Amaryllis

 Anyone who has followed my blog for a few years will know I have a red amaryllis which is over thirty years old and still going strong. But I have another.  In 2006, my mother in law from my first marriage died, leaving her son as the only remaining member of her immediate family.  He had arranged for her house to be cleared after he had taken anything he wanted to keep and gave me the keys to see if there was anything I would like. In the small conservatory, at the back of the house, there were a number of plants which had not been watered for several months and I took pity on one or two and took them home.  Most never recovered, but an amaryllis was sprouting again after a little t.l.c. and so I kept it.  Each year it grew leaves but never flowered.  After nine years of anticipating a flower, I had just decided that if it did not flower this year I would chuck it out.  It must have heard me because lo and behold, this year it has finally flowered. I had no idea what colour it would be and it is quite different from my deep red one, which is a bonus.

Because my other amaryllis has been with me for over thirty years, this one is now known as Amaryllis jr.  and will not go into the compost.

A Sunny Day

We had a dull start to the day and then gradually the sun came out, but something was wrong...

 The birds were vey quiet and a somewhere a dog was howling.  Had I missed something that was on the news for the last few days almost 24/7?

Well not really, this was about as much as it got.  Not a total eclipse, but pretty good and quite spooky.

It Must be Spring

We have just had a nice day out at Lacock Village and Lacock Abbey, both places that feature often as a backdrop for filming cinema and TV period dramas.

A street in Lacock village

Lacock Abbey

Although the daffodils are not yet all in bloom, and the snowdrops are just past their best, the whole place was covered in crocuses and the sunny day made it feel very spring like.

A mass of crocuses

Lacock Abbey was once the home of the Talbot family and Fox Talbot, the British inventor of the photographic process.  He was the first to use a negative.   It is one of the statetly homes of England and has many of the trappings of the luxurious life style of its past.  In order to prevent deer wandering into the formal grounds surrounding this kind of house, a kind of moat was used which became known as a Ha-Ha.  The idea was that your guests could see an uniterrupted view of the vast estate without being hindered by walls or fences.  It was invisible from the house and I have often wondered if any house guests ever fell in when slightly confused by the intake of strong drink.

A Ha Ha

Units of measurement

When did the football pitch, a London bus, Nelsons’ column and the Eiffel tower, become the official standard unit of measurement?

As long as four football pitches

Why do news stories always tell you it is about the length of so many football pitches or so many times the height of the Eiffel tower rather than giving it in some kind of recognised measure like the metre or the yard?    I believe they are still currently used when actually planning and building such things as football stadiums and such.
I personally have no idea how big a football pitch is. I avoided sport at school as often as I could get away with it, being rather puny, and have done so ever since.  My knowledge of football extends to subbuto or those machines where the players are all on metal rods, so to me a football pitch is about six foot long at most.

 

 OK, so if you are really interested you can look up the height or length of the thing used to describe whatever it is in the news and then do the sums but, if they only have such a vague way of describing things, why not say, ‘it is yay big’, stretching out their hands, or it is humongously tall, it would be just about as meaningful.

 

( apologies to the Telegraph Newspapers whos ship picture I have used)

Changes

A couple of years ago, we had some trouble with our neighbour over a piece of our front garden that he claimed should be a part of his garden. As far as we were concerned the builders had clearly intended it to be a part of our property, since it ran continuously across the front of our house up to his driveway. We could have fought harder but we had other things on our mind. Firstly we were away in the states for a few weeks immediately after he first raised the issue and then just as we were returning, I discovered that my brother-in-law from my first marriage had died. Apart from my two sons, his nephews, I was the only surviving relative and had to take care of all his affairs, which unfortunately had become rather complex. This meant travelling back and forth to his property for several months, dealing with banks, solicitors and all the paraphernalia involved in an unexpected death. So we had delayed dealing with the boundary for as long as we could, despite several threatening letters and unacceptable demands. We decided in the end to accept his claim, rather reluctantly, since it was cheaper than disputing them in the courts which is a really really expensive thing to do. For a few square feet of ground it was just not worth going for such a pyrrhic victory, so we then fought a prolonged rear action whilst we organised our tactical withdrawal from the battlefield. In the end we built a fence exactly along the boundary he had claimed was the correct line. In the front it was a an ornamental metal fence but, between the two houses a big six foot high wooden fence. Sadly in the process we had to dig up a lot of nice plants and a flowering tree.

As it was originally but, all the shrubs to the left of the tree and the tree  had to go

So the front garden has been a bit sad since and we decided it could do with a makeover. There were good reasons to change the driveway where we park our cars. We had become fed up with the drab tarmac drive, which was getting a bit crumbly and shedding its surface, whilst gravel we had around the edges was always scattering. We were forever kicking and sweeping the pebbles back into their proper place and removing weeds and animal droppings, so we decided to get rid of the lot and put down block paving, leaving a most of the original grass with planted borders against the new fence.
So day one out with the tired old tarmac.

