Lots of news!

Hi again!

I've several bits of news to report today, so here goes:

First - we scored an automotive hat-trick this week!

On Wednesday our car - Ronnie - passed his MOT. Ronnie is an oldish Rover 214 which we bought from our nephew who bought it from ..... etc. We weren't sure he'd pass, but he did well and we've been declared safe and sound for another year. For our American friends the MOT is a car test that is done yearly after the car is three years old. There are safety and emissions tests and I think they check that the body work is of a certain standard. Certainly, you don't see rusty old bangers driving about here and it's because they wouldn't pass the MOT.

On Thursday John passed his driving test - only 7 minor faults and on Friday I passed mine with only 9 minor faults. I was incredibly nervous during the test - my hair and clothes were soaking wet by the time we were done.

Second - we finally have a green finch at our feeders. We thought we'd get one earlier than this because they're so common (all our neighbours have them), but one finally showed up today. Hurray! We still don't have gold finches, but they're less common and I think we'll have to attract them to the garden with thistles and teasels and cone-flowers before they'll come to the feeder. Too bad, really, because we have lots of nyjer thistle seed for them.

Third - the weather has been less than wonderful. For a couple of weeks we had a cold fog. I really hated it and it made me quite depressed. Combined with the side effects of Arimidex I was a very sad person for a while. Things have improved a bit now. We've had a few sunny days and that was exhilarating, but it continues to be cold with temperatures staying around the freezing mark and lots of frost in our hollow.

Fourth - we had a smashing visit from Margaret Rees and Val White. Took Val's dogs for a walk through the Cardingmill Valley and around the reservoir, doing a bit of birding and botanizing as we went. It was lovely to see them and I hope we'll get together again soon for more of the same.

Fifth - the hellebores are coming out. Val brought me a new one, and also pointed out the ones in my garden. Once she showed me I was able to peer under the leaves and find lots of flower buds, so it won't be long before they're out. We also have primulas opening up and even more heather blossom than before. The mystery flower I showed a picture of in a previous posting was a winter flowering honeysuckle. It has a lovely lemony scent.

Well, that's about it for now. Come back in a while and check for further news, or send me e-mail if you have comments or questions.

Walking the hills of Church Stretton

We've been walking around the local footpaths this week. Starting to explore the territory right near the house a little bit.

The weather has been kind - mostly dry and even sunny on some days. However, it's quite cold for here with temperatures dipping just below freezing at night and only climbing a few degrees during the day.

The local big hotel (The Longmynd Hotel) has built a walking trail zigzagging up the side of the hill and we found some lovely carvings along it. I took some pictures today but I'm only showing you a few. You'll have to come and see the rest of the carvings for yourself! You can click on them to load them full size and get more of the detail.

The Longmynd Hotel is where John and the rest of his group stayed on their first year geology field trip from Swansea. I gather they were asked not to return.

But I think they've forgotten about that by now and today we stopped in for morning coffee in the middle of our walk. It was lovely. They have a great long bar with picture windows looking out to the south and west over the rural part of the Stretton Valley

The LongMynd hotel was originally built as a hydro spa in the late 19th century. This was during the time when Church Stretton was setting itself up as a spa town and trying to attract tourists to take the waters and enjoy the pleasures of "Little Switzerland". It's a massive pile at the top of the hill to the south of town. As you come north from Ludlow along the A49 you can see its white walls gleaming in the sun. At night it's floodlit and quite a sight.

The amazing thing about all this is that it's only about a mile away from our house - and that's going the long way round! Right in the middle of town is a patch of land called Rectory Woods. You access it from the town center and can walk up to the Hotel or on up to the Long Mynd itself. So you can get onto the moorland and be striding amongst the gorse and heather without having to cross a busy road.

Now I'm not saying you don't meet anyone. There are lots of walkers in the hills and you see them about whatever the day and whatever the weather, but unless you go to the most touristy parts at the weekend or during the summer holidays it's never crowded. I always think it's nice to meet a few people on a ramble, specially when they have a friendly dog with them - and most of them do.

