Sunday

Cracking frost this morning, still thick on the ground when I surfaced at 9.30. Couldn't be bothered traipsing down to the market in the cold, even though it was sunny. Anyway, I'm always tempted to buy yummy stuff that I don't need but oh, so want. So I stayed home and wasted the morning on the Internet. What did I look at? I'm damned if I remember now! Pinterest, probably.
  Went into the garden in the arvo and yes! finished planting the tulips. They are Flaming Parrot. And some miniature narcissus which will probably not flower this year. Planted the last of the anemone bulbs, the first lot rotted in the soil, so I've put these in a drier spot, right on top of the body of a large rat that Thomas killed last week. This is the second rat that he's killed, and it was a huge one. And he's only eight months old! Mummy is so proud. What a good, brave boy.
  Repotted two box balls into larger pots. The really big ball that grows in the garden was flattened by the snow, but has now sprung back up again. And fertilized my beetroot and rainbow chard with a smelly homemade mix that is composed of seaweed, cow poo, comfrey leaves and blood and bone, so hopefully these will grow a bit more now, and provide something during the winter.
    Reading a biography of Henry VII at the moment, "Winter King" (sounds like a breed of cauliflower) by Thomas Penn (not to be confused with The winter king by Bernard Cornwell, about King Arthur).
Few biographies of Henry7 exist, probably because he was a secretive, tight-fisted monarch who lived in fear that he would be usurped in the same way that he usurped Richard III.  Considering what reams and reams have been written about the later Tudors, Henry has been somewhat ignored, so I am enjoying finding out a bit more of him, and the vanished world before parliamentary democracy, where monarchs had to be supremely wily politicians.
    Also been reading "Mad world; Evelyn Waugh and the secrets of Brideshead"  by Paula Byrne, uncovering the real models for the Marchmain family, the glamorous Lygons and the scandal of their father, Lord Beauchamp. "Brideshead revisited" is on my top ten novels of all time list, so this is essential reading for such fans as me.