This year, I want to get a bit more proficient at identifying wildlife. I'm pretty good with birds, and can identify most of the common British birds by sight (but not by sound, except for the very obvious ones). 

My knowledge of trees is a little more ropey. I can identify the most common ones (oak, sycamore, beech, silver birch, cherry, elder, willow, hawthorne, holly, poplar etc) by either leaves, bark or other key features, but I am shockingly bad at identifying trees in winter. 

The other day I was walking across town - the sky was grey and nondescript and I fell to idly looking at the silhouettes of the trees.

They're surprisingly different (or maybe it's not too surprising...). Some have twigs that point upwards, some droop down. Some have many small twigs clustered together, while others are more sparse. The outlines are different too - some spread wide, others more compact. 

It seemed to me that the shape of the branches was so distinct that there was likely to be an online guide I could consult, so as I walked I took pictures of as many different types as I could see (which also helped to take my mind off my freezing fingers). 

However, it turns out I can't find what I was looking for online at all! The best I can find is an A-Z guide to native UK trees produced by the Woodland Trust. This does have winter pictures of each tree, but they're quite small, and you have to click through to each species in turn and then click through the pictures to find the winter one. 

The Dendrologist (a journal sadly no longer printed) has this handy winter twig identification guide, which doesn't really help with these photographs, but might if I go out collecting twigs instead. There is also perhaps a more useful dichotomous key from Virginia Tech Dendrology department, although it is obviously North American, so I am not sure how much the species differ. 

Of course, it's easier with leaves. Country Life magazine has a simple pictorial guide to the most common species, and the Forestry Commission has a tree name trail - pretty much exactly what I was looking for but using leaves rather than twig shapes. I'll make sure to come back to that in the summer. 

I'm pretty sure the answer is to consult a book. I'm also pretty sure that we have a tree identification book, locked deep in a box in the cellar somewhere. In the meantime, you might see me around town collecting sticks and doing bark rubbings. 

On Thursday between Christmas and new year, the sun was shining and I took myself off for a nice long wander through the woods. 

This path snakes ever so slightly uphill for a few miles, and as the trees thinned out, it got colder and the ground was covered with an increasing amount of snow. 

Eventually I reached the top of the hill, and stopped to drink my flask of hot chocolate. I was warm from climbing the hill, but the air was freezing, and as I turned the corner and left the trees behind me, the wind blew across the exposed road. 

I'll miss this route when we move. It's my ten mile running route (or at least it was, back when I was capable of running for ten miles...). On this occasion though the aim was scenery, and, after seven miles of walking I decided I didn't need to trek the last three miles through the suburban streets so I hopped on a bus.

The very next day I found myself doing the first part of the same walk with a friend, and this time all of it was in the snow. 

It's funny how much difference the snow can make to how the landscape feels. 

On this occasion we just walked for a couple of miles, then stopped for lunch at a cafe (along with half of the rest of the city population, it seemed). 

It's felt good to be out and about in the winter weather. Not the grey, rainy, gloomy weather (not all the time anyway), but give me a bright sky or a bit of snow and I'm itching to be outside. I can see a lot more being outside in my future... 

Happy new year! 

Each year I seem to start off thinking I won't go back over all my old blog posts, but that's always what I end up doing anyway. To start off, here are some previous posts

Looking back on 2016 - the year we started to decorate, and continued to decorate, and still didn't move
Looking back on 2015 - the year we started packing ready to move
Looking back on 2014 - a year of running and gardening

I started my review this time last year by laughing at how I'd thought we'd move house in the first half of 2016. I ended it by saying we'd definitely move in the first half of 2017. And now, here we are, 2018, still in the same old house... but at least there have been estate agents and solicitors and money changing hands and (dare I say it) we hope to move in the next few weeks...

So, without further ado - 2017. 

After starting with a review of 2016, I launched myself into Uber Frugal January, with posts about food, travel, and getting value for money. We went out and about quite a bit, and ended the month with a DIY update. 

