The bucolic scene above was taken on the approach to one of my customer’s houses whilst on my delivery round on Friday. These Highland cattle are so gorgeous, it would be very tempting to give them a big hug, but those magnificent horns are telling me to keep my distance, though I’m sure that they are very gentle. It’s sometimes surprising what I see when I am dropping your orders off. In the previous week when approaching the front door of one of my loyal customers I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye close to a Lavender bush. I stopped in my tracks and peered into the shrub, whereupon a pretty grey rabbit with a white chest appeared and began nibbling the lawn. It was clearly a domesticated animal on the run. Ann, whose home it was, appeared and told me that the rabbit escaped from its run in a neighbour’s garden when it was damaged during a recent storm. Since then it had taken residence in her garden and seemed to be sleeping under her car at night. The rabbit’s owner has seemingly shown no interest in capturing it. This week I snapped these Daffodils in a garden in Ixworth.

Meanwhile back in the garden I have continued to wrestle with the out of control Beech hedge. I know that it is my own fault for letting it get into the state that it is by burying my head in the sand for so many years, daunted by the task of tackling it. But tackle it I finally am, and once some progress had visibly been made I was encouraged to crack on, driven forward with each additional metre that I scalped, though there are very many more man hours to put in before even the beginning of the end is in sight. The photos below show the small section that I have completed, with the second one showing a 2 metre ladder next to the hedge to give some sense of scale. There is well over 200ft of it to deal with.

Well I think that we were lucky to sidestep Éowyn on Friday. Yes it was windy, but when you see the havoc caused in Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland by the tempest we have little to complain about. After a glorious day of respite yesterday we are advised that gusts of up to 50mph can be expected later today and tomorrow. I can’t remember a late autumn/winter than this current one where we have had so many storms with such strong winds. So whether I will risk scaling a ladder tomorrow with a chainsaw in hand is for now open for debate.

Perhaps I should stay at home and do my tax return instead. This time last week I told you that I was going to do it…..but didn’t. I now have until Friday to complete it, submit it to HMRC, and to pay whatever tax is owing if I am to avoid a fine. Gulp!

It’s the Big Garden Birdwatch this weekend, and I really want to do one here at home as well as at Moyns Park, but that is going to mean 2 x 1 hour sessions of watching and recording all of the species that appear in that time period, and that’s going to be a struggle. I’ll see what I can do.

Because of the pressure on my time I am going to keep this brief, so I will just tell you about what’s in the shop this week before getting on with my tasks. So there are lovely Tundra cabbages with firm hearts, purple sprouting broccoli, cavolo nero and Brussels sprouts. There are some multi-coloured rainbow carrots as well as regular ones, parsnips, swede, onions, leeks, beetroot, and sweet potatoes. it seems that I forgot to order them last week, so apologies for any disappointment caused by that. The Avocados were smaller last week so I doubled up if they were particularly small. I am reluctant to reduce the price in case they arrive this week much larger. Lemons are coming from Italy this time and I am hoping that they are back to normal size. Oranges are large and delicious, as are the Clementines, and there are still Seville oranges.

Right well I’m off to do something….I’m not sure what yet, but something. I just hope that I don’t fritter my time away. Have a good week.

Phil