Nature's Best

I had sardines on toast for lunch yesterday, a real trip down memory lane. I can't remember when I last had them out if a tin. Sardines are excellent for osteoporosis apparently, and with a little balsamic vinegar sprinkled over them are really quite nice. No prizes for guessing where the cardboard carton ended up. Or the insole from one of my shoes. We had a fabulous walk this morning, the air cold and biting but the wind light so it was great to be out. We took the long track around the very end field, the one where Hugo nabbed his hare in the autumn while I innocently picked blackberries just around the corner. I dropped the hare into the very deep ditch that runs alongside the track to hide the horror of it, and today clear water was running through. I looked for its skeleton, hoping it had been stripped clean and not left rotting and putrid, but I couldn't see it. Where I thought it might be was a thick clump of still auburn leaves, and I like to think its friends covered it over respectfully. I've read the Brambley Hedge books, I know how the little furry animals operate in their secret hidden world.

With the expectation of even colder weather and maybe snow I decided to fill the wheelbarrow with logs to build up a good store indoors. Sarah came over while I worked, and I realised my lips were so numb from the cold so I could barely speak. This is the fourth winter in Cransford for both of us, and we're willing the snow to come and trap us in our winter wonderland for the first time. As long as the fridge, freezer and store cupboards are full, the oil tank is topped up, there are logs and kindling, and a few bottles of booze, all should be well. Electricity would be nice too: a winter without an electric blanket would be hard indeed to bear.

Sarah is plagued with moles, like the rest of the countryside around us, but so far none has ventured into my garden. I've never seen so many molehills. This morning we passed a patch of green with huge mounds of earth every few feet, a powerful declaration of the little black demon's presence. Farmers seem not to bother trying to trap them anymore, now that the only poison that works has been banned under EU law. And they have no predators. A mole's body will lie on the ground until it rots as nothing will eat it.

Talking of predators, my new Christmas bird feeder that attaches directly onto the window has been a success with the little birds. The fat balls have been especially delicious to them. Alas, then, that the wood pigeons have discovered this source of winter food too, and the two balls, not even half nibbled by the tits and wrens and robins, have been carried away by brute force. I don't know how to keep the big birds away, but I'll have to come up with something. Moles, wood pigeons, wolves and coyotes, it's tough living in ther wild.