What I like about these local walks is that there's a variety of habitat to wander through. Although the tops are covered in grass, gorse, bracken and heather, the steep sided valleys are sometimes wooded and have little streams flowing through them. Today the ravine we walked through had oak, beech, and holly trees (lots more I don't know yet, too) and there was the usual undergrowth of bracken and blackberry. Lots of birds were about - robins, wrens, tits, blackbirds, crows, etc. Nothing rare, but it was nice to see and hear them all.

As usual, your comments and messages are welcomed at:

joanarnfield@gmail.com

Bits and Pieces

Hi!

John's off on a birding trip today and I decided to stay and catch up with various bits and pieces at home. The posting just below this one will give you a bit more info on the progress of our garden, but this one deals with other little bits of news.

First: I went to see the surgeon yesterday for a regular checkup and everything with my cancer continues to be OK. The only problems I am having are side-effects of the arimidex treatment, so they should go away when I stop that in 4.5 years. These side-effects are rather nasty. It's mostly joint and bone pain, so I come downstairs one stair at a time in the mornings and sometimes I go up the stairs on on all fours like a monkey (no rude comments please!). The most disconcerting thing is the "trigger-finger" phenomenon where my knuckles lock up and I have to work hard to get my fingers to bend. The other bad thing is the pain and/or numbness in my feet which make me feel quite unsteady when we're walking on uneven ground. Still, it could be a lot worse - I could be very sick or even dying of cancer - and I'm very grateful to be as healthy as I am. I have to remember that this time last year I was housebound for two of every three weeks and couldn't walk more than a few hundred yards at a time. Now I can do several miles, especially when there's a nice pub at the end of the walk!

Second: We now have a new pair of birds at one of our feeders - bullfinches. They are lovely birds and they're a joy to watch. Over Chrismas our bird feeder collection increased and now we have them all round the house. Different birds seem to favor different locations, but there's plenty of life and activity around them all. Our most frequent visitors are: pheasant (we still have 4 males and goodness knows how many females), wood pigeons, blackbirds, robins, dunnocks, coal tits, great tits, blue tits, chaffinches and bull-finches. If we put out bread we also get crows, jackdaws and magpies.

Third: Just had a terrific trip up to see Dolly (my old Mac. flat-mate) and Jane who was at Mac with us all and who is here from Canada visiting her Mum and Dad. Needless to say, much wine was drunk and there was lots of talking, shouting and laughter into the wee small hours of the morning.

Now I'm supposed to be preparing for a day visit tomorrow. Joy (John's sister) and her husband, John, are bringing his mum and brother to visit us. If the weather is nice we'll be able to take them up to the top of the Mynd and show them the lovely countryside around here. If not - we'll have to go to a pub and have a drink around a roaring fire - what a shame! I'm plannning a Sunday dinner of roast gammon ham with roast potatoes and parsnips and other veg followed by apple crumble ... mmmmmm....!

Think I'll go and have a cup of tea while I avoid doing any more work.

Stay in touch ..... e-mail when you can.

Sunshine and snowdrops!

Hurray! Yesterday for the first time since early November a few rays of sunshine made it over the hill and into the house! It's going to be a while yet till we have a lot of sunshine, but the promise is there and I'm full of hope!

Another sign that spring isn't far away is the (are the?) snowdrops. I'm beginning to see little patches of them in several places in the garden. They're not quite out yet, but the flower buds are white and it won't be long. In addition, there are clumps of leaves coming out of the ground from other bulbs. Most of them look like daffodils, but who knows? This is all so exiting.

I'm slowly working through the beds now, clearing out the dead stuff and old leaves so that the bulbs don't have so much rubbish to grow through. I'm taking my time and trying to document the stuff I find as I go. This afternoon I'm going out with the camera to take more pictures and try to map the beds that I've cleaned up. Maybe if I do it slowly I can sort it out as I go along. There's so many shrubs I don't know yet and think I'll loose track completely when the stuff that's died back comes up.

