The winter was now starting to chase away the last of the nice and warm summer days, and I have taken out all my warm stuff to ward of the cold. As my little cottage is built of stone, and has  a thatched roof, it was beautifully cool during the scorching summer days, but oh boy, come winter and I want to fly away with the swallows. The fact that the floors are cement does not help, and I bought myself a pair of thick woolen moccasins to try and keep my poor legs and feet from feezing.
One of the apple farmers told Jan that he also had stone floors, and to keep his family from freezing, he had bought a few electric blankets, and this were then positioned underneath the carpets wherever they sat most of the time, and apparently it worked like a bomb! So when I go to George again, I will look out for a couple of these.
The past summer was actually very rewarding, as I had plenty of veggies from my garden. That is of course after I got a lot of old tyres, and planted everything in that. Works like magic, as I put fine chicken mesh underneath so that the moles had no chance to tunnel away the soil from the roots! It is amazing the damage this little scoundrels can reek in one's garden.
One thing however that just does not wilt, fall over or just die when it suddenly feel the soil being removed from under it's roots., is the small cherry tomato. I do not know how, but in spite of tunnels running criss cross around and underneath it, this plants just thrive, and I had a bumper crop of tomatoes, so many that I was able to give nice organic tomatoes to my city dwelling, organic food drprived friends to enjoy!
I also had a bumper crop of butternuts, spinach, and rocket. This little plant, the rocket that is, is also very hardy, and defied all the onslaughts of the moles. I love to walk in my garden, pick a few rocket leaves, wrap it around a warm, sunbaked tomato, and eat it! Delicious! There are still hundreds of tomatoes on the plants, but I have decided to pick it to see if it would ripen in the house, as I think it is too cold outside now. I have put all the ripe ones into containers in the deepfreeze, and just take out a handfull when I need them.
My other friend, or rather foe, Sheila's peacock had, I think, enough of this mad human attacking it with her catapult, and walks rings around my garden now. If I think back on how this things destroyed my strawberries and other stuff, I have no sympathy when I start with my catapult, and jumps up and down with glee when I manage to get a hit. Of course I don't use big stones, but they are so dumd, they never worked out that my stones could not hurt them really. I have now planted broad beans, spinach, and some cabbage plants, and if the snails don't get to it, hopefully I would have at least some fresh veggies during the winter.
But I am all ready to survive, as I had canned all kinds of stuff, including butternuts!