Dishwasher no go! Making horrid noises from the pump, clonking sounds, and the bit you pull to open the front has had an increasingly-large crack for a couple of months. It was the cheapest Which? best buy nearly 12 years ago, so hasn’t done badly.
Replacement on order for delivery tomorrow – again, the cheapest Which? best buy (a different manufacturer this time), which I hope to get a decade or so’s use out of.
For some reason, my repeated attempts to grow snowdrops (galanthus) here have failed. However, their larger relatives Snowflakes (leucojum) do well. Rather an untidy plant, with foot-high straplike leaves, but the green-tipped flowers have just started to open and are a sign that spring is on the way.
Some not-bad spells of nearly-sunshine have encouraged the rosemary to open a few flowers. No bees taking advantage of them yet, though.
I think of spring as being mainly yellows – forsythia, daffodils, aconites and suchlike. The first two have not yet opened in my garden, and attempts to grow aconites have been unsuccessful. However, I seem to be entering a pink phase – the first two flowers on the camellia outside the French window have opened, and the flower stems on the pink hyacinths are pushing up slowly.
As is my custom, I brought twigs of forsythia in on New Year’s Day. The buds have just started to open – a few days later than usual, but a welcome foretaste of spring.
In my suburban heat island of little terraced houses, the outside minimum was down to -5.9C overnight. A couple of young foxes – I think last year’s cubs – were chasing round the neighbouring gardens, delightful to see. Photo taken through the slightly steamed-up bedroom windown – hence a bit washed out!
This afternoon I took the Christmas tree down. A day earlier than 12th night but I’ve got the alarm engineer coming tomorrow (for the service postponed from November) and I needed to rearrange things so he can get to the control panel. Due to severe frosts, I’ve put the tree by the window in the (unheated) spare bedroom, rather than bunging it back outside.
and after increasing the contrast a bit in my photo-editing program:
Overnight temperature down to -2.9C, and there had been the merest suggestion of a sprinkling of snow when I woke up this morning.
An absolutely glorious afternoon to get out and start pruning the apple and pear trees. It’s job that I trry to do sometime between Christmas and New Year, but it’s very weather-dependent! Still some tidying up to do of small bits, but the bulk of it is now in the brown bin for garden waste (which won’t be collected until rather later in the spring and is already rather full ..).
A mixed year on the health-and-fitness front. Sadly, I’ve been struggling a bit with my weight – most of the year was closer to 70kg than the target 66kg. However, fruit&veg met the target of 6 a day (achieved 6.11 average), and daily steps were ok at 5208 (the light months of British Summer Time) and 4150 (GMT), for a full-year average of 4763, which is the highest I’ve managed in the 5 years I’ve been tracking it..
Targets for 2026? Firm target is to do no less than in 2025, but I’d like to hope for a full year average steps of 4,900.