I got fed up with some bushes in front of the downstairs windows last Sunday and went out and really pruned them back. One was a Lavatera and I don't care if it dies, to be honest. It's a scruffy thing and nowhere near as beautiful as some of its other malvacea relatives. There was a heritage rose (Roseraie de l'Hay) which was threatening visitors to our front door and a Ceanothus which was overgrown and straggly. I have the plant labels for each of these and they all say allow about 6 feet of space around each shrub. So why were they planted close together and against the house wall? I realise it's a south facing wall and therefore might be construed to be warm and sunny, but since we have a 100 foot bank in front of that wall, the sun doesn't actually shine there much. It was more important to clear the shrubs from the windows so that what light there is penetrates into the house. It looks a bit bare now, but I've now exposed some wrought iron hooks for hanging baskets and I think we can really liven up the color for the front and make it look more homey and inviting with some really colorful annuals.

On the subject of light and positioning, our compost heap is tucked out of site behind the shed, but it's in the darkest, coldest, dampest spot of the garden. Things are getting a bit slimy back there, so we may have to re-think its position - maybe continue to use it to store the raw stuff and then get one of those "quick-cook" rotating compost barrels which we can place in the sun to process things.

For a while there I was leery of changing things in the garden. I think I still couldn't believe it was mine. Now, though, I'm beginning to realise that I can do what I like. If I get it wrong, it doesn't matter - I'll just have to do it again. So now I'm putting on my wellies and work gloves and moving in with the loppers, secateurs and leaf rake!

I must be luckiest person in the world .

Catching up with the news

As promised last night, here is another post. This time I thought I'd let you know what we've been up to during Bill's visit. I've included links to more information and photo sites so you can get a better feel for what we did and saw.

We really had a great time! One of the highlights was a trip to the "Panto" on John's birthday (Jan 2nd). Panto is short for "Pantomime" and it's an old traditional theatrical event usually staged around Christmas/New Year. For our American friends it has nothing to do with mime. It's a musical play based on a fairy story or a nursery rhyme or something similar. It could be Cinderella, Puss-In-Boots, Peter Pan, Sinbad the Sailor, Old King Cole, etc., etc. In the old days the principal boy would be played by a woman and the dame would be played by a man. There is lots of slapstick, glitzy costumes, singing and dancing and (best of all) tremendous audience participation.

Pantos are put on by professional theatres, amateur dramatic groups, women's guilds, church groups, everyone! The one we went to had professionals in the main roles and drama/dance school pupils in the "chorus". It was loosely based on the story of Dick Whittington and his Cat. Dick Whittington was played by a soap star from Neighbours and the chief "baddy" -King Rat - was played by the guy who is Percy Weasley in the Harry Potter movies. There was lots of hissing and booing everytime he came on.

Dame Kitty Crumpet had a different costume everytime he/she came on and we all had to yell "Hello Kitty"! There were several times when he/she and other members of the cast completely lost the plot and dissolved into fits of laughter, at which point they would turn and talk to the audience and crack a few more corny off-the-cuff jokes. Needless to say there was much groaning and booing!

In addition to the slapstick, crude sexual inuendo and groan jokes, the audience got to do the old "Oh no it isn't"/"Oh yes it is" routines, shouted "It's behind yer" whenever the baddy crept up on someone and generally got into the act with rude comments shouted at people on the stage and other fun stuff.

As Bill said - it was a real hoot!

Jan 4th was our 37th anniversary. During the day we took a drive down to Hay-On-Wye, a town full of bookshops. Anyone who likes browsing through bookshops should plan to spend a few days there! We were only able to cope with a few. The three of us came back loaded with MORE reading materials - Goodness knows why, our house is overflowing with books now! The drive down and back was nice too and gave Bill a chance to see some of the lovely rolling, green, bucolic Shropshire and Herefordshire scenery. In the evening we had a delicious meal at our smashing local restaurant - The Studio. We really like it there. The food is wonderful, the atmosphere cosy and comfortable and the proprietors are friendly and interesting to talk to.

Jan 5th was a day of driving lessons, shopping and exploring around Shrewsbury. We ate lunch at our favorite Shrewsbury pub - The Three Fishes. This is a SMOKEFREE pub which serves nice traditional English food and very good, well kept beer.

Friday Jan 6th was the day Bill was supposed to leave for Manchester airport. So we left in the morning and went to Manchester via North Wales!!!!! It's a bit of a long way around but it was worth it. Drove up the Roman Road (A5 - Watling Street) from Shrewsbury through Llangollen, stopping at Pontcysyllte to take a walk by the canal and look at the terrifying canal aquaduct over the Dee Valley.

