Wednesday 18th February 2026 - Snow, Another Queen, Thrush and Purchasing

If, after the sun and warmth on Saturday, anyone thought we’d said goodbye to the worst of the winter weather, then they were wrong - that includes me!  Sunday, and we were back to rain and if that wasn’t bad enough, it then proceeded to snow.  Fortunately, the snow didn’t lay for too long.  Come Monday morning it had melted and with a slight overnight rise in temperature, there were no treacherous icy patches.

I almost couldn’t believe my eyes on Sunday evening when I saw a queen wasp on the kitchen work surface.  The window was partly open, while I was cooking dinner, so I assume, lured by the warmth, this is where she came in.  Secured in the bug trap, I placed her in the cool and dark of the storm porch, where she settled.  Another appearance of the sun on Monday morning, warming the porch and she was on the move prompting me to take her outside to the same sheltered place as the queen I released on Saturday.  Is it possible this was the same queen wasp and not two different queens?  This is a question I will never know the answer to.

Back in my childhood, song thrushes were almost as common as blackbirds.  Very different now, with song thrushes pretty well much a rarity, while blackbirds are flourishing and regular visitors to our garden.  You can therefore, imagine how delighted I was, on Monday morning, to see and hear a thrush in full song at the top of a tree in a scrubby area, near the children’s playground.  Since then, it’s moved over into the trees, bordering The Pleasaunce gardens.  Keeping fingers crossed, it finds a mate and they successfully rear a brood of next generation thrushes.

Apart from our twice daily walks (providing it’s not raining), most of our time has been spent indoors.  I have already mentioned, going through cupboards etc., as well as drawing to keep myself amused.  Added to this, I have been making purchases online.  It has paid to look into various sources of the items I’ve ordered.  The thyme plant I wanted, for our herb garden, turned out to be free delivery, ordered through Amazon, whereas it would have incurred a delivery charge if I’d ordered it direct from the supplier.  I found some battery powered candles to stand on our hearth on Amazon’s website.  As they were not supplied direct from Amazon, these were subject to a delivery cost.  Taking a look at the supplier’s website, I found the candles had been greatly reduced in price, plus by agreeing to sign up for newsletters, there was a further ten percent discount.  I still had to pay for delivery but overall, the cost was half of which I would have paid by sourcing them through Amazon.  Just goes to show, it pays to ‘shop around’.

Today’s photo is the top of a spike of flowers, just opening, on our Clivia.  This plant was given to me by our eldest son, as a Mother’s Day gift, some years ago.  It came with us when we moved to Overstrand in 2008 and since then has regularly bloomed twice a year, as well as producing two offspring.