Saturday 27th January

 Yesterday our gardener came, for the first time since just before Christmas.  It was a lovely day, sunny, but still pretty cold due to the sharp edge to the wind; a lazy wind that would rather go through you than round you.

She's pruned and trimmed and cleared and tidied and although the garden still looks a bit bedraggled, it's a sort of 'end of winter' bedraggled rather than 'neglected and unloved' bedraggled. My order of variegated ornamental cabbages was delivered at the beginning of last week, and I lefts them outside sheltered from wind, direct sun and frost until she could come and put them in some pots. Now they are outside the patio door so I can enjoy them from indoors. 

We saw a fox trotting silently along a sort of animal track under the hedge just the other side of the fence at the bottom of the garden. I could only see it's legs but that was enough; too skinny for a cat, too quiet for dog.

They are a nuisance; they damage the underside of the cars chewing through the pipes. Our neighbours opposite all have barricades which they have to move, and then replace every time they go out;

It must be a huge hassle for them. The foxes use their front gardens as their own personal trackway, in preference to this side. 

We know of two families, one at each end of our road who love to feed and encourage the cute foxes...

I'm trying to do some kind of art every day for a month. This is actually a friend’s project; she said 'I want to draw every day, make me do it!'. Then she added, 'but how?'. So we email each other a picture every day. 

I'm more of a speed merchant. I find if I'm too 'finicking' the result is disappointing and rather dead. Also, doing all those olive branches reawakened my interest in watercolour. 

I've therefore abandoned drawing the mantelpiece and went wild, first with watercolours, and then with newly acquired water soluble geaphite pencils.