I am stuck inside. The weather is lovely, but birch pollen wants me dead so I have to keep doors and windows closed. The past few weeks have been stressful and it feels strange to have a sick day. I’ve been playing with a drawing app on my ipad and I’m quite happy to be drawing a little bit again. This is a hand sewn bird that my friend made for my little one when he was a newborn.

For my birthday, K. and I had lunch in a really great French bistro (the best chocolate fondant I have ever eaten (I was very happy that day)) and they had lovely fabric napkins. I wanted to have them at home, too, so I made some. I found this tutorial for making mitered corners and I have to say it looks nice. M. really liked them and decided to borrow them to play with, so the stack in the photo is a little short.

These days, I have toast (our homemade no knead bread) with chocolate for breakfast. I’ve only encontered this stuff in Denmark – thin wafers of chocolate meant for bread. Foreigners tend to scoff at this (”it falls off!”), but the secret is either lots of butter and fresh, white rolls, or like this, on toast. Because then the chocolate melts into the bread. Every morning I think I’ll have something less sugary, but I end up with this.

There is hot tea in the cup. This is the only way.

The sun feels warmer. The cold let go and everything is wet. When the snow came, the ground was already soaked from weeks of rain, and the melted snow doesn’t drain away. Our lawn is waterlogged and muddy. There are snowdrops, though, and I picked one.

We’ve been sick for a week, the smallest one and I, stuck with the stubbornest, nastiest cold I have ever encountered. Coinciding with the first real snow this winter. We haven’t been able to enjoy it properly, but watching it from the windows is not that bad. On Monday, M. and I were in the garden for a bit. He jumped around and I swept the snow from the greenhouse roof. We’ve had several broken panes from strong winds and want to avoid more of them breaking. There were tracks in the garden from many birds and some from what I think is a fox. I thought the fox (which used to have a path through our back garden) had disappeared and I’m kind of happy to have it back.

I did make good of that resolution to walk more. One weekend in January K. was away, and I carried the little one on my back while M., almost four now, walked with me down to the beach. He’s a good walker, we were away for at least an hour, and after throwing a couple of rocks in the water we were done lookning at it and did some more walking instead. We tasted some very sour berries that grow by the seaside here, but most importantly, I remembered to say all right when M. wanted us to wade through the huge puddles that had appeared in the grass after weeks of rain. I’ve been told repeatedly that it’s important for small kids to learn the meaning of the word ‘no’. I think it’s far more important for the parents to learn to say ‘yes’ (and mean it).

The photo of the moon was taken with my phone a few days ago. The kids and I were on our way home after picking up M. He loves the moon.
There are so many birds right now. It must have been a good winter for them. Just before, I opened the curtains in the bedroom and a huge magpie was taking a bath in the old bird bath outside the window. His friend was waiting his turn on the lawn (two for joy!). It was drizzling, so I suppose he got a shower too. The moment they noticed me, they flew off.

I finally planted my garlic the day before New Year’s Eve. I couldn’t find garlic for planting (the garden centre didn’t have them; the internet shop only had them by the kilo(!)) so I bought some for eating and now I’m crossing my fingers. I’d cleared the bed a couple of days before. Last year there were beans and peas (and salad and other slightly random crops) in that spot, and I’m hoping that they will have left some nitrogen in the ground for the garlic to thrive on. I have never been able to grow garlic successfully before, and I’m suspecting that my painful lack of weeding is to blame, as well as not very nutritious and clay-y soil. The time of planting is of course completely wrong. The sources say either in late October or early spring, and this is neither, but at the same time this winter has been very warm so far and if I’d planted them in October they would have grown too much by now. Crossing my fingers, again. M. helped me stick the garlic cloves in. I used a bamboo stick for marking the rows and for poking holes in the soil. I like planting garlic. It feels good to poke them into the ground. When we’d finished, M. brought me a packet of seeds he wanted to sow, and accidentally he’d picked spinach seeds. They like it when it’s chilly so we sowed them in the greenhouse. It’s going to be interesting to see when (and if) they germinate. Apart from that I haven’t done any gardening in ages. It’s been a very wet summer and a warm winter so most likely next year will be a slug fest. I might concrete over the entire thing and/or sell the house and move to a flat in the city. Of course I don’t mean it really but when I think about the slugs I want to. Ugh.
Instead of spending time in my own garden, I’ve been reading about someone else’s. Monty Don’s Ivington Diaries is not just inspiring but a very beautiful (and huge) book. Worth it for the leafing through alone.

I have always liked January. The bleakness and quietness after the holidays feels like a good place to start new things, to be quiet, to think. To read. I’m not sure which resolutions to pick this year. I never take them very seriously. The one I like the most is about alcohol, which I don’t have very often right now, but when I do, I want to choose locally produced (organic) beer. It’s tasty, local and the bottles can be recycled.
The more serious resoluion is about more output, less input. I have an ipad now and I have a tendency of falling thorugh the rabbit hole and being too absorbed in what other people write (and photograph). Inspiration is good (very good!) and there are many people in here that I love and appreciate, and I don’t want to lose that. But Twitter, for instance, is a time stealer. And the incessant pressing of update buttons is making me feel a bit like one of those test mice, learning how to press a lever with a paw so sugar water will come out. Gorging myself on the sugar. I’d like to do more stuff instead. And make some output for this place, too.
The photo below was taken when I was in the city, on my way to a meeting. My maternity leave has ended. It felt good to be out and about on my own again. Sticking my nose out of the hole. I hope we will manage to spend a lot of time outdoors this year. The kids need it but I think I need it even more. Maybe that will be my third resolution. Go for more walks.