It’s Spring. The cherry trees have buds, and here are some:
The goats are confined to their part of the garden. They can’t go outside the fence until the grass has had a chance to grow and the cattle grid is in place.
We have sheared them at both ends, but there is still much work to be done. This is Holly:
And this is Misty:
They’re still quite glad of their coats at night. Misty will do anything to find new sources of food. She’s such a smart goat.
But I thought Holly seemed disdainful.
I didn’t take any close-up pictures of Vesla. She just looks the same as the others, only shorter. Here’s Topsy:
There are some lovely wild flowers out at the moment; if there are more than usual, it might be because the snow melted very early this year (that’s just my theory).
A Bad Guide 
:-D I love to see the girls.
And I’m very glad it’s your time of spring now.
Here is autumn, but the temperatures are still high 27ºC today, for instance.
Wow, that’s pretty impressive. Right now, it’s 1ºC here.
Boy, am I envious. For our sins here in Moscow, we’ve still got snow. Tons of it. Covered by filth. Submerged under bog-like lakes. Not a bit of green. Barely any earth. Still in parkas. (The people, I mean). Today the temperature will go up so I’m thinking of going hatless. Woo hoo!
We’re in parkas sometimes too. You should be ok going hatless. There was that US Army study that said that 99% of your body heat is lost through your head, but then it turned out they’d only measured hatless people otherwise wrapped up in warm clothes. Duh.
This factoid about the head as big heat loser (with the percentage varying with the retelling, of course) has been around for many years, it seems to me. Did it originate in a US Army study? I never heard that.
Ø, I think I must have read about the US Army bit here.
Russians are a bit obsessive about headgear. Hats must be worn. Almost always. Especially by children in the winter. And by children in the summer (to avoid sunstroke). Scarves — also a satorial imperative. And did I mention gloves?
My wife used to laugh at talk of “winter” when we lived in South Oz. “They wear neither scarves nor gloves” she observed.
Dearie, I enjoyed this paragraph about the railways in a column in the Observer by David Mitchell today. He sums up my feelings:
I also liked this bit:
I just read a summarized account of the contributions of Thatcher and Blair to the demise of the British train system, in Tony Judt’s 2001 essay The Gnome in the Garden: Tony Blair and Britain’s “Heritage” (in the essay collection Reappraisals). “There is nothing contrived about Tony Blair’s inauthenticity. He came by it honestly, as it were.”
Yes, I’ve read that too. Tony Judt was a gem.
I cannot speak about “percentages of bodyheat loss”. But I can speak about practicalities. A considerable time before that 1970 study, I was at school in Anchorage, Alaska. My sister was the secretary to the late Dr William J. Mills, Jr (q.G.) orthopedist and authority on the treatment of “cold injury” [perhaps the word “frostbite” has gone out of fashion]. Dr Mills also helped set the norms for teaching Alaskan schoolchildren what they need to know to stay alive and healthy in a cold environment, and the adage was: “If your feet get cold, put your hat on.”
This is a reliable piece of advice. It even works in the house, when it is not even winter and you are not even in Alaska. It is also cheaper than turning on an electric or gas heat source; and doesn’t consume firewood.
It’s a cold Spring in Bridgwater at the moment…keep warm, unless you’re in the Southern half; whereupon keep cool!
For the thousandth time, Thatcher didn’t privatise the railways. Anyway, I travelled by rail a lot in the 70s and it was absolutely dire. By the early 90s the railway hereabouts was far better than when we came here in the early 80s. Money had been spent to good effect: good ol’ Thatch, I say.
Yes, it was Major not Thatcher: “.. the then [1990-1997] Conservative government chose to privatize British Rail. They were encouraged by the prospect of a quick profit from the sale of public assets into private ownership; but their chief motive was Prime Minister John Major’s need to be seen to be privatizing something – Mrs. Thatcher had by then sold off just about everything else, and privitization was the Conservative Party’s sole and only program. The integrated network was sold off in parts [from 1994 to 1997]: train routes to train-operating companies, rolling stock to other companies, rails and stations to a new company called Railtrack.”
