wood pile

October has meant some warm sunny days, plenty of misty nights but also lots of cold wind and heavy rain. It's time to start stacking the wood. We try to keep the timber that's ready for burning close to hand at the back door- no running out to the drying shed on a blustery wet afternoon for me. It's a very nice job stacking the wood- I had helpers this time and we'd it done in a flash. I love the thud of the axe splitting the wood and the clang as we load it into the wheelbarrows and then it's stacked relatively neatly and there it waits for a not-very-nice-day when we need warm bums!

snippets

It's raining here and there is more than a touch of bleak mid-winter about the day. I roam about the house in a slightly grey mood until I begin to notice the snippets. Snippets of our lives, that cowboy on the bookshelf, left behind after a game of 'cowboys verses dinosaurs', the record of French band music reminding me of summer holidays, favourite cookbooks alongside a well-used dictionary kept in the kitchen for emergency clarifications, draped fairy lights, a much loved recipe for foccacia which is now proving beside the fire, waiting for supper time tonight... all small snippets, all good for the soul.