Stormy Weekend

Hello.....  well we knew it was coming and that it was going to hit our corner of the world. So most of the weekend was spent preparing and waiting for the storm, they called St Jude to hit the UK.

Saturday was spent battening down the hatches, putting the garden furniture away.

Dismantling the mini green house.

Stowing away anything that could blow away, yes the Summerhouse at the moment looks like a refugee camp for garden essential, with chairs, tables, washing lines and anything else this might blow away all huddled in there together.

'P' spent most of the day out in the garden packing things away on Saturday, yes here at the Summerhouse we were as prepared as we could be. It can get very windy here at the best time. This you can tell by the fact the nearby woodland by the Windmill (yet aother hint) is called 'Cold Blow Woods'!!!

All the neighbours were out battening down, next door even lashed down there conservatory roof with mountain climbing snap lock things ( I'm sure that's not the technical term) to our concert wall, for fear it would blow away.

All that was left to do was wait, as the wind slowly increased over the weekend, here's a shot of the Windmill just before dark, turned to face the coming storm.

Nothing for it but to hunker down and get cosy, light some candles find the torches and fill some flasks with hot water in case we lost power

and of course do a spot of crafting.

 I spent some time playing around with layout ideas for my winter time wreath, seeing what more I need to make, I think more blues and whites for sure, still so much to be done, but it's slowly coming along. More on that another day.  Then it was time to watch some Sunday night TV 'The Paradise' and 'Downtown Abbey' with the very wonderful Dame Maggie Smith.

Here's a picture of our tree that I took pre storm. I went to bed hoping it would not fall in the night as I love it so.  I slept at the front of the house in the spare room as next doors tree had been declared not safe several years ago and seeing as they'd tied the roof on too, I thought it would be best. It was a bit of a disturbed night with the tiles on the roof lifting and banging but morning came.  To tell the truth I think we got off quite lightly, as just seven mile away winds of 105 miles per hour were recorded in the Straits of Dover. Eek.

Out in the garden, our lovely Horse chestnut tree had lost a lot of leaves but was still standing, strangely enough it seems to have lost a lot of the leave from lower branches.

Other than one of the neighbours fences blowing down onto ours everything appears to be OK

My sister who lives a few miles away did come across this tree fallen in the road, when she went out.

As for windmill  it to appears to have come through the strom OK, by 9am it was a sunny Autumn day, still really windy but the worst of it passed.

Just look at that sky, such a gorgeous blue.

Down at the beach in the afternoon there were still several ship anchored off shore waiting the storm out. Which had headed off to Europe, where sadly looking on the news today it has caused much more damage.   You can see the waves breaking on the horizon  in this picture the other side of the Goodwin sands. Which lie just off shore from the beach.

I hope all my UK and Northern European readers  came through the storm as unscathed as we did.  Mother nature sure can be powerful when she wants to be.  It's hard to believe the above picture was taken on the same day.

This week I've been continuing to read, The Lyme Diet by N Mcfadzean.

Yarning alone with 'Ginny'

Take care

Clare xx