In February, I did a round up of Uber Frugal January (I'm doing it again this year so I must make some time to write about it again). I got enthused about cycling before work, and did a catch up of the reading I'd done over the last few months. 

I started March with a 32 mile bike ride, in preparation for my 62 mile race. My weekends were filled with DIY, yet more cycling, and a little trip to York with some friends. I did some more DIY (of course), mended these socks (that I've had to mend twice since) and finally got out into the garden after the winter. We spent quite a bit of time looking round other people's houses, and I planned an epic cycling adventure after tonsillitis scuppered my 62 mile race. 

In April, my epic cycling adventure happened, and I spent a happy (if windy) two days cycling over the Trans Pennine Trail to see my sister. 

We then spent a week in Northumbria (where I did not even look at a bicycle, let alone get on one). 

In May, the garden started flowering, I did a little bit more reading, and spent a lot of time in the countryside, hiding from the appalling, half decorated mess that was our house. Surprisingly, there are no DIY posts from this time - odd as it felt like DIY occupied our entire lives. 

There are no posts in June. June was a month of chaos as we decorated, tidied, cleaned - and found a house we adored and put an offer in. At the start of July I despaired that it would ever get finished. But it did, and after marvelling at how pretty our current house and garden looked, by the 20th we had found a buyer, ditched the house we originally wanted to buy, and put an offer in on a second. 

Finally we were able to have a normal weekend while we waited for our buyers to sell their house. 

In August, I made jam, our buyers sold their house, and our offer on our second house was rejected. After yet more wandering, we finally found the place we will hopefully call home, and the legal and financial shenanigans began. 

I looked back on the changes we'd made to our house, and acquired a big load of fruit which I turned into jam. I ended the month with an evening wander out in the peak district. 

In September we got uncharacteristically adventurous and hopped on a plane to visit our friends in Berlin. I reflected on August in the garden, spent a lot of time in the woods as they turned slowly more autumnal, and we had a little day trip to Bakewell. 

In October, I finally finished one of the socks I'd started months before. We went on a little trip to the seaside, I cycled along the canal with a group of other women and visited some wildlife trust reserves - and I mended those pesky socks that I'd already mended earlier in the year. 

In November, I marvelled at there still being flowers in the garden, and drummed my fingers impatiently as we were still waiting for our mortgage offer three months after applying. Finally, it arrived, and for a day it seemed things would move quickly... but then our buyer had to put their house back on the market and we all had to settle back into endless waiting again. I visited my sister and her new dog in a bid to think about something cheerful. 

Fortunately, by the start of December, our buyers had found a new buyer (hooray!) and we visited our new house again, this time with a heating engineer in tow. Things were rather grey and muddy, and I tried not to be concerned about the amount of grass and mud we are buying... 

Back at our current home, it snowed (a tiny bit) and we spent a lot of time sitting in cafes. 

I ended the blogging year with a Christmas day wander and some knitting. 

It's good to look back. Of course, I don't record everything here, mostly only the more picturesque things that involve cake, scenery and knitting. It's been a rather trying year in real life and when that happens it's sometimes easy to forget that there have been cheerful things too. We finally sold our house! I cycled all the way to the other side of the country! And in amidst all the chaos there were still flowers, knitting, cakes and wanderings. Not a bad year.

Looking back though, one thing that was missing is running. I did a half marathon in January with my sister (which I seemingly didn't write about here) and then... nothing. For a while cycling took over, and then house nonsense has eaten up the rest of the year. I've started running again in the last couple of weeks and goodness me I've missed it. Look out for more running from me in 2018...  

I hope you all had a good festive season. We have been pretty quiet here, and I seem to have done a lot of snoozing. I think I'm just catching up on sleep after a long year. 

We spend Christmas day on our own, opening presents with a cup of tea, eating chocolate before (or in my case, instead of) breakfast, then preparing lunch in a leisurely way and eating mid afternoon. This year we sneaked out for a chilly walk in the park with a friend before lunch too. 

