Winter is waning

I'm afraid there was a glitch and the layout is all to pot this week!

There are signs everywhere that winter is waning, even if we are only just into the second week of February.  The big question is whether it will come back to bite us on the bum, but for the moment the February forecasts are just for ever more rain.  While that doesn't do much to help the soil dry out for gardening and planting, it does help a bit with energy bills.  

It's not just the weather that says things are on the move.  Winter's guilty pleasures of being curled up on the sofa with a rug, a cat or two and undemanding TV are slowly coming to an end.  The deep winter pleasure of the Dakar Rally and nutters racing through deserts is long gone.  The 17 week binge of pure trash TV that is Star Academy finished last night with a new winner crowned, who will hopefully not be a major provider of lift and supermarket background muzak - they are promoted ruthlessly for about a year across most French radio and TV platforms.  While the mental preparation for spring, with watching 30 well built men throwing balls around in muddy conditions started on Thursday as the Six Nations kicked off.

In an effort to keep our local pub alive, we watched one and a half matches down there, with the luxury of a HUGE screen and not having to fight for the sofa with a stroppy old cat.  France versus Ireland was a pleasure to watch, England versus Wales not so much.

While the trees are mostly behaving and not doing much at all for the moment, spring bulbs are doing their thing.  The snowdrops are amazing in that the flowers keep going for such a long time.

My favourite miniature narcissi are starting to come through and should put on another good show I hope.

The vegetables are starting to look interesting - the cauliflowers are looking a bit pregnant - the curds should appear in about 5 or 6 weeks time I think, and the plants don't seem to have suffered at all from being frosted.

The broad beans are starting to pull away, and with any luck, will start to flower in April.

I fear the leeks are never going to fatten up however - they suffered from drought big time in August and September last year, and by the time there was ample water, there wasn't enough daylight or warmth for them to really develop.  I guess they will make a nice hors d'oevres though.

I am still working my way through the bird feeder camera files - there are only 6,600 in the folder now, or 4 Gbytes of "stuff", most of which is rubbish.  I have still only spotted robins, blue tits and great tits, but since they are what I heard and saw on every visit to the garden in January, I am guessing that is no surprise.  Here is one proving that there is actually food in the feeder.

Butterflies are to my mind pretty well impossible to photograph well for the amateur, so the fact that I was buzzed today by three Brimstone butterflies, daring me to waste my time trying to capture their image was rather trying.  On this photo, there is a little spec of acid yellow - that is the Brimstone saying "nah nah ne nah nah" at me.

The forecast for the coming days is wet, so I expect next week I will be writing about and sharing more photos of birds on the feeder.  Have a good week!