Monday 17th January 2022: Old twelvey, 12th night (pre Georgian calender) Wassail day 😁
Another cold and frosty morning and I was on the morning duties as John went off to work. After doing that (a little late as I spent an hour on FaceTime with my brother in Aus) I got on with making an apple cake for the Wassail tonight. I had a few paperwork things to sort out and then goodness knows what else I did but it must have been something 🤷♀️ John came home mid afternoon, the dentist had called and had a cancellation and so he was off to have his tooth out 🙄 I will be honest the timing was not the best, I had plans for him to help me with a couple of things for the wassail but he was incapacitated. So I got everything sorted and changed anything I couldn’t do on my own and it was all fine in the end. We had a fire pit, we made a lot of noise, we chanted, we poured cider on the apple tree roots and we put cider soaked toast on the tree, all under the Wolf Moon and we had a lovely time 🥰
I had a notification today that the blog had reached 10,000 all time views, whoop that’s amazing 🤩
I remembered what it was I did in the afternoon, I cut back (pollarded) the willows at the front of the drive. I now have a large bundle of willow whips and I want to use them for something, I would like a willow sculpture of some kind and I watched a few videos to see what I thought I might be able to tackle, maybe a small wigwam on the grass verge in the driveway 🤷♀️ I would quite like to do a big one but not sure where I would do that without the risk of it being eaten by the horses or the geese.
Tuesday: It was a very cold, clear night again last night and everywhere is white and frosty this morning. I don’t feel the best today and have been struggling a little bit more each day, my joints on my fingers have swollen and hurt, so much so that I have had to take my rings off 🙄 I can feel twinges in my teeth at times and I feel generally ‘meh‘. Hopefully it will be a passing thing, I feel quite emotional with it today as well which is not ideal, doing the animals is going to be a struggle and then I think I will do nothing for the day except rest, sometimes you just have to recognise your limitations and today is one of those days. When I mentioned to John about how I think I will struggle with the water buckets, his answer was to use another bucket with a little bit in and go back and forth, thanks for that, I define will not be making you any dinner today 🤪I have taken a covid test to rule that out and it’s negative.
Well the morning rounds, as I suspected, were difficult, not least because it is frozen solid out there and even the stable tap is frozen. I will have to go back out and try again later as I don’t have the energy to haul water from inside the house. Most of them have buckets I can just break the ice on, some are tiny water holder so hopefully the sun will thaw those quickly but in the stable although the water buckets are not frozen, they are half empty and I can’t fill them from the frozen tap so again I will wait until later and hope the tap thaws quickly. It feels depressing at the minute, mostly because I don’t feel fit and able but also because the egg customers have dropped massively 🤷♀️ We have the usual core of customers that always come but that’s it and we are hardly selling any eggs. I definitely wonder if it is really worth any of it to be honest, it is a fair amount of work for next to no return 😏
Yesterday (Sat) I thought I hadn’t written a single thing all week and so I started a new page only to find this one on the draft section 😂 I think I am losing the plot.
It is now Saturday afternoon, this is the point when I realised I haven’t written anything all week long 😝 (Or at least hadn’t remembered writing anything 😂) Today has not been that productive either, not outside at any rate. I had a hair appointment first thing and then went called round to see Mum and Ken for a cuppa. Mum sorted through her lace and ribbon stash and I came away with a good deal of lace and ribbon in lots of colours, they will be for the tied bouquets and posies. The aim is to use paper and trimmings that are either up-cycled, recycled or at the very least recyclable, as with the veg and fruit garden, there will be no pesticides, herbicides or artificial fertilisers used, so when you sink your nose into a bunch of my blooms you can be sure that it is perfectly safe to inhale that aroma 😁 I have been thinking about flower bunches that have meaning, purpose or just say what you want to convey, to be honest I have done a lot of thinking and none of it can be tried until I have flowers growing 😂 so I just have to keep thinking at the minute.
Sunday: Milder today but we were up later than usual as well, once up and about John did the animals while I sorted out a few things indoors and then outside to get on. I spent a couple of hours potting some things up, a couple of shrubs that, as we about to have a fairly dry period, will be ok to pot on and leave. I sorted out a few plants that I have growing ready to go out the front but it’s all still a little early and a little bit slow. I spent a while taking some photos of various pots I have for sale and I also picked a few bits for the vase. There is not much about at the minute, not bright and pretty colours anyway but there are some lovely structural and architectural bits to be found and some winter honeysuckle which smells delightful.
I have got a new logo for the flower side of business, I am rather pleased with it, simple but effective I think.
Some more seeds are starting to grow 😁 zinnias and some lupin are all beginning to sprout, it’s all very exciting. I have spent a good few hours this week learning new things, soaking up all sorts of information and ideas and watching a couple of seminars. I feel really excited about the months ahead with this project, I can let my creative side loose for a change.
frieslandfarm (flowers) 