After coffee in Llangollen (a very picturesque market town and home to the International Eisteddfod) we carried on into Snowdownia National Park. The mountains were sheathed in cloud, but we could see the tops of some of them and they were snow covered - it was very impressive. I had forgotten what rugged mountain scenery there is in North Wales, and it's only a couple of hours drive from here.

We decided to pull over and eat cream doughnuts while viewing Llyn Ogwen when we were treated to the sight of a goat with the biggest horns I've ever seen running down the road. Shortly after we were able to watch as a panting and perspiring park ranger chased the goat back down the road and with the help of a co-worker shooed him through a gate in the dry stone wall and back onto the mountain!

From Snowdonia we headed to the coast and Llandudno. This is a lovely old seaside resort. The hotels on the front are all painted in pastel "icing sugar" colours and there's still a covered shopping street running parallel to the front. The pier seems to be functional and there's good walking along the promenade complete with views of oyster catchers, red shanks and lots of gulls. We took a drive around The Great Orme, walked along the front and then had the traditional supper of fish and chips before taking Bill on to his hotel in Manchester.

I had a great time with our first U.S. visitor and I'm very thankful to Bill for coming over. We hope to see lots more visitors in the months to come.

lots of blossoms .....

Hey .... it's been a while since I last wrote and there's lots to tell you, so please come back again in the next few days as I have a few other posts to make.

Meanwhile I want to show you some of the things that are in bloom around the garden right now! Yes, it's early January and lots of stuff is out!

Does anyone out there know what this is? It's on a shrub, but I haven't a clue and I haven't found it in any of my books yet. I'll keep looking, but in the meantime, if you have any idea, please e-mail me with guesses, information or whatever!

mailto:joanarnfield@gmail.com

This is a closeup of the flowers of the Wych Hazel (Hammemelis) and the following picture is a shot of the little tree. As you can see, it's covered in blossom.





























We also have heathers, viburnums and a huge Mahonia japonica in bloom. Some of them have lovely scent, and of course there are insects around to smell that scent and pollinate the flowers. It's so mild here. Last night we had a frost for a few hours and the car was covered in ice, but by morning it had all melted away and I was able to work in the garden all day.

Lucky white heather
This picture's for you!
It didn't cost nothin'
So I'm lucky too!!!!!













This is the Mahonia - it's about 12 ft high and must have a canopy diameter of at least 10 feet. The beech in the background is in my neighbour's garden. It's still holding onto its leaves for some reason. Most beeches dumped their leaves a couple of months ago.


Stay tuned for more posts (if I can fit them into my busy social life!).....

Happy New Year!

Hi there you all!

Just thought it was time to say "Hello" to everyone out there and to let you know that we are thriving!

Had a wonderful Christmas in Nuneaton with John's family and am now spending New Year with Bill Fenner from Columbus and Barry and Sheila from Lancaster (England).

This is a picture of the snow we had over Christmas, taken on a walk at Coombe Abbey in Warwickshire.
















It wasn't anywhere near as bad as this picture looked ... here is another scene taken on the same day.

















The snow has all melted now and it's back in the 40s (around 8 or 9C). Today we did a 6 mile walk and climbed one of the local "mountains" - Caer Caradoc. It was beautiful and sunny and we had stunning views from the top. When I got home I collapsed in a heap and Bill is making dinner. Thank God I have lots of friends who can cook!!!!!

Will write more when all the company has gone home! E-mail me when you can: mailto:joanarnfield@gmail.com

What a Week!

Gosh, it's been an exiting few days. It started last Tuesday when I headed off for London for the day. I had to take the long way round as I didn't want to head down the M1 and get involved in traffic delays around the big fire at Hemel Hempstead. It was a smashing day and I enjoyed the drive down through Ludlow, Cleobury Mortimer and Kidderminster. The countryside there is gorgeous. I joined the motorway system just south of Birmingham and steamed on down the M40 towards London. As usual, the highlight of the trip was the climb up and over the Chilterns where I counted 12 Red Kites circling around.

