Welcome to 2009

I'm trusting we all survived the excesses of Christmas and the New Year and emerged the other side in one piece. As mentioned in my last post of 2008, I can confirm that I did get a Stihl FS38 petrol driven strimmer - it's orange, noisy and very, VERY manly. Trouble is it's just too damn cold out there at the moment to go and use it. I dare say it's powerful enough to cut frozen grass but I'm happy to wait until my feet don't turn into blocks of ice just in order to give the plopment a bit of a haircut.

I tend to get stir crazy if I have to stay indoors for a few days at a time, so decided that today the weather was bright enough (and the green bin in the kitchen needed emptying) for a trip to see how the site was doing. I also wanted to pick the last few meagre brussels sprouts and purple sprouting broccoli.

I also got a BRAND NEW CAMERA!!!! YAY!!!! So this was an also opportunity to play with the settings - The Husband took most of the pictures. D'you like my new hair? Nah, only kidding, it was so cold that I was wearing my Russian (fake) fur hat and even had the Deputy Dawg ear flaps down which left my head toasty warm but somewhat deaf.

Everything's doing fine down there although it's so cold that the water troughs have frozen completely - poor the Water Boatmen that live in there.

Anyway the onions and garlic seem to be thriving. If you recall, in Autumn last year I planted 200 onion sets of both overwintering Japanese and Red varieties, and probably about 50 Garlic cloves. The close up picture shows a few red onions (and even some frost on the ground, just as proof of the general coldness of the day).

The Savoy Cabbages are all coming along but weren't big enough to eat for Christmas Day lunch and, frankly, still aren't big enough to eat even now.

The fruit bushes and canes still just look like sticks stuck in the ground so we don't know yet how they're doing although all three Blueberry bushes have new buds. The cherry tree also seems to be surviving as do the many strawberry plants that went in at the end of last year.

We were only there for about 20 minutes or so before running home to the joys of central heating and a hot cup of tea!