Birdwatching from the sofa!

We often go birdwatching on our walks, but since moving we've seen so many birds in our garden.

Today there was a greenfinch picking up nesting materials from the hanging basket directly outside the kitchen door. Fortunately he wasn't after the herb seedlings!

He came back several times, we're now the greenfinch equivalent of the local DIY store I think.

A few minutes later I spotted (pun intended!) a great spotted woodpecker in the birdbath. By the time I'd grabbed the camera he'd gone down to the grass. I included the first blurred photo because it shows (to me, anyway) that he was busily drilling away in the ground.

According to my bird book they are "rarely seen on the ground"

Look at that beak!

So beautiful. His (or her) mate was around too, but hid in a tree when I tried to get nearer outside. 

These photos are all taken from indoors, through glass.

Jack in the Green

By chance I got chatting with a couple of fellow beach-combers on Sunday, and they told me that it was Jack-in-the-Green weekend, with lots of morris dancing and drumming and a parade...just my type of event!

It turned out to be the home turf of Mad Jacks Morris who I knitted years ago for the Tenterden Folk Festival.

Sadly there were no buses running so I couldn't join the VERY busy drinkers, but I still had fun!

Here are just a few of my 125 photos! I started off standing with the drummers who were waiting to join the procession - yes, it was *LOUD*!

 So many fabulous costumes - mostly featuring green, not surprisingly!

I hadn't realised that the town entered into the spirit of the event so thoroughly and was quite ashamed not to be dressed up myself - next year I will! I did get splodged on the nose though...

Even dogs like to attend - though some of them aren't up to the long walk. I noticed the pram several times during the day, and only once did I see the dog awake, despite the noise! After the procession passed me I followed the crowd to get ahead of them and found a wall to perch on.

There were several giants, I'm guessing these are Autumn and Winter.

Great to see so many kids involved.

I don't know who the ladies below are, they certainly don't look like morris dancers but the crowd loved their flamboyance!

 This is "Jack" himself with his entourage - all green of course!

A giant mermaid (and why not?)

I wondered why there was a big gap before the next person...then I realised...

Not sure who these guys were intended to be - the leader was offering the one behind as a potential husband to the ladies in the crowd!

The end is in sight! This is the view down from the castle mound with the end of the procession and just a few of the spectators. There were great views over the town and sea from the castle, I'll have to go back another day when the weather is a little more friendly.

Snow!

We don't get a lot of snow in the south east of the UK, so when the first fall arrived overnight on Saturday we knew we had to get out there and enjoy it.


I love the way the snow softens the edges in some ways... but then


these trees look like they've been highlighted!


The fence reminds me of fake snow sprayed in windows at Christmas.
Nothing fake here though.


I was pleased with the "framing" around the sheep in this next shot


Wish I could say this was my garden pond, but it's the local trout farm.


I love the way the snow is coating each and every surface it could find here!


Texture!!!


Our local area is beautiful all year round, but I especially enjoy it under snow.




The sun is already working its magic and much of the snow has gone now. I'm glad I enjoyed it!

Foraging for sharks' teeth

We went house-hunting again today, but as it was low tide we started off by visiting Beltinge beach, supposedly one of the best places in Britain to find fossil sharks teeth.

According to the article I linked to above, it's best to kneel or bend down. I soon discovered what happens when you sit on wet shingle!


We were not at all sure we'd find what we were looking for - but MrNifty found the first tooth very quickly, then (luckily!) I found one. We'd have been there all day if I hadn't been successful too! I photographed the first two in my wedding ring to show how tiny they are.


We had an uninvited guest at our picnic lunch:



After lunch we both managed to find another tooth before heading off househunting. You'll be pleased to hear I changed out of my wet shorts! It's quite amazing to think these teeth are from so very long ago - 54 million years according to my link !



Makes me feel quite young ;-)

here's hoping we can move to the sea sooooooon!

Frog babies!

The frogs all started arriving in our garden pond yesterday - and the maternity ward was busy over night!

SNOW!

Some houses just look better with snow...it's not ours!



nor is this ...



each of these shots was along the route of my walk this afternoon



So Christmassy!



Even the local pigs seem to be enjoying the snow!



I love the way the snow accents the skeletal branches





This last photo is a shot I've retaken every winter since we moved here - this house is quite near us (nothing like our own home!!) and it just looks perfect with snow.



Home now - to light the fire! We don't usually have anything like this much snow in November - brrrrr!

Cooking USA style

One of my birthday presents was a Star Trek Cookbook (my son must want me to live long and prosper fatly!)

Luckily the recipes have been translated to allow us to use all-human ingredients...but not-so-luckily it's all in American.

Over this side of the pond, we weigh our dry ingredients. Over there - you use cups.

So far, so bad.



Wet ingredients are OK though (or so I thought) because we both use pints and fluid ounces. But wait - they're not the same!!!

My new best friend explained that a US cup is 8 fluid ounces...whereas a UK cup is 10 fluid ounces. Looks like I'd better buy an American measuring cup.

Back to the dry stuff. Can't be too hard to scoop out a cup of flour, can it?

But apparently it can. My new best friend says :" It's also important to realise that when an American recipe calls for "1 cup of flour", there is an assumption in how this is measured. Scooping out of a bag will compress the flour, and a cup can easily end up containing an extra quarter or even half an ounce, and this could make a big difference to the results. Instead, the "official" measuring technique is to stir the flour with a spoon to "aerate" it, then pour it into the measuring cup and level it off with a straight edge. Don't pat it down, or tap the cup on the workbench to level it off.

However, this only applies to very powdery dry ingredients, like flour. Other ingredients, like rice, brown sugar or fats, should be packed firmly in the measuring cup to avoid air gaps."

Oh good grief.



Even now I'm not ready to cook. Many recipes call for a "stick" of butter (although it seems even in America some of you prefer to buy your butter in "cubes", like the lower of these two!



In the UK we don't buy butter in sticks. We buy butter in 250gm packs.



My new best friend says "You normally buy butter in packs of a pound, consisting of four sticks, and they're usually marked in quarters (sometimes in eighths), making it easy to measure off, say, 2oz of butter, or "half a stick"."

Yet sometimes the recipe asks for "half a cup" of butter. What on earth do you do? Squash the butter in?

What would Neelix do?

*ARGH*

I know what I did...made an English recipe chocolate cake, cut in half horizontally and sandwiched with raspberry jam!



The new part to me was the icing (USA = frosting?) I melted some chocolate (actually I burnt some chocolate to the bottom of the pan, went out and bought some more, then melted some chocolate) mixed in some raspberry jam (USA = jelly?) and some icing sugar (USA don't know what this is, the very fine powdery type) and a little water. Absolutely yummy!