Last week was another non-gardening week. It was cold – very cold – and we also had some fog at the weekend. We couldn’t keep the bird-bath ice-free but fortunately, the birds could drink from and bathe in the pond.

Martyn posted about the weather here

We still managed our walks with Ruby. We all wrapped up warmly. Ruby doesn’t seem to feel the cold as she dashes backwards and forwards but she does need to be discouraged from hanging about for too long sniffing something interesting.

 The lake at Nostell was frozen over again.

You can easily understand how it could fool people into thinking that they could walk on the ice and in so doing place themselves in serious danger.

Walking on ice is something that is best left to the ducks.

Once again, we took a bag of food for the water birds. As soon as they notice food being thrown, the birds stream to the area anxious not to miss out on whatever is on offer.

Once again one of the swans, which I am guessing was the adult male, was very intolerant of any ducks invading his space. He actually tried to drown one poor duck by pushing it under the water. A few weeks ago, I heard one dad telling his child that swans were gentle creatures. Don’t you sometimes have to bite your tongue? Martyn posted a video here.

Ruby was fascinated but did cause a bit one a fuss at one point when she thought she ought to chase after the food that I was throwing. She loves a game of chase.

It’s been a week for stocking up on supplies. We now have our main vegetable seed order.

The bundle of flower seeds is smaller and includes flowers for the plot and also some for adding to our garden tubs.

So far we have a small collection of herb seeds. I’m sure that I ordered some basil – maybe it is lost amongst the pile of vegetable seeds.

We had a visit to a garden centre where we bought some new dahlias and some gladioli bulbs.

We also bought some seed potatoes. Two varieties that did well for us last year were Elfe and Osprey. It seems that no one is offering these for sale this year which is baffling. Surely the growers didn’t have a crop failure when ours did so well. We still have some potatoes of each variety left and so are thinking of saving some to plant. Has anyone any experience replanting potatoes? Should we try it?

Our seed list is posted here

On to last week’s meals. I  used some of our leeks, parsley and frozen peas in a risotto.

I used some of our parsnip, squash, onion and garlic in a cassoulet.

I also made a  turkey stir fry using our, carrot, onion and frozen peppers. The recipe called for spring onions but they are growing outside in a large pot and the compost was frozen solid,

That’s all for this week. As always stay safe, stay well and stay war