February can be a rough month - if you are older than about 18, there is no real excitement, and certainly by my age, Valentine's Day holds no thrills any more. The weather can be lovely, sometimes for longer than a couple of hours, and it can be vile. We had some sunny intervals today, but it was blowing a hoollie and while it went some way to drying the laundry, things are now hanging all over the bathroom as there was a heavy shower. We must have had an inch of rain in the week, and while that has done good things to the water levels in the ponds, we didn't actually need it.
During one of the nicer hours of weather, I managed to scramble round onto the deer path at the back of the second pond, to get a whole different view. The pond is clearly leaking water somewhere, so while I had those lovely big fish in there last year, I can't see the pond ever being able to support 10 to 12 inch long fish again. I'm not sure what has made the pond leak, but I'm sure the environmentalists will tell me when they visit in the spring.
With the longer days, the chickens have more time to consider their raison d'être, and one (I'm fairly sure it is Jacque the Ripper) has started to lay eggs again. She is pushing out 6 per week, which is nice and enough for a meal and an addition to a pudding but I really need Mack (the Knife) to get back into the swing of things too before I can put away the egg box I take to the market on a Saturday.
I've decided we need to work our way through the leeks we have been growing, not least so the land can be prepared for other crops in the spring. I lifted 4 rather nice ones and a runt - I could have done without the feline assistance, but Donald made it clear I had no choice.
I have a regular walk to check out all edges of the land and see what is going on. There are little cul-de-sacs that I go down to check on the various ponds, that are like little spurs off the circuit. One bit we always go past is a large walnut just uphill from the ponds that seemed to die last year. It has a number of broken branches held up in the canopy - what the arborists tend to call widow-makers - one of which came down during the week. While John tidied it up, I looked at another branch that appears to be long dead and needs to come off. It was well festooned with rather unpleasant fungus.
Last night we pretty well finished this year's truffle fest - there is just the truffle infused camembert to eat up. They were very aromatic, but the quality was a little patchy. It was the first time storing them in rice and then using the rice in a risotto has really worked for me, so that was a real plus. However the stuff going on in life in general has perhaps made me a little less inventive than normal. It's been very enjoyable, but I hope to do much better next year. Truffle and prawn risotto is always a winner though!
Anyway, that's all for this week - have a good one!
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