The rest of the afternoon was spent knitting while watching Harry Potter. I'm trying to finish a pair of socks for a friend - I've just started the second so clearly they are going to be rather late for Christmas... I'm planning to finish them before I go back to work though - good job all of the Harry Potter films are on the tv this week. 

It's rather chilly here, but I forced myself out for a wintry walk this afternoon. I'll post photos soon but right now I'm off to try to defrost my bones with a hot water bottle. 

It's been pretty chilly round here lately, and last weekend we were poised for a large flurry of snow, but... nothing. 

Well, not quite nothing, but also not the 'several inches' we were threatened with. 

Still, it was nice to walk (or rather slide) around the local park, and see who else had been out walking. 

I do like wandering about in the snow, but it doesn't do to stay out too long in such weather if you have the choice, and we quickly found ourselves in our favourite cafe.

It's been a bit of a week for staying inside, and yesterday we hosted our usual pre-Christmas festive gathering. More of an open house really, with people coming and going throughout the evening and bringing tasty goodies with them. 

I made these (supposedly) unbelievably easy mince pies. What a faff! The recipe boasts that they're so easy because you don't need to roll out the pastry, but I spent far longer squidging and squishing to get it into the tins and they looked rather 'rustic'. Still, they were quite delicious, so all is forgiven. 

They did look slightly better cooked, but somehow they vanished rather quickly and I didn't get a photograph. Not sure how that happened. 

No house news - our buyers' buyer is presumably now going through the same stress we all did we mortgages and surveys, and we're not really expecting to be ready to exchange until mid January at the earliest. In the meantime, we're decking our stacks of boxes with festive trimmings and settling in for a cosy few weeks here before we head out into the middle of nowhere. 

Oh! I should also tell you I'm planning to join in with Frugalwoods' Uber Frugal Month Challenge in January again. You can read about last year's efforts here (although you'll have to scroll past a bit of DIY first - that brought the memories flooding back!) It would be most cheerful if you joined in the challenge too - sign up (for free, of course) here. 

Will you join me for a celebratory cup of tea? Our house-buying adventure is back on, as our buyers found a new buyer for their house yesterday. Hooray! 

Of course, we won't be going anywhere before Christmas now, but that's no bad thing, as it gives us another few weeks to save (and to pack). And it means when we move it will be closer to spring, which is no bad thing, as it's pretty grey and bleak at our new house right now. 

(Well, of course, it's grey and bleak here in the city too, but somehow everything is more muddy and cold out in the countryside, which I suppose we'll get used to...)

This is me at our new house a couple of weeks ago in my fabulous blood-and-acid-proof wellies and my posh frock (I had to go to a work function straight after). As you can see, the neighbour's cows have been stomping around and I'm not sure I'd advise camping in this particular field right now.

I was striding about the fields photographing the ID numbers on the telegraph poles (there's a rumour from the solicitor that we may be able to get £5 a year from BT for giving them access to maintain them, and I'm not going to turn my nose up at free dosh). 

I was surprised how many telegraph poles there were - I'd been convinced there was only one. 

This one, in fact. However, it seems I was wrong, and turning my head in the opposite direction I spied this one. 

Oh! And what's this? 

Turns out that contraption is on our land too. Exciting! 

Now is probably a good time to confess that, until last week, I hadn't fully realised the extent of the land we were buying.  I mean, we have the plan, and we've looked on google maps, and on the Ordnance Survey map of course. But the first time we viewed the house the estate agent was late, and we had an appointment to view another house, so we just went inside and round the outbuildings and looked across the fields but didn't really go into them. 

I'd been back a couple of times since then to walk along the public footpaths, but had forgotten the plan of the land both times. 

This time, wearing wellies and armed with the title plan, I had a good look round. 

It seems we're buying quite a lot of mud. The neighbour's cows have been doing an excellent job of keeping the grass down, and have been thoughtfully making little (and large) puddles for us to splash through. At one point I thought I was going to lose a welly, and have a lot of explaining to do when I turned up at work covered in mud (I'm sure it won't be the last time).

