Thursday 9 December 2010

Surprisingly Unexpected

Well what a difference in the weather this week! Yesterday it was 20 degrees C, the sun had his hat on and it felt like late spring. Sorry to everyone reading this who's got snow and freezing temperatures but it really was lovely. And today is fantastic too. So it's off with the thermals and outside I've been.

I've planted some garlic in one of the raised beds - it's a bit late in the year but we'll see what happens. Apparently garlic benefits from a cold snap and as long as I can keep the animals away from it, it stands a chance!

Speaking of animals if anyone is looking for a pig either as a pet of for eating we do have a couple still for sale. The piglets are now getting big and probably weigh in at around 35 kilo's each. Ideal for a small freezer or christmas lunch.

Christmas is just around the corner, although it doesn't feel like it here. I've not put any decorations up yet, the kids have asked for money instead of presents and I've yet to do a big food shop. Everything will be last minute as usual in this house. No christmas cards have been sent either as I don't trust the postal service after having so many returned months later. So there may be some e-cards sent to people and a christmas day blog post yet.

Well I'm off outside to do something - not quite sure what but there is still loads to do before the winter really does get here. Hope you're all having a good week.

Sunday 5 December 2010

Up in the Air

Life sometimes throws things at you that are not expected and that's what happened to us in the last 10 days. Routine gets turned upside down and there's absolutely nothing we can do about it apart from grit your teeth and go with the flow.

Unfortunately my father in law passed away quite suddenly last weekend which of course meant that hubby had to fly to the UK for the funeral. Now we don't usually plan to fly anywhere after December and through until March because you can just never judge the weather and we've always been caught out and had delays etc. The weather here is still warmer than normal and we've yet to have snow, although the poor UK has had awful weather lately and temperatures in County Durham, I believe, have been as low as -15 deg C, with lots of snow.

This time hubby had a 3 hour delay which wasn't too bad (I hope). But it could've been very different. He'd had an awful time trying to find a coach seat from town to Sofia (where the airport is) and ended up booking a seat at 4am which would get him to the airport about 3 hours earlier than he needed to be to check in for the flight. But due to a technical problem (possibly an alarm clock set wrong) we both slept in and he missed the coach. All panic then ensued as we ran around at 4.45am to try and get dressed without waking the kids, get in the car and drive to town to try and find another coach seat!

Luckily for us the ticket office was open when we got there at 5.45am and to be honest I really thought I was seeing things - There aren't many places that would have a ticket office open and staffed at that time on a saturday morning! So on the coach he got whilst I drove home in the rain. I miss hubby loads when he's away but know that he had to go this time. I'm already looking forward to him getting back next weekend. Life will just carry on as usual here with animal feeding, muck shovelling, horses and donkey in and out daily and the general household chores that need done.

All of the animals have extra bedding now as the temperatures continue to drop. I think nature is playing tricks on us at the moment because my spring bulbs are poking through the soil and the strawberry plants are flowering again. Hopefully the weather here will stay mild and we're not in for a huge shock in January and February, which are usually the worst months weatherwise. Still I know it will get colder and we will get snowed in at some point - it's just a matter of time. But when it happens we should be well stocked up and have thermals at the ready, fashion goes out of the window at temps lower than -8!