No help from Imogen

The weird weather continues. Woke up to lying snow, then sunshine, bees flying, snow gone, lovely day. Spotted first leaves of crocus poking their heads out of the ground. Then hear we can look forward to severe cold and snow next week.

Checked out our "forest" on the other side of the stream. Sadly the storms haven't managed to bring down the leaning trees, so chainsaw and full protective clothing needed. Am not looking forward to attacking the big, vertically split, tree which is just hidden. Think I will get a second opinion/advice.

These trees belong to our property but we only discovered this several years after moving in. At some time, probably in the 60s/70's the stream naturally meandered around the trees until the then commonly adopted  idea of straightening every bit of waterway was implemented. Getting rid of the braking caused by the serpentine meandering, helped to ensure quicker flooding of areas downstream. Nowadays there are efforts to reverse some of these mistakes but up until now seems to be only on the main rivers like the Danube. For the moment I will have to wade through to get to the other side or perhaps I should consider a dam with hydro electric power station!

Today one of Germany' big wood heating pellet manufacturers called in the receivers. Oil price collapse given as the main reason bu was always a bit of a "strange" set up, doing lots of online advertising promising huge % returns on loans - always questionable when companies seek capital outside the normal banking system. Seems like a lot of private people will lose a lot of money.

Just like yesterdays organic and convenience food bit, another organisation jumping on a bandwagon in the hope of making huge sums and ending up harming the original idea. Wood pellet heating was supposed to be a sensible, environmentally friendly way of using up waste. Has ended up with trees being felled simply to make pellets. Same as with gas made from slurry - now the countryside is turning in to a monoculture of crops, planted solely to feed the units.

Just hope that the tiny chink of possible good news on the Syria front, from Munich last night gets the chance to ease that situation.

(Just for my personal record - brought in the last haylage (2014) bale today)