winter

Someone keeps trying to kidnap Spring

As I have indicated in two previous posts, here and here, this past Winter has been a cold and very snowy one. And Winter has been very reluctant to release its grip. It seems that each time Spring tries to make its appearance, someone promptly kidnaps it 🙁

Altogether, we had over six weeks of lying snow, which only finally began to melt in the latter part of February. This photograph, taken on 20^th February, shows one of my clumps of snowdrops, reappearing as the surrounding snow slowly melted.

And here they are ten days later, flowering beautifully.

Believing that we had seen the last of the snow for this Winter, during the first weekend of March, I moved my snow shovel from outside my back door, to its Summer home in the woodshed. On the morning of Monday 8^th March, this was the scene that greeted me when I opened my back door!

Back garden on Monday 8th March 2021 © Ricky Yates

Whilst on the morning of Saturday 20^th March, this was the view from my front door following an overnight temperature of -6°.

View from my front door on Saturday 20th March 2021 © Ricky Yates

But after the official beginning of Spring, the weather did finally become Spring-like. Therefore on Friday 26^th March, I went on a 9km circular walk from the village of Ludvíkovice, exploring a route above Kanon Labe which I hadn’t previously walked. It included this wonderful view.

The Labe just north of Decín © Ricky Yates

Then on Tuesday 30^th March, I walked with my friend Kát’a, on a triangular route from Markvartice to the summit of Vysoký les (464m) & return. There was bright sunshine and a maximum temperature of 22°!

The summit of Vysoký les has two viewpoints.

The view north towards the Lužické hory from Vysoký les © Ricky Yates

This is the view north towards the Lužické hory.

The view west from Vysoký les © Ricky Yates

Whilst this is the view west with the conical hill Ružovský vrch on the right. The village you can just make out in the centre of the photo is Stará Oleška.

The path through the trees on Vysoký les © Ricky Yates

Descending from Vysoký les back towards Markvartice © Ricky Yates

During Holy Week, my first daffodil also appeared……

…..as did these wood anemones.

But on Easter Monday…….

The view from my front door on Easter Monday 2021 © Ricky Yates

A week later, on Monday 12^th April, I had to be Prague for two separate medical appointments which were several hours apart. So during the period between the appointments, in a mixture of rain and snow and with a maximum temperature of 3°, I walked around parts of the historic centre of the city. A combination of the weather, together with COVID-19 restrictions meaning there are currently no visiting tourists, meant I hardly saw another human being.

Charles Bridge on 12th April 2021 © Ricky Yates

This is a never to be repeated photograph – Charles Bridge with absolutely nobody on it.

Winter did have one final fling on on Friday 16^th April when we had yet more snow, which fortunately rapidly melted. But I won’t post yet another snowy photograph 😉 Instead, here are my tulips finally flowering.

Tulips flowering in front of my house © Ricky Yates

And trusting that the kidnapper of Spring has made his final appearance for 2021, a few days ago, I returned these plants to their normal Summer location on my front steps, after their Winter sojourn in the house.

More snow

Stará Oleška 44, Sunday 31st January 2021 © Ricky Yates

Further to my previous post, ‘Winter has arrived‘, winter has definitely decided to stay 😉 We have had further snowfall since I last posted and there has been lying snow now for over three weeks.

It finally stopped snowing around lunchtime yesterday (30^th). Overnight, the skies cleared and the temperature dropped to -10°C (14° Fahrenheit for my American visitors). But clear skies has meant bright sunshine all day today, creating the perfect opportunity for taking snowy photographs 🙂 Knowing from past comments, how much my previous snowy photographs have been appreciated, here are a few more.

Back garden, Friday 29th January 2021 © Ricky Yates

This was my back garden on the morning of Friday 29^th January, before I cleared the path to the woodshed to split more logs and bring them into the house. The hump in the middle of the garden…….

Logs delivered on Monday 25th January 2021 © Ricky Yates

…..is this pile of logs, the second half of my order, delivered on Monday 25^th January. I was very glad I got some of them into the woodshed and the rest covered, before the latest snowfall.

I have lost track of how many times I have scraped snow from my front path and the paved area that gives access to my carport. This was view after a considerable amount of labour on the afternoon of Saturday 29^th January, once it had finally stopped snowing.

