The last few days have been gorgeous – warm enough to sit outside in the middle of the day with no coat.  The birds think its spring and are singing away in the trees.  Due to this warmer winter, we have had much less birds visit this season than last, even Splodge only make occasional visits, but we still have our family of great tits, pair of coal tits, marsh tits, blue tits and nuthatches, Mrs blackbird and the troop of magpies who come regularly to feed.   In fact one morning, when the male nuthatch came down to feed first thing from the peanuts we put out on the veranda banisters upstairs, doing his normal routine of trying them all out until he finds the largest, he dropped the first one down onto the floor, jumped down and picked it up, flew back up onto the banisters, put the peanut down and tried several others before deciding on the best!

As the ground is quite soft in places, we were today able to dig a channel to take water away from the house.  We seem to have sprung a new spring in the garden and were in danger of the water collecting too near the house.  I also took the opportunity of collecting some kindling, blown down during the high winds last month, although we have used much less this winter than we had anticipated, both kindling and logs.  But the forecast is for snow this week and temperatures should start to drop tomorrow.