch . . .

. . .  he posed for a photo.

Feltons didn’t have what we needed so we walked up to Market Square to see how the "regeneration" was progressing.  We had avoided this end of town for weeks because of the road works and were pleased to see that the work had been completed and that the square was available for parking again.

It wasn’t until we got home and I looked at my photos that I noticed the  words “electric vehicles” painted alongside two parking bays.  

Google obliged as usual, and I discovered that Ramsey was keeping up with the trend (or galloping ahead of it) and had installed a recharging station. I had even taken a photo which included the recharging station (the little black structure near the blue car in the foreground).

After inspecting Market Square, we walked down the quay towards the Farmers Combine.  The tide was high and some of the fishing boats were preparing to leave the harbour.

We stopped to look at the water birds.  We saw at least six adult swans but still no juveniles. There were also plenty of Canada geese and some mallard . . .

. . . and a huge gathering of black headed gulls which were relaxing on the water. These are just a few.

The Farmers Combine stocked strong nylon cord and plant straps so we managed to get everything that I needed to restrain the rose.  The only thing which delayed the work was the strong wind.  It was going to be a tricky enough job without contending with long thorny branches whipping around in the wind.

Wednesday morning looked promising.  There were still clouds around and they proved that not all clouds have silver linings . . . some have pink linings! 

But the wind was still strong so I did some clearing work at ground level and put off climbing ladders for another day.  

On Thursday the wind eased and I ran out of excuses.  I couldn’t find a suitable level place to stand the ladder so I wedged it above the hawthorn on the bank and tied it securely to the tree.  I wasn’t certain that the plant straps which I had bought would stand up to the weight of a wind-buffeted rose so I decided to recycle a couple of old nylon dog collars instead.  I climbed to the top of the ladder, clipped the collars around the branch, threaded the cord through them and then climbed down and got on with the painful task of attaching the cord to the trellis behind the rose and attaching the rose to the cord.  By the time I had finished my hands looked as though I had been wrestling with a wild cat.

This is the semi-tamed rose.  I hope it doesn’t try to break free again during the next gale.

And this is one of the recycled dog collars.

It has stopped raining now so I may go out and collect more leaves . . . or maybe not.  It is rather cold outside.  It is five degrees C in Ramsey - but factor in wind chill and it feels like zero.

Winter 1

A wet and wild start to winter

Monday 7th December 2015

The weather - and its aftermath - were the only topics of conversation last week.

It started with Clodagh, our third named storm, which passed over the Island on Sunday.  We were able to do the shopping in the morning before the rain set in and the wind strengthened.  This was fortunate because it was our last chance to shop before waiting around at home for a heating oil delivery early in the week.  We weren’t even aware that the fairly normal winter weather in the afternoon had a name until I read about it in The Guardian on Monday morning.  We congratulated ourselves on surviving unscathed in the glen after the onslaught of yet another storm - until we received a hand-delivered letter from the Department of Infrastructure in the afternoon which informed us that the road up the glen would be completely closed to all traffic and pedestrians from 09-00  on Tuesday until an “unstable tree has been removed and the area has been made safe”.

Tim phoned Manx Petroleum to let them know about the road closure and they rescheduled our delivery from Tuesday to Wednesday.  Then we walked down the road to inspect the offending tree.  It was a huge beech and did look rather hazardous.  The roots had been torn out of the ground and the only thing stopping the tree falling onto the road was the neighbouring tree.

We walked down again the next morning to find out whether the oil tanker would be able to get up the road on Wednesday.  One of the men working on the tree told us that the road would still be closed officially but that they would be allowing traffic to get through.  Work had already started on cutting back the top branches of the tree - a skilled and dangerous job requiring a good head for heights.

When we got home I decided to make a start on clearing old leaves out of our stream/ditch.  Bearing in mind last week’s resolution, I made the decision and stuck to it and this turned out to be more fortunate than I could have anticipated.

We walked back down the glen road in the afternoon to check on progress and on the way we met a couple going for a walk with their pet.  At first glance I assumed that they had a large dog - but that only goes to show that we don’t really look at things and tend to see what we expect to see.  This is the “dog” which was going for a walk.

The tree men had done an incredible job and the area had already been made safe.  Most of the tree had been removed and the road was completely clear and open to traffic.  

The huge trunk, which had been leaning towards the road, plus a few branches, had been left at the edge of the field.  They must have used a tractor and ropes or chains to get the trunk to fall into the field.

Wednesday started with a peculiar pink tinge to the morning light.  This isn’t a photoshop effect.  It really did look like this.  

