Today I’ve been planning my seed sowing strategy for the coming weeks, and what’s the first thing I do when I get stuck? Do I take notice of the above Internet sales pitch? Of course I don’t, I reach for my favourite gardening book.

I wonder if it’s an ‘age’ thing, people of my generation were brought up with books. Admittedly, if I can’t find what I’m looking for in a book, I do venture on to the net, but somehow a book is more real, reassuring.

Anyway, it’s a good job I heeded my own advice for the new year and didn’t get carried away with the relatively mild weather in January. February has brought with it ferociously low temperatures, wickedly cold winds and the promise of heavy snow later today.

Sitting in the warm with a gardening book planning Spring, seems like exactly the right thing to be doing.

The general consensus seems to be, that because the autumn and winter have been milder than last year, indeed milder than many years, the birds don’t need as much support, because natural food is still available to them.

The forecast for the coming week is for very cold days and sharp frosts at night. Fingers crossed the winter doesn’t have a sting in it’s tail for all of us.

Over the last couple of weeks there has been activity. Vehicles parked outside, windows open, smoke out of a chimney, mattresses propped up outside and curtains tied up as if to facilitate cleaning.

Then today the icing on the cake. The septic tank was pumped out. This is the septic tank that was installed last March, was big enough to live in and reputedly cost the brewery £50,000. The pub was already on it’s knees, and has been closed completely since September. They must have money to burn.

All of this, plus the arrival of a skip and strangers walking dogs in the lane, is a sure sign that the pub is about to rise like a phoenix from the ashes. Watch this space.

Today was bright and breezy so I decided to have a close look at the plants in the conservatory. All winter I’ve really only watered them occasionally, and not much else. I’m pleased to say all was well apart from one fuchsia which had been attacked by vine weevil grubs.

I knew almost immediately just by looking at it, and a gentle tug on the stem confirmed my suspicions as the plant just lifted out of the pot with barely a root to it’s name.

I have been here before. Sometimes I can save them, sometimes I can’t. I washed what roots it had thoroughly,  pruned it, re-potted it and watered it well. Now only time will tell. I checked the other plants, who all seem to be OK which is a relief. Roll on Spring.

Incidentally I’m still keeping to my resolution and not getting carried away at the first sunbeam and bird song.

Finally, Happy Birthday to me, 58 today!!!!!

In my defence, it’s sometimes outside my control, for example last year we were under several feet of snow, and the year before I was decorating, but even so it seems to me the gardening switch in my head just turns itself off around the beginning of December, and refuses to fully switch on again until about March.

A lot of people don’t like January and February, but to be honest I quite like them, having a birthday towards the end of January probably helps a bit, but regardless of that, I feel the excitement of a new gardening year approaching and what’s not to like about that?

The trouble is I do tend to get a bit carried away, and as soon as even a hint of warm sunshine appears, I’m convinced Spring is here, and over-ride my gardening switch to go into the garden, even if it’s still February!

Consequently I have been known to come un-stuck occasionally, when I’ve tried to get things going a bit too soon, but this year it’s going to be different. Honest!

With that in mind, instead of rushing out to buy seed potatoes and onion sets, all I’ve done so far this year is plan the crop rotation in my vegetable garden. I’m going to plant a new strawberry bed this year, as the existing one probably peaked last year.

The ‘Lucifer’ seedlings that I sowed at the end of September and the ‘Rudbeckia’ experiment are both still hanging on in the conservatory along with flowering fuchsias and a few geraniums.

I’m going for long walks to keep me occupied until the weather improves and the switch in my head turns on and I can get back into the garden.

I’d just finished cleaning my teeth and had placed my brush back in its mug. I should point out at this stage that I was quite tired, and having had my usual night-cap of a glass of port, wasn’t at my sparkling best.

Suddenly, out of nowhere something that seemed quite large flew at my head. I tried to brush it away, but it kept on coming. I began to retreat to the bathroom door, but the thing kept on flying at my head and it was buzzing.

I’m not given to hysterics, but I actually screamed out loud, not that it did any good, as Peter who was downstairs watching TV, never heard a thing!

The whole thing probably lasted no more than a few seconds, and when things calmed down there was a huge wasp in the middle of the bathroom floor. Where on earth had he come from?

I placed a glass over him so I knew where he was and to stop either of us treading on him with bare feet during the night, because at that point I was going to leave him there until morning.

Then I got thinking. I knew if I did that he would be dead by the time I got up. So at around midnight I got out of bed, scooped him up into the glass to take him outside.

On reflection, given my ‘mellow’ state and the fact that it was pitch dark and blowing a gale, this might not have been my best decision ever, but as luck would have it all went well.

He may not have survived the night coming as he did from our warm bathroom to a force 9 gale, but at least I’d given him a chance.

So there we are, proof yet again, that the old softie in me is alive and well in 2012.

It’s funny how you accumulate ‘stuff’ over the years, and I’ve certainly come upon things I’d forgotten I had, or in some cases didn’t even know I had, or indeed some I wondered why I had.

During one particular sortie into a particularly inaccessible secret hidey-hole, I came upon a pile of papers and photographs that had belonged to Peter’s granny. A sweet old lady who died probably 20 years ago.

At the end of 1989 we had helped her to move from Lincolnshire to a Residential Care Home in Halifax, where we were living at the time. Amongst these papers I found the bill from the removal company.

Now Peter thinks he’s clever, so I like to try and catch him out if I can. I must admit he certainly has an exceptional memory for dates and numbers, so I don’t catch him out that often, but surely this removal bill, which hadn’t seen the light of day in 20+ years, would be a test too far.

“Guess how much it cost to remove your granny from Barton to Halifax in 1989?” I quipped eagerly. He thought about it for a few moments and then said “£180″. I could not believe my ears, he had guessed exactly the right amount!

How does he do that??

A lady in Sweden lost her wedding ring 16 years ago. The story goes that she had taken it off in the kitchen, whilst doing some Xmas baking, and it had disappeared. Lost forever, or perhaps not?

A few days ago she was digging up some carrots in her vegetable garden, and guess what she found?

She pulled up a carrot only to find that this lucky vegetable had grown through her lost ring and was wearing it as a sort of carrot necklace!!

How cool is that? If this story doesn’t give you a warm glow for the start of the new year, I don’t know what will.

On a serious note, perhaps it should be a lesson to all of us. Never, ever, give up hope.

Happy New Year.

It’s not unusual to see green daffodil shoots at this time of year, but imagine our surprise when we noticed that one actually had a yellow opening bud.

I spoke to my sister on Xmas Day. She lives in the north east of Scotland near Aberdeen, and she told me she had cowslips flowering in her garden. Today I noticed we have a pink antirrhinum in flower, and there is a fuchsia in the conservatory flowering it’s socks off.

Everything is too soon. I read somewhere that last year at this time it was -16c, this year it is +12c which is a huge difference, particularly if you convert it to fahrenheit, some 50 degrees in fact.

I’ve often wondered why, in the UK at least, we tend to use Celsius in winter and Fahrenheit in summer, I think I might just have answered my own question!

Anyway, I fear it will end in tears.