One increasing problem has been where to put all of the excess snow. As you can see, there isn’t much more room here.

Or here.

This afternoon, I went for a walk to try and capture some of the beauty of the snow. I had to walk very carefully as the temperature only rose to -2° and it was very icy underfoot. Tonight as I write, it is back down to -6°! Here are a few photographs from my walk around the village.

‘When the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even’ © Ricky Yates

Olešský rybník on Saturday 30th January © Ricky Yates

View towards Camping Pod lesem © Ricky Yates

Winter has arrived

The view from my front door on Tuesday 12th January © Ricky Yates

As I explained in this post, the winter of 2019-2020 was remarkably mild. However, the winter we are currently experiencing is bearing a much greater similarity to my first two winters living here in Stará Oleška and a week ago, winter arrived with a vengeance.

Before Christmas, we had a dusting of snow on a few occasions, but it soon melted. On 26^th December, Boxing Day, we had a further light snowfall but which again, mostly melted in the following twenty-four hours. But overnight Friday 8^th – Saturday 9^thJanuary, snow fell once again and didn’t melt. And since then, snow has fallen, snow on snow!

The view from my front door on Saturday 9th January © Ricky Yates

This was the scene that greeted me when I got up on the morning of Saturday 9^th January.

Olešský rybník on Saturday 9th January © Ricky Yates

Later that day, I went for a walk to Olešský rybník, the lake at the other end of the village. As you can see it was almost totally frozen at the surface with snow lying on top of the ice.

The photo at the beginning of this post was the view from my front door on Tuesday 12^th January, before I cleared my front path. And above is a view of my house from outside of my front gates, taken the same day.

The new path across my back garden, from the rear steps to the woodshed, has very much proved its worth during the current weather. You can just about make it out in this photo, taken before I cleared it of snow. But being smooth and even, it is relatively easy to scrape snow off it.

A few days ago, my Czech friend Kát’a, who has helped me with language issues in recent months, saw one of my snowy photos and said she would like to make a snowman. She lives in Decín, which although being only 11km from my home, is 135m above sea level, whereas Stará Oleška is nearly 300m above sea level. Therefore what falls as snow here, often only falls as rain in Decín.

Therefore yesterday, ironically when Decín did get some snow, I picked her up and brought her to my house and together, we made a snowman and a snow woman 🙂 The snow woman was Kát’a’s idea and her creation 🙂

My back garden, Friday 15th January © Ricky Yates

Today we have had yet more snow. Once more, I cleared the path to the woodshed, past the snow people 😉 , in order to split some more logs and bring them into the house and keep the wood-burning stove going. But as you can see, within an hour it was once more being covered in snow.

Winter 2019-2020 and progress with my front garden

This past winter, which is hopefully now over, has been my third spent in Stará Oleška. Yes, I’ve now lived here for two weeks short of three years.

The view from my front door on the morning of Saturday 29th February 2020 © Ricky Yates

One of my regular commenters asks for me to post snowy winter photographs. Well this one – the view from my front door on the morning of Saturday 29th February 2020, is the best I can do, as this past winter has been remarkably mild. And within a few hours, all the snow in this photograph had melted.

A combination of it being a mild winter, together with my new wood-burning stove, has meant that I’ve had no problem at all in keeping warm this winter. I’m also very pleased that the hope I’ve expressed a couple of times previously, that the logs delivered in mid-January 2019 would last until the end of this winter, has been fulfilled.

This is the inside of one end of my woodshed where my logs were once stacked, right up to the roof.

Split logs, ready for my wood-burning stove © Ricky Yates

But in mid-April, when this photograph was taken, I still had this supply of logs that I’d previously split, sitting on a table in the other half of the woodshed. These have enabled me to have the wood-burning stove going for a few hours each morning which is all I’ve needed the past few weeks.There are still some left if we do have few more cool days like today. The stove is burning merrily as I write 🙂

Although I pruned the vine on the front of the house in the Spring of 2019, I failed to give a serious ‘haircut’ to several of the bushes in my front garden.

My front garden in mid-October 2019 © Ricky Yates

This photograph, taken in October 2019, shows the result of my inaction 🙁 Therefore as well as pruning my vine, as explained in this post, in early November 2019, I severely cut back all the bushes in my front garden.