They say that “Red sky in the morning is a shepherds warning” but in this case the sky wasn’t very red but the whole glen looked pink.  It heralded an uneventful day but perhaps it was an advance warning.  Our oil was delivered and then I spent a few hours working on the stream and removed most of the remaining leaves.

Thursday was wet, extremely wet.  The weather system wasn’t windy enough to be given a name although it really deserved one.  About two and a half inches or rain fell on our garden.  There was traffic chaos all over the Island with flooded roads, landslips blocking the mountain road and a semi-collapsed bridge in lower Laxey which dumped a school bus in the river.  Luckily the school children had already been delivered to their homes and the driver was advised to leave the bus before it toppled into the water.  The bridge had withstood two hundred years of Manx weather, including the notorious 1930 flood but Thursday’s weather was the last straw.  This photo is from the Manx Radio website.

The Auldyn River must have overflowed and filled up the glen road next to Milntown because we saw a lot of debris trapped under the fence and huge puddles in the Milntown grounds when we drove to the shops on Friday morning.

Our little stream managed to cope with all the water seeping out of the hillside above us but the main stream which flows through our neighbour’s garden on the other side of our mutual holly hedge clogged in a few places.  I spent some time clearing out the section above our top fence where a couple of big stones had slipped into the ditch and blocked the flow.  A bit of water had been diverted down the path above our fence, but not enough to cause any problems.  Further down the stream had overflowed and water was running down the edge of our neighbour’s drive as well as the usual blockage at the bottom of the ditch which causes a minor waterfall onto the road.  

So Friday was another day spent on removing wet leaves from ditches - but it would have been a whole lot worse if I hadn’t removed the bulk of the leaves before the deluge.

But the week wasn’t over yet.  On Friday evening and Saturday the next storm, called Desmond, arrived with warnings of severe damage, heavy rain and structural damage.  Islanders were warned to stay at home unless their journeys were absolutely essential and all the ferries were cancelled.  So we stayed indoors and waited for the devastation.  Luckily Desmond didn’t live up to the forecasts as far as the Island was concerned.   There were a few trees down but there was less rain than expected although the wind was strong and kept going for over twenty four hours.  Parts of Cumbria were not so fortunate and are still under water.

Sunday promised to be a better day with a glimmer of brightness in the east.

It lived up to the promise and there were even sunny periods.  I was able to clean out all the leaves that Desmond blew into the ditch.  This morning we are enjoying (?) ”Occasional rain &/or drizzle”  and winds of about Force 6 (strong breeze).  The next belt of rain (possibly heavy at times) is due to pass over the island this evening.

Autumn 12

Tail end of autumn

Sunday 29th November, 2015.

Saturday

The second named storm has been and gone and was barely noticed on the Island.  Well not in the glen anyway.  It is more sheltered here amongst the hills.  We don’t get the full blast of the south westerlies which crash into the coasts but we do get more than our fair share of rain.  Like life . . . what you lose on the proverbial swings you win on the roundabouts.  

The interest in the naming of storms seems to be abating.  The jokes about the names are even fizzling out in the newspaper website comments.  The next one will be called Clodagh which doesn’t have much scope for comedy.  Number two was Barney and someone asked whether we could expect to be inundated with pink dinosaurs.  He was immediately corrected  by another commenter who replied that Barney the cartoon dinosaur wasn’t pink . . .  he was purple and green!  

I remember the lurid dinosaur well.  He was a favourite of our eldest American granddaughter and much in evidence when we used to visit the Early Learning Centre in Douglas.  Modern children’s toys were rather a culture and colour shock for me.  I was brought up in the more pastel world of Beatrix Potter and Alison Uttley and was particularly fond of the illustrations of little British countryside animals.  I loved the original illustrations in the A. A. Milne books too but was never very fond of The Wind in the Willows.  The loud and obnoxious Mr Toad spoiled the book for me.  I have always had an aversion to loud and over-confident people.

Autumn is almost over and winter starts on Tuesday.  It hasn’t been very cold yet but the wet and windy spell continues.  I should be busy finishing off the autumn clear-up in the garden but the weather has turned wet and windy and I can't get motivated.  You will understand my reluctance to work in the garden if you read these comments on today's five day forecast from Ronaldsway:

Sat: Gales. Coastal overtopping of large waves near high tides.

Sun: Severe gales, with a risk of potentially damaging winds for a time (confidence in this low at present, please look for updates to forecast). Coastal overtopping near high tides, this quite severe.

Mon: Strong or gale force winds until later. Heavy rain, risk localised flooding.

Tues: Strong or gale force winds developing. Heavy rain, risk localised flooding.

Wed: Strong or gale force winds. Risk ice on highest roads later as it turns colder

So I am stuck inside with plenty of time to write but nothing to photograph and nothing to write about apart from the weather.  I think I need a new hobby . . . although there are little bits of brightness even on some of the cloudiest days.

