Snowdrops
A slow day today. My valiant effort to rid the house of all festive leftovers last night led to quite a difficult blue cheese and red wine disturbed sleep. Fitful slumber interrupted for bladder-emptying and bleary consumption of Rennies and paracetamol has become all too common over the festive season. I am very much looking forward to waking with no sniff of a hangover tomorrow. A 9pm bedtime is calling to me; a 10 hour, restorative sleep my ambition.
I rode my bike into Dumfries for the first time in a week or two- the seemingly endless rain let up for a few hours- and it felt great to pump up the tyres and swoosh into town on my own leg power. Sometimes I forget how fun riding a bicycle is, especially on quiet country roads. It’s less fun in town where unnecessary, red-faced encounters with jeering motorists are dishearteningly common.
In town I visited the leisure centre, DG1, freshly reopened after their New Years holidays. 1 and 2 January are public holidays in Scotand, prudently allowing the country 2 days to recover from Hogmanay’s overindulgences. The gym was more crowded than usual. The fresh-faced Resolution crowd and the high school boys who still seem to be on their winter break, and us creaky old regulars hungry for a big feed of resistance strain and cardio machine exhilaration. I overdid it, probably, trying to get back on track. Cycled back home just after sunset appreciating a little longer afternoon, an extension of just-enough-light-to-see-by nearly to 5 o’clock.
The snowdrops are beginning to break through the mud in the garden and the woods opposite. Hopeful little shoots, a bit taller each day. The garlic I planted in November is coming up too, kept safe from marauding chickens by some wooden lattice laid over the bed; it peeks its pungent green fingers up through the slats. Aside from some well-established leeks which have stoically endured several good frosts and lots of badgering and pecking by our 10 hens, there’s little else in the garden. A few stands of spinach may replenish themselves come spring. The time for seed selecting, garden planning and planting the first indoor starts is very close. Before all that we must unroll our newly acquired chicken wire and erect defences around the summer beds. The hens, rabbits, hares, birds, made short work of our plantings last summer, not to mention the slugs and snails. This year we must try to give ourselves a fighting chance against them.
