Hello, welcome back and I hope you are all safe and dry after this spell of appalling weather. We have been rather quiet this last few weeks, partly through necessity and partly due to the return of the ‘flu we had before Christmas. We’ve christened it “shark ‘flu” because after taking a bite it circles round and comes back for another. Despite this we have made plans and are achieving a few things in our tin-pot little way. A lot of this revolves around the wood, as usual. By wood I mean both the growing trees and the logs remaining in our now sadly diminished wood store. Our regular tree man has been absent, caught up in the need to clear the devastation wreaked by storm Eowyn that felled an estimated 5 million trees. We hope to see him again soon but may have to look elsewhere as we have some leaners, a faller and almost no logs.

There is some progress on the planting front however. A group called “Free Trees Ireland” donate over 80 thousand trees each year. This year I set my alarm early and hovered over the laptop, with success! For a small donation I secured either 10 or 20 native grown young trees. The confusion over how many is due to the fact I applied twice by accident. Look, it was early, I hadn’t had my coffee and the website was creaking over the rush of applications and kept going round to the form. If it is 20 trees we will offer some of them to the park in our local town. Looking after 20 new trees – 24 actually as we have a couple of nut trees waiting and 2 copper beech ordered – is possibly too much work given our current physical condition. Together they will make the wood much closer to completion and Donal, our tree man, is coming to clear the next patch of undergrowth and dead ash trees.

It has been very, very wet here with a number of “dirty days” – relentless rain, squally winds and thick, grey skies. We’ve not had any real flooding though our soakaway is completely waterlogged and spills over the front drive with great regularity. As the free trees bundles include willow and hairy birch we are planning to plant several near the worst of the overspill as they can suck up the excess. We will be taking Donal’s advice on this however!

The rain has had a much greater effect on the land across the road from us. Several years ago the owner felled over 30 mature trees around a pond that bordered the road on one side. The result was flooding on the road and rising water levels on his land. It hasn’t flooded this year but the pond is now a small lake in his field, much to the delight of a number of water fowl. A large flock of geese roll up regularly to swim, graze on the grass and generally socialise. They are often joined by half a dozen swans and other, smaller, birds. In the evening the flock takes off with a great cackle and much honking, a tremendous sight.

As I said at the beginning, we have been resting a lot recently. I have completed my new jigsaw, a wonderful pantheon of dogs. I’m now working my way through some of the others as the television signal is rather unreliable at present. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for the next few weeks as it is the rugby 6 Nations, one of the few tournaments I follow now TNT has taken all the cycling. I think we are lucky over here as we can get all matches over 2 stations, and without the intrusive adverts in matches. It’s not always restful I know but I love it.

To finish with some dog news, all 3 of ours are doing well. Cynthia has recovered from the “hospital” visit and is eating well, especially the special menu Jacqui cooks up for her. She got the blue plaster bandage off her front leg within 24 hours and hasn’t needed the subcutaneous drip so far. We are keeping a very close eye on her but so far it is looking good. Chloe is now prone to sudden spells of barking in the night and can get up, prowl around shouting and get stuck in corners or under the furniture. I’ve had to start giving her some Gabapentin in her evening meal and this does seem to help. I hate the idea of sedating her but as Jacqui says, it’s better than her being upset or afraid in the night as signified by barking and whining. And I get some more sleep. Charlie is a bit anxious about the girls. He takes everything so seriously and keeps trying to nurse them, wash their faces and always goes out with them to check they are okay. We give him extra hugs and occasional treats to reassure him.

So that’s us – waiting out the winter, planning our planting and taking care of our little pack.

Thank you for reading. I began this blog as a way of keeping in touch with some of the people we left behind when we moved. I wonder now how you are all doing? If you’d like to let me know you can DM me privately on Facebook Messenger or use my e-mail, Jennie@jenniefinch.me.uk. I have taken to disabling comments on this blog as the AI spammers and scrapers began to flood my feed with their data-harvesting messages. Cheers, AI. Not.

Whether I hear from you or not, I send you all good wishes and hope you have a good few weeks, maybe even with some sunshine.

Jennie.