We did go for two short walks about a week ago.  We just wandered up the tarred roads to the top of Fern Glen and up our branch of the glen to the entrance to the muddy footpath through the pheasant estate.

I took about half a dozen photos, none of great interest but the river was higher than usual.

And there were some golden beech leaves on branches overhanging the water.

Work was proceeding on the old barn, which is being converted, enlarged and turned into a modern home next door to Far End.

The sun came out briefly and lit up the remaining leaves on a nearby birch.

And the lions on the gateposts are still guarding the entrance to Fernside.  They always remind me of Betsy-Lee our crazy Schipperke who thought they looked very threatening and barked at them when she was a puppy.  I am not sure whether she realised that they represented big cats.   She had a tendency to hysteria and also barked at some white quartz stones at the side of the road outside Baytree Cottage.

I took this photo of the east side of Skyhill above our house from a field about half the way up the Fern Glen Road.  The bare pale grey branches of the ash trees trace the course of the little streams that trickle down the hillside.  Some of the water ends up running down the ditch through our garden.

Sunday

There are still a few colourful leaves on the big white flowering cherry but most have been ripped off by the wind and are littering the front lawn and the flower beds.

I started reading Håkan Nesser's latest book on Friday.  The first sentence appealed to me.  “The day before yesterday I decided that I would outlive my dog.  I owed him that.”  I felt I could identify with the narrator because I agree that we owe it to our dogs to outlive them.  The second paragraph starts “That is how I intend to pass the time from now on.  Make decisions, and stick to them.  It is not all that difficult, but harder than it sounds . . . “.   That resolution also appealed to me.  I am quite good at making decisions.  It is the sticking to them where I come unstuck.

During the non-gardening weather I have been spending far too much time reading the on-line newspapers and my first decision is that I must stop reading the opinion columns in the Guardian - and particularly the below the line comments.  There are mainly heated clashes between the right wing bigots (who should be reading the Daily Mail and only visit the website to annoy and the Guardianistas) and the left wing “professionally offended” types . . . with a few reasonable people caught in the crossfire.  I don’t know why they bother to argue.  Nobody ever shifts from their entrenched point of view.

As well as the repeated slanging matches about race, religion, politics and women’s lib, etc., etc.  the trending issue is gender identity politics.  It has a high profile because of a current fashion for claiming celebrity status by becoming a type of trans-person.  First Germaine Greer got into trouble for not being sympathetic enough.  I think she got rather irritated about the whole Bruce/Caitlin Jenner media frenzy.  Then a Guardian food writer, Jack Monroe, who used to be described as female announced in October that she wanted to be referred to as "transgender with a non-binary gender identity".  She/they has also asked to be referred to by the singular they pronoun, rather than "he" or "she".  It is all getting too much for my aging brain.  How can I avoid stepping into the linguistic elephant traps and causing offence.  How will I know who is going to be offended by being referred to as “he” or “she”  And grammar will be even more complicated.  Should I write "they have" or "they has" if I am referring to a singular non-binary person?  I thought it was bad enough when poor Benedict Cumberbatch stirred up a media hornets' nest by inadvertently referring to "coloured people" instead of the preferred "people of colour."  But I am beginning to think that the only solution in future may be not to say anything at all.  Total silence - that is the answer!

Autumn 11

Let us cultivate our garden . . . if the rain stops

Wednesday 18th November, 2015

Sunday 8th November was this sort of day . . . .

I tried to take an interesting photo of the nerines in the rain but the camera couldn’t decide whether to focus on the raindrops on the window or the flowers.

There was no chance of working outside in comfort.  The TV wasn’t tempting - too much bad news - so I had to make do with my own thoughts about finding the way through the confusing quagmire of twenty-first century misinformation.  The internet is a wonderful way of “thinking aloud” and a great way of searching for information but there is the inevitable downside.  It isn’t always easy to distinguish between fact and fiction, or fact and opinion.  From religious leaders and politicians to friends, everyone wants to persuade us to accept their prejudices and I include myself in “everyone”.   The reason for this train of thought was the arrival of one of those ubiquitous forwarded anti -“some one else's religion” messages that tell us far more about the sender than the subject they are ranting about.  There is no better way of annoying a grumpy old peacenik.

