Winter winds.

Winter -  it comes at different times of the year depending on where you live and we are sometimes asked when our winter months are.   Not when you'd expect really,  we were used to the English winter months until we came here and were pleasantly surprised to find that October,  November,  December and even January can be sunny  enough for t-shirts in the daytime  -  surprisingly warm once the sun is up.  Night time temperatures are another matter entirely and heating - wood burners for us - are on from the end of October till the end of March at least. 

Our most unpredictable months are February and March,   it can be really windy,  really cold and snowy (although long time readers will remember pictures of heavy snow one year on Nov 30th soon after this blog started...)  we get days and days of greyness and drizzle - or we might get days and days of blue sky and sunshine - basically we just take each day as it comes,  we look out the window in the morning and decide after coffee what to do that day.

This week has been one of those weeks,  really windy last Friday - our neighbours were here and trying to do some tidying up on their land but the branches and twigs were blowing away as fast as they tried to pile them up.    Saturday was just grey, a bit drizzley at times but mostly grey,  then the winds came and howled all night long.  Sunday was sunny and after  sweeping up,  restaking the peas for the umpteenth time  and skimming the blossom and leaves from the pool it was an enjoyable day.  Breezy but not bad.  Monday the winds started again just as I was pegging out the washing -  8 pegs on each sheet  to hold them down some of which pinged off and I found on the floor of  the pool. 

Thursday almost 2 weeks ago now,  I took Monty  to the vet for his annual vaccinations - he now has this year's pale blue disc on his collar to show he is up to date with the rabies jab,  last years disc was a raspberry pink colour.   Soon after we got home we heard the familiar sounds of a digger  rumbling and clanging - the pista was being cleaned.  Man and machine  had worked their way down from Yegen filling in the dips and gullies and levelling humps  and arrived here just before 6pm.   By the time the digger had gone past us and levelled from here down to the start of the concrete road,  it was definitely dusk.  We had our outside lights on and he still had to drive back up to Yegen.   Long days work. 

Despite the winds the spring flowers are not damaged.  Most of our  almond blossom had already  finished and we have baby almonds on the  trees already.  A bank of white iris are in full bloom by the shed,  the freesias are blooming in their tub as are the grape hyacinths.  Some plants never seem to stop flowering though....