Where did the week go

I can't believe its the weekend again, where has the week gone to!

At the beginning of the week we were up to our ears in water (well not literally, but it was very wet and the rivers had burst their banks. Not as bad as some parts of the country though. Week before last we were in snow and now spring is coming but more of that later.

We had some lovely night skies last week too, once it had stopped raining. One night we noticed the big fat gibbous moon just starting to wane and hanging over the horizon with streaks of cloud passing over it, wish I could have taken a piccy of it.

Still struggling hard with the reading for my MSc, working on the plan to have the first draft done by the end of the month, but it might be time to start panicing soon!

Banana wine in demijohn now, it smells like rice wine, it will probably be horrible but worth a try. The peach wine has cleared beautifully and I will probably rack it off into a glass demijohn this week. The apple and the marrow are still murky and I need to restart the apple apparently, so lots of work to do in the 'brewery' this week. Also it is time Mark did another brew as we have run out of his lovely beer, thankfully I was able to pick up our order from the brewshop now that the snow has gone from the roads on Dartmoor.

Long day on Thursday, 8.30am appointment with a student in South Cornwall meant leaving at 7am which was a bit early for me. It was worth it though for the sunrise over Dartmoor. I was surprised though to see that all the snow had gone from Bodmin as I crossed it. After this appointment I had another one just north of Plymouth at lunch time and then home, very tired but it was a good day.

Friday and it was time to write up notes from the meetings on Thursday (too shattered when I got home) and do final bits of shopping for Mark's birthday on Saturday, what a day to have a birthday, Valentines! I am quite proud of myself as he told me that he would like a birthday cake so I made a chocolate fudge cake from a recipe by Nigella, it looks lovely on the outside but was rather overly moist on the inside (a great chocolate hit though and not too sweet). The recipe included sour cream and I only had the diet stuff (!!!) which was rather thin which might explain some of the dampness of the cake (I did check that it was done when I took it out, maybe it needed a few minutes more too. Still an achievement for me and Mark enjoyed it which was the main thing (went rather well with the nice whisky I got him!). Should say that we haven't eaten the whole half of it (it is huge), we gave some to friends! Not sure if we will manage to eat the whole thing, we aren't normally into cake.

But back to spring; you can feel it in the air and the birds are singing very loudly again too. As this is our first February in the house we are starting to see little green shoots of bulbs that we didn't know were there, it's quite exciting waiting to see what will come up. There are some lovely snowdrops in the hedge edging the drive too, they seem to sprout up everywhere.

Despite the fact that is does feel a bit like spring it is still chilly. Luckily we managed to get the woodburner in the office to work without smoking now and it is starting to be enjoyed by one and all!