To be fair, some change was mandated by EU Directive 91/440 and subsequent ones:
There was no EU requirement to privatize everything, nor to privatize anything in the way Major’s government did. Germany and France took different kinds of decision. In Germany the state still holds 100% of the shares in Deutsche Bundesbahn, although the latter has been commercially and legally reorganized into many individually operating companies, along the lines of what Judt lists in the quote starting this comment
The German government has been hot to sell off around 49% of the train system. An IPO was just rounding the corner when the 2008 financial crisis sent it scurrying back into never-never land.
“If your feet get cold, put your hat on. It even works in the house and not in winter.” I will try this, because my feet get quite cold. What is g.G.? Is Bridgwater in Somerset or Alaska?
Good old Thatch for not privatising British Railways. Perhaps she knew something we didn’t. BR was an irritating organisation, they never resolved “leaves on the line”, for instance. Ideally, everyone (me) would have their own train.
What is “leaves on the line” ? A euphemism for “leaves on time” ?
It’s a euphemism for “no trains running”. During the autumn commuter-train service in Britain is unreliable, because the wheels spin and so the trains won’t go. This is because there are leaves on the line. It’s a uniquely British problem, and very tragic.
Don’t forget “the wrong kind of snow”, another euphemism for “no trains running”.
“It’s a uniquely British problem”: except I remember a letter in the Times from a chap in Northern Germany saying that it occurred there too. The solution is to ignore the pestiferous Greens and chop down the ruddy trees that drop the leaves.
Huh, I’d never encountered that, but apparently it happens all the time. Of course I myself travel on the fast lines, and don’t tootle along in local trains on their way through the woods to Grandmother’s house. The fast-track rails run on a raised embankment where nary a tree grows.
Is the word “raised” superfluous in “a raised embankment” ?
Das Phänomen ist nicht neu, und doch gibt es augenscheinlich keine Lösung…The solution is to chop down the ruddy trees
In Norway they put velcro on the line. It’s “greener”.
Is the word “raised” superfluous?
It sounds a bit like “support beams” to me, but surely whether an embankment appears raised depends on whether you’re standing at the top of it or at the bottom.
“The wrong kind of snow” is also an excuse for not skiing.
“The wrong kind of snow” is also an excuse for not skiing.
In my experience, for cross-county (I don’t do downhill) some snow just sticks to the bottom of the skis and makes forward progress impossible. you are serious, you put the right kind of wax on the skies and off you go. But it’s a whole process and in such circumstances I stay in front of the fire with a book and the appropriate refreshment.
AJP: I’m intrigued by the photo of Topsy showing the side of the house and the basement (?) window. I presume that must be covered with snow in mid-winter. Is there no inward pressure, or leakage during the melt ?
IF you are serious…
The “wrong kind of snow” arose because the automatic sliding doors on one sort of carriage were designed against customary British snow i.e. wet and dense. It turned out that dry, light snow could get blown into places that yer patriotic snow couldn’t get to, hence the problems. Me, I’d have tried to desgn fagainst both sorts. Perhaps the boss said “don’t”.
I’m intrigued by the photo of Topsy showing the side of the house and the basement (?) window
The snø doesn’t really come up very high on that wall, perhaps because the ground is sloping. The construction: a wooden frame sitting on that concrete wall. The 4″x4″ frame is covered inside & out with wooden paneling, as is the window wall in the basement. The basement (previously the hen house, currently tool storage) is painted in an iron-oxide stain. We don’t get any leaks, but most years we lose roof tiles when the snow melts & freezes.
My goddaughter was telling me about some velcrolike thing you can use in lieu of wax on cross-country skis to stop yourself from sliding backwards. She said it was great, I’m ready to try it next year.
