Friday 30th January 2026

We come to the end of January.

Signs of spring are everywhere, if you look.

Daffodils are beginning to flower, crocuses are close, and out in the fields and lanes, wild flowers are in bud or flowering.

In our garden, the dwarf Witch Hazel has begun to do it's thing. Is it flowering? I don't know.

But I had to snap this in a gap between heavy rain showers, as Friday was rather inclement.

Jools went to yoga as usual. I went back to sleep so didn't hear the car being driven out, but once I did come to, I could hear the heavy rain hammering on the car port roof.

And it was bins day.

That meant once up and dressed, putting on the sou'wester, oilskins and the rest just to drag the brown and black bins to the top of the drive.

Then back down to fill up the feeders and scatter peanuts for the corvids and wood pigeons.

It took about four hours for the rain to lessen, by which time I had got one of the bins back down.

Jools came back, so we had breakfast and a brew before she was out for her craft morning.

Its all go here.

While I stayed behind to make a huge pot of chilli. Jools had requested chilli, so we had bought all the ingredients on Thursday, so all I had to do was combine them, in the right amounts and cook for some time to make six meals for chilli, the other five would be frozen as batch cooking.

Three onions, two pounds of mince, three cans of tomatoes, five cans of kidney beans, seven cans of water, two stock cubes, chilli powder, cayenne pepper, dried chipotle and two splashed of Jesper's special chilli sauce.

Once all was combined, simmer for three hours of so and it was ready. So all there was left to do was boil some rice, and serve.

Some tortillas would have been nice, but it was OK. Good in fact.

Then to the sofa for two more editions of Smiley's People, while between us, Scully slept happily, as her sugars have stabilised and she is no longer desperate for food.

Thursday she ran around the garden chasing a twig for nearly and hour. Not bad for a senior cat of sixteen years.

There was the music quiz, but my knowledge of Sting solo albums was somewhat lacking, so no points for Jelltex.