So how do I plan to find my way through the quagmire?  I don’t.  I shall just be a stick in the mud and refuse to believe that anyone knows “the whole truth”- including myself.  We can’t learn from history because we are only taught a distorted version of history.  We even lie to ourselves.  Our apparently well thought out “reasons” for doing something may just be excuses for doing something that we always wanted to do anyway.  I shall just try to follow the example of Candide.  If I receive any more of those forwarded message, I will send a forwarded standard reply - of his advice to his friends.  After listening to them arguing about whether this is the best of all possible worlds, the book ends with these words “Excellently observed” answered Candide “but let us cultivate our garden”. And cultivating our garden is what I will be doing as soon as the rain stops.

The rain continued on and off all week.  It did stop briefly on Wednesday and I took some late afternoon photos of the sunset and a pink-tinged jet which passed overhead on its way to North America.  It looked too big to be flying the UK/Ireland route.

We spent the first half of the week waiting for Abigail - our first officially named storm.  There was “an intense extratropical cyclone” in December 2011 which caused a lot of damage in Scotland and was named.  The Scots called it Hurricane Bawbag - but that was just a rude nickname. Contrary to the report in the Express, Abigail didn’t hit the British coast until Thursday and was so far north of us that we were hardly affected.  We would have just assumed that it was normal wet and windy November weather - if she hadn’t achieved celebrity status by being named.

Her name was allegedly voted for by the public but it sounds suspiciously like a name chosen by a crossword compiler . . . Clue: Girl’s name sounds like a big gale (7) although a cryptic crossword compiler would choose a suitably obscure synonym to make it tougher.

The only interesting things in the garden this week are some mushrooms/toadstools.  While I was cutting back meadowsweet on the wildflower bank I found a couple of little red ones which could be scarlet waxcaps.  I have seen them growing there in previous years and there are always just one or two.

Work in the garden keeps getting interrupted by the weather. The wildflower bank could be described as half-cut at present.  It is a slow process because I do it by hand with snips so that I can cut the thick meadowsweet and knapweed stems down to ground level without damaging the primroses, bugle and stitchwort too much.

The second group of mushrooms, which look rather like the illustration of oyster mushrooms in my book, are new to the garden.  They may be edible but I am not going to risk cooking them.

I have seen some similar ones up in the plantation under the old oak.  Ours are growing in a broken semi-circle around the edge of a golden yew on the north east side of the house possibly following the route of a root from a nearly Lawson’s cypress.  

The golden yew is the only survivor of a massacre of assorted small conifers which were planted before we bought the garden.  They were far too closely planted and too big to transplant by the time we realised that they weren’t dwarf conifers.  The only solution was to save the yew, which was the best of the assortment, and sacrifice the rest.

The sparrowhawk is back.  While I was washing breakfast mugs there was a loud thud as someone heavy hit the kitchen window.  I looked up  but hardly had time to focus on a fast disappearing bird at the top of the garden.  I was about 95% sure that it was a sparrowhawk.  After lunch I saw him/her again.  He flew towards the house but had learned from his earlier experience and did a quick U-turn before reaching the window.  This time I got a good view of his outspread tail feathers as he sped away.  I looked out of the dining room window to see whether he would come back and saw him perched in the hawthorns.  I dashed for my camera but he had disappeared before I got back to the window.

I am still trying to photograph the last rose.  This one wasn’t enjoying the weather and was swaying around in the wind,  trying to shelter from the rain under a leaf.  It probably isn’t the last last rose because I spied a small bud on Gentle Hermione.

On Monday the grass dried out enough for me to use the mower and I managed to cut both the front and the back.  It was a minor miracle.

And yesterday we were up early to drive to the Cottage Hospital for Tim’s monthly blood test.  The sun was just thinking about rising as we left.

It hadn’t risen yet when we turned north at Parliament Square.

. . . but when we arrived at the hospital it was already emerging over the Maughold peninsula and lighting up the town and the boating lake in the park below.

I often marvel at how easy it is to get things done in Ramsey.  It is just big enough to have nearly all of the amenities which we need but compact enough to have them all in walking distance.  We always drive to the dentist and hospital but we could walk in an emergency.  You can see the distinctive outline of Skyhill in the background - behind the spire of St Olave’s and the ginger cat drinking out of a bird bath.

Later, we returned to town to do some shopping and post a calendar to our American daughter. We passed the ominous Christmas tree that I photographed on my way to the hospital.  It is ominous because it will be a constant reminder that Christmas is approaching at the speed of a runaway train.  I am gradually opting out of the Christmas hysteria and the calendar will be the only thing that I post this year.  I gave our Canadian daughter her calendar when she visited us at the end of summer and our son is planning to come to the Island for Christmas.  But there is no escaping from the turkey.  Is there a word to describe the fear of roasting large birds?

And if Christmas comes can spring be far behind? Apparently not, shoots from the spring bulbs are already emerging. The first signs are spring are arriving well before Christmas.

PS  It is raining again this morning.