Me, I’d have tried to design against both sorts. Perhaps the boss said “don’t”.
I’m guessing that the cost of dealing with alleged snow can’t be justified when it so rarely shows up.
..velco-like thing in lieu of wax … My langlauf skis, now some 30 years old, came with a sort of fishscale pattern in plastic on the soles, which (more or less) did the job of stopping you sliding backwards, but weren’t any use on the wrong snow, which packed underneath regardless. I suspect the velco stuff is much more high-tech and solves that problem too.
I wonder if the slip-on sealskins which are the traditional way of going cross-country on alpine skis in fact work better. I wouldn’t have thought seals got stuck on the wrong snow….
Here’s a Spring delight. Gather nettles and bishopweed from the garden: tear off the stalks so that you’ve got 4 oz of herbage. Add one potato and one onion, and cook up with water enough to give you four bowls of soup.
Then jazz it up a little with anchovy flavour. If Crown is a Patum Peperium man, no doubt he could use a wee dod of that would: we used drops of Thai Fish Sauce “to taste”. (The brand, should you be interested, was Silk Road Best Before July 2008.)
Delish: just the job for a blowy, wet, cool day here.
I’m with a dictionary in one hand and a soup pan in the other, ready to follow dearie’s suggestions!
Yes, me too. I’m going to have find out what bishopweed is – and I shall do so, ’tis a blowy, wet, cool day here too. Beastly weather. I have proper anchovies, I’ve found there’s an Italian kind that they hide behind the normal ones at our exotic & expensive supermarket.
Thank you, dearie.
Can’t find bishopsweed. Bishop’s wee, maybe?
Bishopsweed? That’s bloody ground elder! Aaahh! Actually, I know you can eat it, it tastes good, and some people put it in salads, but I simply can’t. The smell reminds me of weeding.
We have got a few nettles somewhere. I’ll use those.
Ha! I found it immediately (before you),
http://www.oregonlive.com/hg/index.ssf/2011/03/gardening_news_and_notes_eat_y.html
but only in the internet not in the garden (I haven’t been to any garden this week, ’tis sad to live in a city…)
‘Tis.
(sounds like “poetic function” to me… =D )
I shall be looking for bishopsweed as soon as I get home. We just love eating everything that is free. Except I haven’t managed to try bryony tips yet. A certain couple of friends assure us the tips are edible and called “esparagos turcos” but until I see these friends consuming it, I am not trying it. The internet and everywhere else says bryony in general is poison.
Nettles will be easy, and we have the Peperium. Yum.
Another good thing for a cool, blowy, wet day is a mug of Spanish drinking chocolate. Though it probably meant I had a week’s worth of sugar in one lunchtime.
It’s not just free; having wee’d all over our garden, I’d now pay the bishop to take it away again. I hadn’t heard of bryony tips. We used to have a lot of borage; the flowers were good in salad and it sounds healthy, like ‘porridge’, but it’s disappeared.
What’s Spanish about drinking chocolate? Is it different? Better than, say, Swiss?
‘Tis a great addition to one’s vocabulary, Julia.
1) Sorry: forgot to mention that we added vegetable stock. To the soup, I mean.
2) Borage: we use the leaves and flowers in Pimm’s. But cold, wet , blowy weather is certainly not Pimm’s o’clock.
3) Drinking chocolate: not familiar with the Swiss variety, but fond of the Spanish stuff that the local health food emporium stocks. (Also the source of our vegetable stock.)
Nettle soup is quite well-known in Germany, but I’d never heard of bishop’s weed either and even after googling it, I would probably pick the wrong plant and die of poisoning. In German, it’s called Giersch, but also Geißfuß or Ziegenfuß because of the botanical name Aegopodium, so that should endear it to you a little more, AJP.
Allegedly it was introduced here by the Romans to provide an early season salad.
Geißfuß or Ziegenfuß
I’ve tried to get them to eat it, also nettles, but they won’t.