A rainy Saturday morning

The weather forecast was right, a thick band of rain is passing over us.  The ducks have been sorted, my husband is out, and in this weather I don't feel like going into the garden ........... so I've taken a few rainy pictures through various windows in the house:

The ducks are nowhere to be seen in this weather, they are painstakingly searching through the field, no doubt, and what they pick up on these forays [apart from worms, which my eyes CAN see] will remain a mystery to me forever.  I've put a little arrow into this photo on the left, pointing out the lone waterhen picking over where I'd been digging yesterday.

I've also put a little arrow into this photo on the left.  Can you see the water dripping where the drainpipe is still missing?

The snowdrops are multiplying in all the places where I've planted them, and in the duck run - where our chickens used to scratch out and kick the little bulbs everywhere - there will soon be a carpet of snowdrops.

They don't look too good in the wet, but last Wednesday I put together 7 bunches of them with some spotted laurel for the tables and 3 volunteer workers at the luncheon club and they looked lovely:

The four forsythia shrubs we have in the garden are trying their best to open up their buds, it won't be long now before they show up bright and yellow  -  in the meantime the 'bright and yellow' bit is still being done by the winter jasmine.  There are other things which bring Spring to my mind.  Since moving all plants out of the old conservatory and distributing them over all the windowsills in the house several have rewarded me with blooms:

Even the abutillon half way up the stairs is showing two flowers - wish the strelizia Annie gave me a few years ago would take that as an example and flower instead of just pushing up enormous leaves!




I don't think I've mentioned that John had a nasty surprise on Thursday morning when the microwave gave up its ghost midway through cooking his porridge - he had to finish it on the cooker.
Even knowing that it was dead I caught myself several times since trying to do routine tasks in the microwave like heating up coffe-gone-cold or defrosting mince for the Bolognese ........ old habits die hard.

The new microvave is due to arrive on Monday!