73 days ago
Set in the winter of 1880 to 1881, The Long Winter is a fairly grim book in the Little House on the Prairie series. It really did seem at one point as if the folks huddled in the North Dakotan town of De Smet might not make it. But they did, and sixty years later, Laura Ingalls wrote down what she remembered of a time when she was just fourteen. But the Indian…
319 days ago
The Met Office keeps on telling us all how jolly warm it is as a result of global warming. I have covered how its numbers are bodged and unreliable before but I can say without lying that, here in North East Wales, I feel bloody cold. It is, after all winter, so no climate change there. While the Mrs and my son Joshua are enjoying the Indian sunshine for another few days, the cats myself and little Jaya are really feeling it as the temperature, with wind chill, falls to zero
1102 days ago
In the alcove next to the aga, strings of red hot chillies continue to dry. I really am not sure what I shall do with them as I already have more than a year’s supply and there is another batch awaiting stringing and more still to be harvested. But now joining them are a few bunches of rosemary, thyme and lemon thyme, drying ahead of storage. There are other herbs in the two new herb gardens which I will be harvesting to dry and store this weekend. More progress as we prepare for the long winter.
1134 days ago
Joshua and I are now almost at the end of On the Shores of Silver Lake the fourth of the books by the great libertarian author Laura Ingalls Wilder. My old babysitter, DD, is also re-reading the series, just for her own pleasure, and is now a book ahead of us in The Long Winter. She says I must store up well at the Welsh Hovel as tough and cold times lie ahead. However, on that front, today saw a gut-wrenching setback.