My front garden in early November 2019 © Ricky Yates

In the photograph above, you can see the result of my labours. As you can also see, because the bushes grew too large, they killed off the grass underneath, leaving bare patches of earth. Re-seeding these areas is one of my tasks in the coming days.

My front garden on 22nd April 2020 © Ricky Yates

But with the arrival of Spring, green shoots are appearing on all of the bushes reassuring me that I wasn’t too severe 😉

As I outlined in my previous post, since the middle of March I have been living in splendid isolation because of the measures taken by the Czech government, to counteract the Corona virus. However, this has given me the opportunity to do a lot of work in my garden, aided by dry, fine weather throughout April.

Along with dead-heading and pruning all my roses, I have finally managed to repair this trellis alongside my front door, which was damaged on 10th February by Storm Ciara (UK), Storm Sabine (Czech Republic & Germany).

Once DIY shops, (or Hobby shops as Czechs call them), were allowed to re-open just before Easter, I was able to obtain a replacement metal bracket to re-attach the trellis to the wall of the house. You can see the new bracket in the photo. I also screwed a new wooden baton, (which you can’t see), across the base of the trellis, and resurrected the roses.

One of the joys of this Spring has been to have these daffodils and tulips flowering, directly in front of the house. The bulbs were given to me by my daughter Christa at Christmas 2018. Last Spring, only the daffodils flowered, no doubt due to being planted too late. This Spring, they flowered beautifully.

Flowerbed & panels treated with wood stain © Ricky Yates

A couple of weeks later, just as the tulips were past their best, I also completely weeded and delineated the flower bed, and then applied wood stain to the panels below the enclosed verandah. This and the previous photo, show how dry everything is. The whole of the Czech Republic is currently experiencing drought conditions. Fortunately, this weekend as I write, we have had some most welcome rain.

I have also done plenty of work in my back garden. But that deserves another post 🙂

From Autumn to Winter 2019

Winter has been rather slow to arrive in North Bohemia in 2019. We were blessed with a wonderful Indian Summer during the second half of October and the weather remained mainly dry and fine, well into November. This allowed me to make a lot of progress in the garden about which I hope to write another blog post in the near future.

But now it has turned cold with overnight frost on several occasions. I noted yesterday afternoon that the the tub into which rain off the roof of my carport drains, was still solidly frozen on the surface. However, we still haven’t had any snow. In my two previous winters here in Stará Oleška, the first snow fell in November.

Wood-burning stove well alight © Ricky Yates

I have to say that I am very pleased with my new wood-burning stove about which I wrote here, a month ago. It is already proving to be a very worthwhile investment. Here it is, roaring away!

Cross-sections of tree trunk, awaiting removal © Ricky Yates

As I said in reply to a comment on that post, I hope that the truckload of logs that I had delivered in January 2019, will last me through the whole of this winter. But as I wrote in a post on 30^th March entitled, ‘From Winter to Spring 2019’, that load included these massive cross-sections of tree trunk; twenty-three of them in total.

Where the cross-sections of tree trunk once were © Ricky Yates

The only way to get them from where they were deposited, on public land, adjacent to my garden, and into the wood shed, was to cut each of them in two with my chainsaw. Having done that, I then transported each section, one at a time, by wheelbarrow, into the shed. Forty-six journeys in total! I finally completed the task on 22^nd April. Here is where they once sat, along with the debris from chainsawing.They did all just fit into the shed!

Being protected from any rain and with the warmth of summer, all the normal-sized logs have developed some cracks whilst sitting in the shed, as the timber has dried out and become seasoned. In turn, this makes them easy to split into a size suitable for the wood-burning stove.

Two of the cross-sections of tree trunk stacked in the wood shed © Ricky Yates

But the cross-sections of tree trunk have only developed a few fine cracks and have therefore proved much more difficult to split. So instead, I’ve had to spend quite some time and energy with my chainsaw, to reduce them into sections of a more manageable size, before they can be used in the wood-burning stove.

Chainsaw ready to tackle the next half cross-section of tree trunk © Ricky Yates

However, because the wood from these cross-sections is so dense, it burns far more slowly. This is particularly useful if I want to go out for a few hours in the evening and join the locals at U Soni. Just one of these reduced size sections of tree trunk will keep burning for at least three hours, meaning I return to a warm house and with no need to re-light the fire.