Soggy, wet, muddy ...

... it has been so far in the new year, and we had a bit of frost this morning, but no serious ice yet - that is to come soon, the weather forecasters say.

We are lucky here in the Midlands, really, no real flood damage, just very sodden underfoot.  I take my life in my hands every morning when doing the breakfast bowls and refreshing all the water buckets, wherever there is duck or human "traffic" there you must tread very carefully!  John has done a lot of shredding and put it on the worst affected areas, he'll shred some more sticks next week.

The duckies have made themselves some lovely muddy patches which they're making bigger every day,

and they're loath to leave this pond except at bedtime.  They don't even dive into their breakfast bowls up here just lately in their endeavour to get straight down to the big pond..  The other day Captain and Anke - whose hut is by this pond - spent the night in the duck shed by our house, and as Honey was taking flight like she does every morning she was the very first to arrive and raid Captain and Anke's bowls.

Because most of them have missed breakfast in their hurry to get to the big pond they tend to come back mid-morning to catch up on their food-under-water,


which routine I started to try and foil the pheasants pinching all the duck food ....... No, it hasn't worked, ducks are messy eaters, always spill something, the pheasants know, and they also know when I put the dry food out, never mind how often I change the times for that.

  
When there was a break in the rain John spent some time recently pruning the apples trees in the orchard, you can see the big steps better in the photo on the right.  It looks neat now he's finished:
                                                                                                                                        

It's twelfth night tonight and I shall be taking down decorations and tree trimmings tonight and tomorrow morning if it gets to be too much.  And then I'll complain that the house looks dreadfully bare ..... and start Spring-cleaning because the walls look dirty ...

A couple of days before Christmas the lights on our tree failed, and a desperate trip to Tesco's to buy a new set revealed that there were hardly any left in store.  We finished up buying a set of 400 - see the difference in the two pictures below: