Sundown

Comfrey - native UK 'common' comfrey - is a thug. Even knowing that, we planted it in the garden. It's beautiful to my eyes, the bees like it, but it's still a thug. After a few years, MrsM is heroically digging it up in trug-fulls and we are taking it to the apiary/orchard, where it is most welcome to lock horns, roots and boundaries with nettles, docks and brambles

This morning, MrsM dug two holes and bedded some in, while I did something important, I'm sure. Probably talking to the new bees - who were not, of course, coming out for a chat on a grey morning at 4°C. I checked their entrance in daylight and all looks fine, but I'd still like to see some bees flying in and out before I regard them as happily at home. Of course I had to speak to them, with an apology for the timing, of death, but he did keep some bees himself, so they probably already knew

The ridge that we look west to, skeleton roadside trees beside the ancient highway along the top. It is far enough away that you can't see the potholes. I read that when these lands were enclosed, there were stipulated minimum widths for the main roads between the villages, much wider than our modern roads. This was necessary because ground became so damaged in winter that carriages needed space to divert around rutted, boggy areas to get through. That has left us with verges many metres wide on many roads. As the condition of the asphalt deteriorates year by year, we may need to return to earlier tactics