Skywatch Friday - what sky?

Last Friday I took a day off work for a combined allotment/Christmas shopping blitz. It was a day of freezing fog, and not surprisingly I was the only person mad enough to be working my plot that day. While I was working - hard - I was warm enough, but as soon as I stopped the damp chill seeped into my bones. I drank my thermos of tea sitting on a deckchair inside the shed, looking out at the foggy view, and felt very...British and eccentric.

More skies from around the world, including some with sun, are at Skywatch Friday.

Wish list - Forsythia

Does anyone else remember the old-style Woman and Home magazine, that our mothers and their friends used to get? Before its makeover into empowered womanhood and a 'brand new attitude'? It was a 1950's time capsule of household hints, knitting patterns, soft-focus short stories, and flower arranging. Even in my childhood I knew this magazine was seriously out of date, but there was a certain comfort about it. Most of all, it has left me with a love of Forsythia, that brave winter flower that seemed to feature in all the 'arrangements' between November and March.

I long to have Forsythia in my garden or at the allotment. Not that I am into flower arranging, but a few sprays of it in an IKEA vase would brighten up the gloomiest December day. And hurtle me right back to my childhood.

For the moment I have to make do with this sunny patch at the entrance to the allotment site.

Still working

It may not seem like it from this blog, but things are still moving slowly at the allotment. A bit like this worm, disturbed as I cleared out the dahlias that seemed like a good idea at the time. I did have a slight pang of regret as I dug them out. They were strongly established, with huge tubers. But they need staking, and they don't attract bees, and they get so heavy and sodden in the rains of September and October. And they're full of forky-tails (Scots for earwigs). So it was out with them the other week while the soil was still workable.

In digging them out I disturbed not only worms, which of course I was glad to see, but several ladybirds hiding under fallen leaves. The work went all the more slowly because I kept gently relocating the ladybirds under a different pile of leaves, and they kept stolidly heading back to where I was digging so I stopped again and...

I see other garden bloggers are still busy, but I've had no time to visit. I hope to have a big catch-up treat once this last crazy week of work and school end of term finishes.