Woodland with snowdrops

The snowdrop and primrose our woodlands adorn, and violets bathe in the wet o' the morn.

Some days are calmly manic. Today is one of them. The first chore is plucking the three cockerels. I’m going to use my Whizz Bang chicken plucker, which is handily at the back of the shed behind trestles, tools, mattresses and whiteboards. Eventually it’s out, standing proud in the winter sunlight.

I heat a huge pot of water and scald the birds, which takes ages. The plucker then refuses to deal with the birds, seemingly they’re just too large. The belt is slipping - I’ll need to adjust the tensioner. The birds are plucked by hand, gutted, bagged, and frozen.

Claire gives me a lift from Broughton to Biggar and back, before heading off to Kinghorn. She may have a job offer, but there’s plenty of prep for Monday and she’s playing with a helicopter on Sunday.

Now, it’s on with pruning. A couple of hours sees me done with most of them. Working on the last espalier, the sun is hot on my back - while there’s still ice on the ground. I don’t quite finish in the orchard, but they’ll keep - it’s supposed to get cold again on Monday.

There’s the 93 into Peebles followed by the 62 into Edinburgh. A semi futile computer rescue mission at Angus’s leaves him with a reinstalled Windows, but none of the drivers - including, unfortunately, the network adapter, so no internet. Ho hum.

A 26 to Portobello and a visit to Nick. I’ve brought last nights leftover and a fresh bag of kale. Enjoyed with wine and merry banter, it’s soon time to pass out and prepare for an early start tomorrow.