Welcome to both 2010 and the new format for bringing you the Fortnightly Diary. This not only makes things a lot easier for me, but also allows us to keep all the photo’s in place, whereas before they were lost whenever a new entry was made.

Also, you too have an opportunity to comment at the bottom of each page. Please bear in mind, that to prevent spammers, your comment has to be approved by me, but I get notification as soon as there is a comment, so you shouldn’t have long to wait until you see it there.

Snow down the Lane

January has never been my favourite month of the year even though all the Christmas chaos is over and we can settle down to normaility.

Well, normality for most of us during the first two weeks of the year has been in the form of way too white ground!
Ashford and East Kent seemed to avoid it quite well for a few days and I could sit in my Sofa watching the stories of Hampshire and northwards unfold. Then last Thursday – down it came!

In some ways I prefer snow to rain and I prefer proper cold to damp cold, but this, blimey, minus 8 was stretching my feelings to the full. At least it gave me around the home and garden jobs more diversity; scraping snow off the shed roof, clearing pathways and more.
Working on the website has been made more difficult with the Cats who don’t like to go out much and every time you get up, sit down, come through the door, think it’s feeding time. They’re bored stiff !

There are two Blog articles with snow in mind, Ridiculous Panic Buying and Scouting gets harder.

The Chickens and the Garden

Not only are the Cats bored, the Chickens are as well. Luckily they have a decent sized shed and n 8′ x 4′ sheltered area just outside and that has been there place of residence for about the last 10 days!.
I’ve cleared some snow in the open Pen area, but they don’t want to know, I think I can understand why!

At least not seeing the garden means you can’t do anything in it, so in that respect you don’t have a guilty conscience !
I’m hoping the snow will kill a few things off and maybe make digging it all up in February a little easier. This year I want to do more out there. Last year I admit I didn’t really get going, but at least all the vegetables we planted in Pots did quite well.

Left: Down the Lane Office gets a hammering – Right: Old Pallets and boxes donated for burning and DIY

Out and about

Not a lot has really happened, both local football matches Leo and myself had pencilled in got cancelled, don’t know why, they could have used a red ball!
Work wise it’s been a little thin on the ground with just a few jobs to do, This in turn has caused a mini cash crisis and I’m hoping my monthly small pension goes in Friday morning before a Standing Order is paid on the same day. Chances are it won’t of course, that’s what happens when you’re tightrope walking with budgets !

Website visitors have shot up over the last few weeks. With the demise of people wanting to keep chickens in their gardens, visits have shown a gradual decrease since last Spring, but the good news is that it’s now running just ahead of last January and the other website categories seem to be becoming more popular.
Certainly there’s no stopping the Forum and that’s now averaging over 400 posts a day!

All’s well down the Lane, except the weather !

New Pages 2010 = 8 | Total pages = 764 | Forum threads = 13,939
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