Kittenses

Grumpy mama Miffy.



My daughters have told me off because I am not blogging often enough about the kittens. They are a good 7 months old now - young cats rather than kittens of course - and gradually adapting to a dual life as part house cats (at night in this bitter weather) and mostly outside cats, but more than that, they are Foodies. They love to eat. It shows. Especially on Fatty (aka Jarvis) who is like a little barrel on legs (short ones at that!)

If I put food outside for Miffy (mama cat), they are there liked greased lightening, so I try and feed her now before and after they spend the night in the shower room. That way she gets a decent meal and she needs it more than they do, as she lives in the outbuildings of the farm. I hope she has found the barn, with its hay and straw, where Amber lives.

Mind you, they are good at Takeaways - as you will see from these photographs. Sometimes it's mum catching it, and they takeitaway. Or sometimes one of them has a lucky moment and the others try and grab the poor vole off the hunter.

I would like to say there was a happy outcome from these photos, but sadly for the vole, it got scoffed!

Anyway, our darling boys have wormed their way into our hearts and it is hard to imagine life without them. They are so easy going and MUCH easier than the rag and tag we have - Lucky/Lucy/Fluff are far too quick with their claws. I've never had cats who were like that until Lucky turned up and presented us with kittens, many years ago now. It's obviously something which is line bred through her.

Anyway, here are some pre-freeze photos of the boys hunting. Tippy was Doing Other Things Elsewhere by the look of things.


Now you've done it - it's gone under there . . .

Can you see it? Nope . . .

I'm sure I heard a rustle here in the leaves . . .

You take the front, I'll cover the back . . .

Have you got it?

I'm not interested in it now - it tastes yukky!

'Smine!! You can't have it!

Kittenses

A Wintery walk

Another new kid on the block. This is Eric the Red. Anther young tom, who seems to tolerate the Three Muskateers (that's Alfie and Tippy just in the picture).


There was another hard frost this morning and many of the trees and bushes were blasted with a white rime of hoar frost. I've not walked up the hill since this bad weather has been with us - mainly because I didn't want to meet up with anything larger than me on 4 wheels sliding in my direction! Up in the canyon part of the hill, there is nowhere to go!

The views were wonderful, and you could tell which bits of the valley caught the sun first, for they were green, and the valley bottom and eastern slopes were white and shadowed still. I got quite warm in the sunshine, and was surprised to find that I am still fitter than I gave myself credit for. My pulse was about 75 as I climbed the steep bit of the hill, returning to 63 after a minute's rest. Going downhill later, it was around the 64 mark. My resting pulse is something ridiculous like 40!

Looking across the paddock this morning as the sun rose over the hills.

Climbing the hill and looking across towards Court Henry.

The frost on these twigs looks like snow blossom.

This is my favourite, apart from the out of focus bit in the left corner. The shadows on the slope make up for it though.

Looking towards the Towy Valley.

Black Mountain under snow.

You can just make out Dryslwyn Castle in the centre.

This fox was desperate for food - he was hoping he would turn up a tasty vole as he hunted across our field.

Red sky at morning . . .

Shepherd's (or sailor's if you live near the sea) warning . . . How right it was yesterday!

The photo was taken from my office window. We were barely able to step outside to ttake photos, as the rain on top of freezing-cold ground, had turned to a thick slick of ice overnight. Even the tractors and landrovers of Next Door were unable to move an inch. A slick of ice covered everything, even these rocks on the top of the wall beside the front gate. I think he must have got his cattle in, finally, as the poor creatures were in free-fall coming down a steep icy trackway from the field the previous evening. They were standing at the top of the slope, obviously a bit worried about proceeding, and then they would begin to glide down. It looked really funny, but of course, was quite serious as several fell and could easily have been deadstock.

This was what faced us yesterday - ignore the slight thaw with water - it was the blardy Cresta Run. We had to VERY carefully take dolly steps to negotiate the lane as far as the gritting box, only to find that the "grit" (in actual fact, duff with a little salt added) was frozen solid and we couldn't stand upright to even put the little we could chip out across the road.

Below, is Next Door's yard - a bovine ice rink . . .

Of course, all the workers in the household had to phone in and say they were stranded. They were not alone. Listening to local radio, people were phoning in and one lady said under no circumstances attempt to drive down Allt-y-Cnap hill at Johnstown as she had just gone into free-fall down it, sideways all the way down, with a car behind her doing the same. The story was a similar one across the county, and the Kidwelly road was shut all day because of a multi-vehicle pile-up . . .


A thick layer of ice covered everything, leaving the grass looking like seaweed . . .


This was the path just outside the front door . . .

Today we "just" have freezing fog.