It took about 4 hours to get to Stanmore. As I drew close to my destination I could see the great black smoke plume billowing up from the remains of the fuel terminal at Hemel. The smoke drifted off to the southwest for miles and miles. Where it was forced to rise over the ridge at Stanmore the smoke particles were acting as condensation nucleii and the plume turned to a big black cumulus cloud. Thank goodness it didn't produce rain. It would have been a nasty, greasy, sooty mess!

I went down to London for a couple of reasons. One was to take flowers to Mum, Dad and Grannie's graves and the other was to visit my friend Eve. Eve is the kind lady who kept an eye on Mum and Dad when they were alive and on our London house when we left it unoccupied for 4 years. Eve loves to play the piano, but doesn't have room for one in her house, so I was delighted to be able to help out by giving her my keyboard. We plugged it in immediately, and had great fun playing with it and experimenting with all the voices and orchestrations it has - especially the percussion. I think Eve will get so much more enjoyment out of it than I did. It was difficult to tear ourselves away, but eventually we went off to a local hostelry and had a good dinner before I set off home. Having seen that the fire was not interfering with the roads, I came back the shorter way - motorway all the way to Shrewsbury and it only took just over 3 hours to get back. Needless to say I was pretty tired, but I felt that the driving was all good practice for my test which will probably happen in late January.

Then came the highlight of the week. Most of you know that it was my 60th birthday on Saturday because John wrote to everyone I know and told them about it. The result was a flood of cards, phone calls, flowers, e-mails and e-cards. So once again I am swamped. I'm determined to reply to everyone, but experience tells me that it could take a long time to do that. When I found out I had cancer the response to that was similar and I still haven't replied to all the e-mails I had then!

My birthday was a wonderful day. We got up rather earlier than usual and over our morning cuppa tea John gave me my first present. This was my senior rail card (!) which enables me to get a discount on the trains. We used it immediately to take a train to Swansea, riding the lovely, scenic Heart of Wales railway line. The weather was beautiful and it was lovely to roll through the countryside, watching the green hills go by, seeing the sheep in the lush green meadows, admiring the glint of sunlight on babbling brooks and stopping in villages with unpronouncable Welsh names.

Here's John on the train:



This is not our first trip on this train. We rode it first when we were undergraduates after a week of sleeping rough in a barn and mountain walking in North Wales, and we've taken the same line a couple of times since. Swansea, of course, is where we went to University and where we took our brief honeymoon, so it was a return to the haunts of our youth.







Here's me!




As we rocked along John produced a fabulous brunch and when that was done he had all sorts of wonderful presents which included a couple of trial horse riding lessons (I'm keen to try horse riding as this is really terrific country for it) and a day's session on a skid pan. I've always wanted to try the latter - I've had a couple of spectacular skids in my life and found them quite thrilling. I would have enjoyed them more if they had happened under controlled circumstances where I wasn't convinced that I was about to die!



Here I am getting the skid pan present:



We arrived in Swansea in the early afternoon and just had time for a bit of a wander around and a cup of tea and a piece of cake before it was time to come home. We came back on another line, along the coast through Cardiff to Newport and then heading north through Hereford and Leominster. Again, it was really lovely till it got too dark to see anything.

We had about an hour at home to get changed and washed up and then we walked down into the village for dinner at the local restaurant. It was a great meal, and we both over-indulged, so it was good to be able to walk home. By then it was quite chilly, but the stars were out and it was a brilliant end to a lovely day.

Today I've been making (and eating) Christmas cookies. This is not a tradition here, but I wanted to make something a little different for Christmas. I've done brownies and lemon bars so far and expect to make mince pies and almond macaroons tomorrow. I'm having to convert parts of my American recipes. I'm OK with cup and tablespoon measures because I have my American cups and tablespoons, but butter is measured in grams here and it doesn't come in conveniently sized sticks. Baking chocolate is in grams and milk comes in litres. Ther are three grades of white sugar. Granulated is coarser than American, caster suger is a bit finer than American granulated and icing sugar is the same as American confectioner's sugar. There are several different kinds of brown sugar too, so sometimes it's hard to decide just what to get for a given recipe.