Apparently this will be our field too, and those our dry stone walls. I love dry stone walls. I always have (except for a brief period as a teenager, when on a school trip to the Lake District we listed what we thought were the Most Boring Jobs in the World - number one was working in a shoe shop, and number two was building dry stone walls).  

I had a go at building a dry stone wall once - it was like doing an extremely heavy and complicated jigsaw. Fortunately I like jigsaws, and am planning to book myself onto a dry stone walling course as soon as we move.

I'm still not entirely sure what we're going to do with all those fields. Our friends and family are, of course, ready with a series of suggestions from the boring-and-sensible-but-wouldn't-be-allowed-in-a-national-park to the preposterous. I make no apology for not turning our particular corner of the Peak District into a festival site, caravan storage or pet cemetery. 

I think it's far more likely that we'll start with the field closest to the house, plant some veg, and then work outwards as we settle in. I don't want to make too many firm plans in case it all goes wrong... 

So it looks like we'll be spending much of the winter in the city, which I don't really mind, because the sun is shining here and there's a lot less mud. I've been tramping around and about the place and mostly taking photographs of trees. 

Our little garden bird table is attracting quite a few visitors, and now the leaves have all fallen off the lilac, we get quite a good view. This little goldfinch arrived yesterday morning as I was having breakfast. 

There's a robin there at the minute, and a couple of weeks ago (when the leaves were still around) a squirrel made several trips up and down, up and down, burying seeds in the ground. 

We've resigned ourselves to spending one last Christmas in our old house. It's not a bad thing really.  New year, new house. If it all goes to plan of course... 

Things have taken a distinctly autumnal turn around here lately. 

I think autumn might be my favourite season, but this year it's not been great so far. My nan died this week, we are still in limbo waiting for things to happen with our house, and altogether things are rather gloomy and unsatisfying. 

A look back through my photographs tells me we have been getting out and about though. 

We spotted these flowers planted into old milk cartons on the side of a metal fence screening some building work. I've never seen this before, but how pretty! 

Last weekend we went to Bakewell, a little market town out in the peak district, where I tried to hold onto the end of summer with a last lolly ice. 

We walked into town along the river, and I love to see the old houses lining the banks. 

This bridge was built in the thirteenth century, and is still one of the main routes into the town. 

We visit Bakewell quite a bit, so didn't feel the need to do anything particularly touristy. We wandered around the charity shops, bought some books in a second hand bookshop, and then had tea and a sandwich in the memorial gardens. 

I think we feel a bit discombobulated at the minute. We're moving - but who knows when? A lot of our stuff is packed, so we don't have access to most of our books or any of my sewing stuff and even some of our clothes. But there's no point packing anything else at this stage as it might be months before anything else happens. 

I'm trying to be interested in the legal and practical process of buying and selling a house, neither of which I've done before. I'm also trying not to get too hung up on whether we end up in this particular house that we're trying to buy, because so many things could still go wrong. We'd hoped to be in by Christmas, and there's still time, but I'm not holding my breath.

Hey ho. There's nothing I can do at this stage other than wait, so I suppose that's what I'll have to do. In cafes, mostly, particularly now the weather is turning. Maybe I'll knit myself a new scarf to keep me occupied. 

It's funny how a flurry of words comes over me sometimes. I'm sure my family would tell you I never shut up, but occasionally I just don't really have anything to say here. 

I'm here now though, because I came across these photographs from a few weeks ago when I took a detour on the way to a friend's house and ended up in the woods. 

I do so very much love these woods. This path is an old carriage track which snakes up through the trees. There's a steep bank to the right, and a steep drop to the left, at the bottom of which is a swirling stream and a rocky path. I'm usually cycling, so I take the top path, but the bottom one is magical in the evening sunlight and I really must get up there again soon. 

The day after this cycle trip, I found myself in a different woodland, on foot this time and with Peter in tow. 

