Category: Tales from Pond Cottage
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Survival of the fittest at Pond Cottage
Sunday Sunset over the pond. It’s around 5.30 pm, and I see from my handy weather app that we’ve gained more than an hour and a half of daylight since the beginning of January. For some reason I always find the longer days of February bleaker than the twinkly darkness of midwinter.
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Old skool blogging
Bliss. Blogging in the sun, sitting outside with birds singing, bees humming, light breeze ruffling sea-shore sounds from the aspen leaves and only the distant hiss of hot tyres on the M90 across the fields reminding me that tiresome hustle and bustle goes on beyond Pond Cottage.
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Troubled waters
Agitation on the pond. Fear and fury rippling across the water. Ducklings darting in and out of reeds, their mother circling and crying overhead. The swan family on guard, cygnets packed tight between parents, mother hissing, father lunging at the bank, hitting out hard with his beak. Two helpless humans standing by wondering what on…
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Fiddling with Europe while the planet burns
The Red Gateway leads to an almost unimaginable world. Yet it models the prospects for a future very like the one we are sleepwalking towards at present. We will arrive there if we do nothing to turn away from business as usual. Stephen Blackmore On a misty, moisty Sunday morning there is not much chance…
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Spring WILL come
Ray is steaming ahead. Literally. In this cold air breath comes in cloudy puffs as wind whips flurries of snow off the verges and plucks a mourneful chord on the telegraph wires. G Minor I reckon but I really wouldn’t know. Whatever, it’s cold, bleak and very unseasonal.
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First catch your swan
‘You know those ducks in that lagoon by Central Park South? That little lake? By any chance do you happen to know where they go, the ducks, when it gets all frozen over?’ I blew the dust off my old copy of The Catcher in the Rye to find that quote. Rather eerily it fell…
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Duckling: handle with care
What to do with an orphan duckling? The internet is not helpful. We better be prepared for two months of hard work. Ducklings take a lot of looking after, they are messy and time-consuming. They need a diet rich in protein – plenty of slugs and worms – and ideally, a specialist ‘duckling mash’. In…
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Nature is red
Early morning and it looks idyllic out there. Buttering my toast I watch a scene Walt Disney would be proud of. Two – no three! – red squirrels, frisky as kittens, chasing each other round the bird feeder.
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Dreaming of a green Christmas
That’s what I get for waiting. Just a week ago I took this picture to show the dramatic contrast with the same weekend exactly a year ago.
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King Wenceslas on a Kubota
Snow has always been an adventure at Pond Cottage but this year it feels like an attack. Three weeks ago we only just managed to get away by digging a narrow track up the lane with the tractor. I followed Ray, King Wenceslas on a Kubota, as close as I dared, hanging on to the…
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Bloody February again
What a difference a year makes. I’ve been wanting to post pictures of our Natural Progression to winter since, well, since we progressed to winter. Hard to believe it is a year to the day since Susie installed her bamboo sculpture on the edge of the pond.
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The yew’s revenge
[thanks to Dougal for the snow track picture] You don’t have to be able to read the tracks. When we get to Pond Cottage, the signs of deer and rabbit are all round the garden. Deep snow protected the plants from frost but gave the animals a leg up above the tree guards. Apples, hollies,…