A fluffed-up visitor in the garden

Well, it's certainly chilly here at the moment.  Bright, yes, but also two-socks weather!  Today it was 4 degrees C.  I think winter is upon us.

I was pottering out in the garden this afternoon, sorting out washing and looking for stones (more of that later) when I became aware I was being watched - up close.  This little chap was no more than a few inches from me:

He was all puffed up to trap air in his feathers to keep warm.  I couldn't believe how close he was to me; I took several photos, thinking he would fly off when I moved, but he just stayed there, looking at me, cocking his head from side to side.  Unfortunately, the other photos were out of focus because he was just too close!  The encounter lasted a couple of minutes or so, and made my day.  

I mentioned the garlic that we planted a few weeks ago.  We had begun to get a bit concerned that the soil might have been too cold for germination, but over the weekend, we saw not one, or two, but several little green shoots pushing their way through the soil.

There's actually a whole line of garlic sprouted, not just these two.

We had a final tidy-up in the garden on Sunday.  A bit of hoeing round the cabbages, a check for livestock (somehow a caterpillar had got under the mesh cage =:o  ), the last of the perennials cut back; dead leaves picked off.

We have several jobs lined up for next year in the garden, but for now, apart from cropping winter greens as and when, we'll let it tick over through the colder months.

Indoors we've been pottering along.  I think decorating the lounge has made us more inclined to have a bit of a sort out, declutter, tidy up and just generally think about where the best place is for things.  Every day I am trying to focus on one small job - today, for example, I emptied out, cleaned (and polished!) the wooden craft-box and re-arranged it's contents so I could actually shut the lid properly.  I'm trying really hard to make sure surfaces stay clear - it makes them so much easier to clean, for a start - and that things get put away in the right place rather than just left lying around.  It's something I need to be vigilant about, as I'm usually the culprit!

N finds the winter really difficult.  During the spring, summer and most of autumn, he can always finds something to busy himself with in the garden, but he is the first to admit that winter months are a challenge to him.  We live in a small flat, and there are many, many advantages to that, but one disadvantage is that there is only so much maintenance and upkeep that needs to be done.  Once it's done, well, it's done.  I can always find something to keep me busy; at the moment I have three different needlework projects on the go, and plenty more just waiting for me to find the time for, but it's not quite so easy for N.  We're giving this some thought - it's something we need to find a solution to - and there are one or two ideas that we are looking into.  Hopefully we may have news to share in a while.