We are having some foul weather, and it is so cold at night that I sleep with a thick woolly scarf around my neck, and woolly gloves.The frost in the mornings are so heavy that my place look like it had snowed during the night! I have lost a lot of my young shrubs, and even my broadbeans that is supposed to be frost resistant, were lying flat and stiff this morning. The only things that is not at all affected by this frost, are my onion seedlings, which are almost ready to plant out. It could have been done the previous week, but one of the farmers told me that the soil is still to cold, and the tender seedlings would not be able to establish themselves quickly enough to survive. Made sense to me, so we postponed the planting.
I have now started on a new war against the moles to help my strawberries survive that little pests, and that is to dig long furrows, put some shading net in, then fill it with soil, fold the netting over to cover the soil, and plant the strawberries in small holes cut into the shading net. It  is done by many farmers to protect their crops, but of course they use commercial stuff,and I now hope that mine will also survive! Of course there is still Sheila's bally peacock, and this beauty is already eyeing my beds with greedy eyes, hoping for some good feasts in the near future. But I have my catapult always at the ready, as I use it to scare of the cats that are always on the prowl for a nice little bird! And I must say, I have become pretty efficient in the use of that weapon! And I have collected a box full of small pebbles!
Baby Emil is now big, and very, very busy, and poor Berty, who took a lot of chances by keeping him in the cot while she watched telly, had quite a hard time. No more standing crying in the cot, as the little man had worked out how to pull himself up onto the top rails, then sliding down on the other side, and voila, he was a free baby! Not always without mishap, as he had a few healthy blue bumps as witness to his escape efforts! Berty tried for a while to keep him quiet and in the cot by giving him bottle after bottle, until his dad got sniff in the nose, after catching her giving him milk when he was supposed to get his lunch.
A lively exchange of words followed, and Jan told her to either start doing her job, or go. He then took the telly out of the family room to keep temptation away from her, and for a few days she was just a wee bit unfriendly, but soon perked up when we took no notice.
It was going on for two years since the boys escaped the accident in which their mother died, and I cry a lot for them, as it is so sad that the little Emil will never know his mum! Andreas have luckily no after effects, and his broken arm and leg, and also his cracked scull had mended nicely. The bit above his eyebrow, where a piece of bone had to be planted in, is now without any scarring!