I have been throwing out frozen apples for the blackbirds - we have upwards of 20 in the garden at any one time, pecking at the small apples which we left on the tree for just this sort of weather (though we didn't expect it so early).

Off to make soup and more bread . . .

Down by the river

I went for a walk down along the river with my husband yesterday, to get some exercise. We've had no further snow since last Friday, but it has been BITTERLY cold, as you can see from the river. Our eldest daughter and her boyfriend are currently stuck up in Sheffield, snowbound, so we hope they will get home tomorrow though trains are looking dodgy at the moment.

Still, this amount of freezing isn't a patch on last winter's, when only a narrow strip of river remained unfrozen and still moving . . .

November Snow

It really is no joke having snow this early in a winter - well, still officially Autumn I suppose, until 1st December. The temperatures have been perishing too - at least minus 11 a couple of nights ago and quite possibly colder since. It began snowing on Friday morning, just as we were driving our son into town for work. In no time at all we were in the thick of a blizzard, and it carried on, unrelenting, whilst we dashed around Tesco's, stocking up on anything we thought we might get short on - though we do carry a good storecupboard.

It really DOESN'T take much snow to cause total upheaval here. On Friday for instance, it took us HALF AN HOUR just to get out of the Tesco car park. In fact, it took ten minutes to actually join the queue to GET out as for once we were parked where we would have to reverse out. It took us, in all, an hour and a half to get home as town was gridlocked. Crazy. Even then we had to abandon the car at the bottom of our hill as we couldn't get up it.

The side roads still aren't good - frozen compacted snow for long stretches where the winter sun never gets. Passable if you drive very carefully. Normally we would just shut the front gate and wait it out, but now we have to try and get our offspring into work. I sat up until 1 a.m. on Saturday morning waititng for our middle daughter to get home safely from her pub job. Our son is supposed to be going on a course in Bristol tomorrow and has to be in town for SIX A.M. to meet the chap who he's going with and will be driving them there and back . . . As there is supposed to be more snow tonight, that may not be possible . . .

As for how cold this house is, well, suffice it to say that unless you're by the wood burner, outside clothes are necessary (hat included) and life is rather miserable. The kitchen was 9 degrees Celcius this morning and the cats looked very disgruntled . . . We kidnapped the kittens last night and they spent the night in the shower room, and were SO happy to be in the relative warm (it has been at least minus 11 and below the last few nights). They were purring like grampusses . . .

Now we have a section of pipe frozen, which is causing problems, so my poor husband has to go and dig it up. It's a fresh junction he put in this year, so we are going to use the poorest fleece I was given for spinning this year (I had 6 in all) and use that in a bin liner to try and insulate the pipes.

The birds are desperate for food, and I am glad we got a sack each of seed and peanuts in just a few days before. Someone was writing somewhere about NOT feeding the birds as it encouraged rats, made them a target for cats and sparrowhawks, spread e-Coli and stopped the birds being good at foraging. I am sorry, but if we hadn't fed the birds last winter dozens would have died - I used to come down to up to 26 blackbirds each morning, plus countless Blue- and Great Tits, Chaffinches, Sparrows, Robins, Wrens et al.

I used to love the snow, but the last couple of winters have shown how difficult it makes life and right now, I would be happy to return to warmer and wetter winters . . .

Dinefwr Park

Well, Newton House really, which is in Dinefwr Park. I had a stroll around the park on Wednesday, when we were in the area. The heavy mist made it all look quite magical.





Above and below: A fallen giant provides a home for countless invertebrates and those who feed on them . . .



The beautifully fissured bark of an ancient Sweet Chestnut tree.

And again . . .


Above and below: Despite there being lots of dead and damaged and fallen trees, this is actually managed woodland. It is managed with wildlife in mind, and because of the wonderful habitat, over 400 different species of beetles have been recorded here. As there are ponds and lakes in the grounds, their proximity to ancient woodland (some of the trees are a thousand years old and formed field boundaries initially) encourages bat species such as whiskered, noctules, Natterer's and Daubenton's bats.

A stand of trees near to where we were involved in the Dig for the Roman fort. As it happened, we found two - one pretty early - on this site.




I walked along this trackway to try and get nearer to the White Park Cattle that live here. From the driveway the herd had been barely visible in the mist - no, it was more like fog . . .

As you can see, I was successful as there were a few herd members on this side of the parkland. White cattle have been associated with Dinefwr since the days when the Laws of Hywel Dda, the 10th C leader of Deheubarth (Dinefwr Castle was at its centre) when fines and payments were recovered in white cattle.



This is a peek of the beautiful stable yard through the mist. On my way past it I had noticed a little tortoiseshell cat - what a wonderful place for a cat to live!