Day one

Day two it snowed so they could not do a lot, so they left it as it was and we stayed indoors.

Day three, the snow had gone and the ground was levelled off and prepared.

All the tarmac and paving slabs gone

levelled and a base put down

A delivery of paving blocks arrived

Day four and blocks were laid.

The blocks marched across the prepared base

 I would dearly have liked to make a stop motion sequence of this process, but it was done so rapidly, I did not have time for more than one shot of it happening.

and that part of the job was done.

We were able to park our cars on the drive that night.

Day five and the ground has been cleared for the new lawn, the old turf removed and fresh topsoil put in to build the level up to the top of the edging blocks.

Day six the planting. Day six came and went and due to the ground being frozen solid, nothing happened. This continued not to happen for several days including a weekend and some prior engagements by The Better half and yours truly.  So it was not for another week that the turf finally arrived and was laid.

The final prduct,  The grass has yet to establish itself and we will need to keep it watered for the next few weeks, but soon enough, it will require cutting.  Oh well I will sharpen the blades on the old lawnmower...

It was once said that the United Kingdom and the United States are two great nations divided by a single language. This is clear in this kind of work, because if I said 'sod the garden', in the USA, grass would be laid whereas in the UK, it would be taken that I was annoyed with the garden and did not intend to do anything to it.  That word is not considered very polite in this country and is used more often than not as a swear word, derived from sodomy. The word is also known as meaning a clod of grass and soil here, but rarely used in that context.  So our friends in the USA, should never be surprised if UK residents are taken aback by an American using that term and UK residents, take note your American friends are not being rude about your garden.

Spring?

It looks like spring is on its way. It still is a way off but hints are appearing. Snowdrops are blooming and the birds are setting up home.

 
We had an old nest box which had great tits nesting for a couple of years, but we never saw any chicks. Eventually the box started to come apart, so I built a new one.

At first a blue tit investigated it coming back and forth for a while but stopped calling after a few days. Now a great tit has been flitting back and forth for more than a week.  He is alternately poking his head into the box or sitting nearby chirping loudly. No doubt he is telling the world that he has found a nice nest site and any suitable female bird would be welcome to come and share it with him.

So winter may be on its way out soon and more spring flowers will be showing themselves quite soon.

Dear diary - nothing happened today

I have not blogged for some weeks and feel I ought to post something, but nothing much has happened since Christmas, so I will just post some pictures I like. I say nothing much has happened; the most significant event has been my ancient Amaryllis has flowered once more. It is now well into its thirties and still going strong.

When we were in Cumbria I took this sunset photo of the wind farm out to sea off Walney.
 

 I recently posted this picture below on FaceBook for one of my cousins who was hoping for snow and who likes trains. It was taken by my late brother-in-law when he was in the USA, where he was on a train spotting tour.

 He went all over the world looking for steam and produced crates of photos on 35mm film. I have only kept a few of those that I particularly like.

 
This picture is one of his, of a rather unusual machine in South Africa. It seems to have been converted from a standard car to run on the rails. No doubt a kind of runabout for the railway company staff who need to get to a particular section of track without using a full sized engine.  If you look closely, the steering wheel is still there.  Something to hang on to I suppose.

Next are a few pictures of things in flight.

This dove is just coming into land on a roof at Snowshill Manor in Gloucestershire.

The GoodYear blimp often found at air shows and such in the 1970s/80s.  This picture was taken at the Rolls Royce airfield at Leavsden during an airshow.  The site is no longer an airfield, but one part now hosts the Warner Brother’s Harry Potter exhibition.

Some starlings preparing to roost for the night

 Some ancient history here.

An advert from 1965. 

 You could freely  advertise cigarettes then, even though it had been known since the 1930s that there was a link to cancer.

Going back a bit, this rather scratched negative shows the M1 motorway a few weeks after it opened in 1959.  Not too busy, only two lanes and no centre barrier.

World War  Two and they had Mars bars back then.  It must have been a winning idea to last so long.  The ad does not mention points, so this must have been before they started rationing.  The bar looks a lot more chunky than modern ones. Two and a half d is one penny in modern currency.

 Finally, a clue as to where I live.  A road junction that causes panic and fear to strangers trying to navigate  the streets of my home town.

It was originally named the County Road Roundabout, but due to popular usage, by the bewildered townsfolk, it was renamed to The Magic Roundabout. Once you know how to use it it is very easy to negotiate, but for first time users it is a nightmare.