Freezing cold

And off to yet another place of work this week. In fact, this morning, as I climbed into the car, I found myself thinking "only 50 miles to drive to work today"!. Good grief, what is happening to me - I'm turning into a car driver. I used to only have a 20 minute WALK to work, now I'm rejoicing at only having to drive 50 miles. Well, OK it was a nice change from the 120 odd miles down to Norfolk. (but think how much knitting time all this driving is wasting.)

Today I have been glared at all day by Queen Elizabeth I, whose portrait hangs opposite my current desk. This pic was painted in the 1590s (towards the end of her life) and my camera hasn't quite captured her glare, but the room was dark so the best I could do.

Maybe she disapproved of all my clothing (certainly not as decorative as hers) - but it was FREEZING! I was sat at my desk wearing 5 jumpers, woolly hat, fingerless gloves, 2 pairs woolly socks and still had to go for a cup of tea every 90 or so minutes when I could no longer feel my fingers or toes. Ouch.

I liked the idea of photographic tours on Anne's blog (originally from this blog)- so here is mine:

This is the patio with my flat on the left, taken on the boundary in the middle of our plots (we have a double plot of land, my flat is on one bit and Mum's house is on the other). All the garden furniture is stacked on the patio for winter, the pile of crates (very untidy!) we use for collecting up the apples in the autumn each year and have just been emptied. The lumps of tree are from the work we've had done on the garden - that used to be a Victoria Plum tree but we're waiting for a friend to come and collect the wood. The pergola has a grape vine on it, I've never understood why as we're too far north here for the grapes to ripen so they just turn into a squishy mess on the patio underneath.

This is down the garden from the patio. It never used to be this tidy and my half (on the left) used to be orchard. The trees in the middle of the lawn are apple trees so we still have some fruit left, but it was far too much for me and Mum to deal with so we've had a lot of the trees taken up and more turf put down.

Below is the bottom corner (to the left of the photo above). This is the old vegetable patch, half of which has now been turfed over. There used to be a greenhouse next to the compost bin too, but it had to be taken down as the glass was broken. We also used to have raspberries and strawberries down here, and there is some bare earth left so we can have a little bit of soft fruit and veg again. The snow by the fence hasn't melted yet as it's in the shade!

And finally, the view from the bottom of the garden up towards Mum's house and my flat:

The tree on the left in the foreground is my pear tree - it was planted when I was born so is a bit of a stunted specimen for 26 years!
The garden does look a bit barren at the moment, but it should look really good soon once the chopped down things have started to grow again. Maybe I should take more pics in a few months' time?

And now, back to the knitting!