January in the garden Part 1

I have managed to get out with my camera a few times on sunny days. I'm feeling the cold a lot more than usual so I'll leave the pretty frost photos to everyone else - when I go outside to let the chickens out in the morning I'm barely admiring the white frost; just want to get back inside in the warm! It was funny because the second time I ventured out I put on my macro lens, which always means squatting down and looking at things closer up. The next morning when I got out of bed I wondered what was the strange pain in my legs - haha the lack of exercise had meant that I'd strained my hamstrings! I'll be a bit more careful next time. 

An ICM of the pond - original on left and the other two have had a few BeFunky texture
treatments for fun. Best clicked on to view large if you are viewing on a desktop sized screen.

How it really looks - don't fancy sitting on the bench eating ice cream at the moment! ;-)

Nice to see the blue sky reflected in the water, and the ducks are not affected by the cold.

Now for a bit of a veg patch update. My undergardener has been clearing up for me and has already dug over one of the five plots. This year we've decided we will only grow a bare minimum of veggies for obvious reasons, and some will have to be done by him under supervision as I won't be able to bend, squat, dig etc for quite some time after my surgery. 

We've decided that new/early potatoes are too good not to grow but the plot they need to go in is the one which contains the Pollinator Meadow. It doesn't seem worth digging out all those perennial plants though when there will be so many empty areas in the other plots. So I thought we could move the rotation along by two years which shouldn't have any harmful effect as I have a five year rotation cycle. The rest of the space will have a couple of courgettes (probably the easiest veg to grow as it practically looks after itself and just needs harvesting), a few lettuce and some leeks. Cross fingers by the time the leeks need transplanting and the kale and PSB needs sowing/planting out I'll be OK for doing those jobs by then. And we'll buy a few cherry tomato plants and grow them in pots along the house walls where blight doesn't seem to hit. The rest of the space will have annual flower seeds sown so they'll help keep the weeds at bay and it should be a colourful bug and butterfly filled place! 

A bit of a mess but at least the purple kale was upright - now after heavy wind it's leaning somewhat!

But look! I discovered the PSB has started to sprout!

This variety is 'Rudolph' which is a very early one - the rest won't start sprouting until March/April.

And here's why so many things self seed - top are nasturtium seeds all over the
path, botton left are physalis seed pods (I'm still trying to eat all the harvested fruit),
and coriander which is the only thing left edible after temps of minus 5c.
That self seeds everywhere too.

Two blackberry plants in front of the chook shed - we are going to take out some of the
others elsewhere as we just don't need that many plants - two is more than enough!

And now for a few cat snaps - Bertie doesn't appear in these.

Hallie posing nicely for a change and looking at the camera.

And away from the camera.....

She's put on weight and looks odd without a tail!

Harry having a good old stretch....

.... and hugging a tree. :-)

Next lot of photos in a separate post otherwise this one would have been too long!