I'm having a helluva time with my new oven, too. I've never cooked with a convection oven before - you have to cook for less time and at a lower temperature. Most of it is guesswork right now, and we'll be eating our mistakes! Of course, it's also calibrated in Centigrade so everything has to be converted. Thank-goodness for Google's wonderful conversion feature! If you don't know about that, you should try it. Try typing the following into the Google search text window "32 degrees F in C" (without the quotes). It should come back with: "32 degrees Fahrenheit = 0 degrees Centigrade". You can use if for feet to meters, pounds to kilograms, etc. etc.

Well, it's time to go. Thank you all for your messages of congratulation/commiseration - it's been lovely to hear from you all. Please keep the communication lines open - we LOVE to hear from you.

Update on Yard Birds

The only notable additions to our yard list came this week with a pair of long-tailed tits. (OH SHUT UP - no more jokes, please!!!!!). They've been flitting around in the trees, but don't come to the feeders.

The pheasants are still about - 3 males and 5 females, but there's a lot more feather ruffling, displaying (by both sexes) and chasing around so we think they're starting to think about territories, harems and SEX! Because they keep harems we started giving them eastern sounding names like Fatima and Farouk, but have given up on that. Now the males are called Fatty, Thinny and Darkie because of their relative sizes and the coloring of their feathers. We can't name the females because we haven't been able to tell them apart!

Fatty does a lot of posturing and walks around with his feathers fluffed up. This hasn't actually seemed to have any benefits where the females are concerned. Thinny has a lot of grey on his back as well as his wings. He seems to be the most successful in rounding up the ladies! Darkie is considerably darker than the other two because his chest is a purply brown, he has no grey on his back and just a few streaks of grey in his wings. There is no grey on the top of his head either, just a slightly lighter shade of green. I didn't realise there was so much variation, but I gather that many different varieties have been bred and imported into the U.K.

The female pheasants remind me of a group of "old gals" out on a spree. They wander up to a plant and spend a little time pecking the seeds off it, then they all seem to drift off together in one direction or another. Occasionally a squabble will burst out. There will be a ruffling of feathers and a bit of chasing about and then they all go back to pecking and drifting about the garden.

We still have the same crowd at the feeder - lots of coal, blue and great tits and a couple of nuthatches - with a few blackbirds and robins scratching about on the ground. We haven't seen the woodpecker for weeks inspite of keeping a steady supply of fat for him so I think he's off to find a less cold spot for the winter.

So this is enough of an update for now. I'll try to write again before Christmas.

Stay in touch, please ...... mailto:joanarnfield@gmail.com

Engineering in the stream!

Remember how we all liked to play in streams or on the beach building and breaking dams and generally doing all sorts of waterworks? Well, I've been doing that today.

The weekend before Thanksgiving we had a tremendous cold snap. The temps in our valley never rose above freezing and we had frost on top of frost for five nights. Here's a picture I took:



The frost finally disappeared a couple of days before Thanksgiving, but it came back with snow on the day after the holiday. It was quite pretty and white when we woke up on Friday. And it put the whole town in a festive spirit for the Lighting of the Christmas tree in the town square on Saturday night. There was a childrens "fun-fair" consisting of some swings, a tombola and a roundabout; a parade led by the local fire engine, Bob the Builder and one of the Telly Tubbies, and carol singing in the square.

On Sunday, Church Stretton had its annual Christmas Fayre with stalls in various locations around the town, along with a hog roast outside one of the local restaurants, mince pies and mulled wine at the Scout Hut and various puddings (desserts) at the community center. The grand finale was a short service in the Church followed by a lantern/candle lit parade around town with stops for the singing of carols.

Since then, the weather has been slowly warming and getting wetter and over the last 2 days we've had a lot of rain. Of course, our little stream is swollen again and this time it was blocked by a branch which was collecting debris and starting to form a dam. This afternoon I donned wellies and rain-coat and went paddling in the ice cold stream to get the rubbish out of it. I don't think it would have flooded and I could have left it for a day or two, but it was actually fun to get into the water and do a bit of engineering!

Well, that's enough about the weather. I think I'll just do one more post.