317 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
489 days ago
At the end of our garden there is a wooden fence. Behind that is the old orchard which is far longer than it is wide, 7 or 8 yards from the garden is the river. Alongside the apple trees is a giant weeping willow. Well, as you can see, it is a bit less massive now. I have now idea why two enormous boughs broke and I did not hear any great crash. Presumably the snoring of the Mrs drowned that out. Yesterday, the cats, kids and I inspected the damage. The good news is that my pal Robert was due here next week to take down “the snake barn” and one last shed sited in the fields as we expand the orchard along the river. Robert is just the man to bring a chainsaw and deal with this. At a stroke the winter fuel for the wood burning stove is sorted without Joshua and I needing to do any sawing at all in the wood shed. Every cloud…
1144 days ago
Joshua and I have just reached the point in “On the Shores of Silver Lake” where the Ingalls family move into the surveyors’ house ahead of a long winter. In the fourth book of the Laura Ingalls Wilder series we see the family in a place already provisioned to the rafters. Heck,they even have coal for the stove. We have no coal for our wood burning stove which could really come into play this winter the way gas prices are heading.
1541 days ago
Back from my fathers’ and in need of exercise after six hours at the wheel with an all too brief break in Shipston, it was time to start tackling the scrap iron at the Welsh Hovel.
2175 days ago
During the week that he was here, ShareProphets reader Bernard from the Grim North of England, c/o Donegal tried manfully to get my new wood burning stove going. It is jolly chilly at night. He failed. Over to the maestro.
2220 days ago
I am not sure folks will understand the point of the veranda until it is completed. But weather permitting that will be by Friday so here is a progress photo with the carpenter who has featured here so often, in action.