This too has a stream, and snakes upwards, albeit far more gently. There are even stepping stones. 

(Gosh, I can't remember when it was warm enough to wear sandals! I'm sat here in a woolly cardigan with a hot water bottle just a couple of weeks after this was taken!)

Even back then though, signs of autumn were starting to emerge. 

I haven't been outside much this week, and these pictures are reminding me that I really should remedy that tomorrow. I've walked to work, of course, but after we gave ourselves food poisoning at the start of the week, we've spent a fair bit of time resting. 

Today has been a pottering sort of a day - a cafe, a bit of a shopping trip, and a visit to see friends. We've tidied up a bit after our enforced rest, and this evening we'll settle down with a film. 

Tomorrow, though, I can feel the outdoors calling again. I'm not planning anything energetic, but a little stroll might not go amiss. Maybe I'll take the rocky path by the stream through the woods. 

Last night I found myself wandering round the local fields again, collecting blackberries. I love foraging, it gives me a great sense of satisfaction (and I like getting something for free, of course). I'm thrilled that, having missed several years of blackberry harvests, I'm making the most of this year. 

I made a decision this year not to grow anything edible in our own garden (apart from the herbs and soft fruit that grows by itself), so we are incredibly grateful to friends who pass on their surplus produce. Just this week we've had an enormous marrow that has contributed to three meals so far, and these beautiful purple beans. 

Today we popped to a friend's house for a cup of tea, and he confessed that his plums were rotting on the tree, and did we want to take any? Yes please! He's eaten his fill, and many of them were turning bad, so we picked the rest and will take him a jar of jam in return. 

​Of course, all this produce needs processing. 

The blackberries were in most danger of rotting, so tonight I'm making a few jars of this roasted plum and blackberry jam. It's not ready yet, but I can tell you that the roasted plums smelled so delicious that I swiped a few to put in a quick rice pudding I just made to use up the last of a tin of coconut milk. I've not roasted plums before but that won't be the last time. 

Tomorrow I'm planning to turn the rest of the plums into this plum and ginger jam. 

It feels good to be making jam again. I'll definitely be planting a plum tree or two once we move. 

I'll miss this gooseberry bush when we leave. I bought it from Poundland about eight years ago, and it looked like a stick for the first couple of years, but every summer since has grown more gooseberries than I thought possible from one small bush. 

This year they were ready just as our house was going on the market, and I kept seeing them from the window and thinking 'I really must pick those gooseberries', but the freezer was full and in the midst of painting and gluing and fixing and packing and tidying, there was really no room for making jam. 

​So they stayed outside and the birds ate some (but not many) and the rest turned slowly brown. 

Finally, the house was ready, and the viewings were done, and someone agreed to buy our house. One sunny weekend, I found myself with nothing to do (a rare occurrence), and my eye fell to the remainder of the gooseberry crop. 

Sadly, most of them had gone, but I did gather enough for a decent bit of jam 

I love making gooseberry jam. Once you get past the giant thorns, and the endless snipping of stalks, it's an easy process, and I love the way it turns from green to deep pink as it cooks. 

I wasn't planning to make any more jam this year, but one evening last week I found myself yet again with little to do, and took off for a wander round the fields. 

It was a lovely evening, and as I wandered my eye fell on... blackberries. In my head they are ready in September, and I miss them every single year. I gathered as many as I could carry (in, er, small plastic bags leftover from looking after a friend's dog the day before). Not exactly a picturesque Country Living magazine-style shot. 

I wandered into the local park, which runs down the side of a hill, and provides an excellent view. I sat on a bench to watch the sun set, and before long was joined by our dog friend, and his owners. Most jolly. 

So now we have a choice of jam, which is never a bad thing. I'm not sure how long it'll last. I've never made jam that needed to keep for very long, because we are avid jam-eaters in this house and I've never made enough to last longer than a week or two. One day I'll experiment with making enough to last the year. Probably need more than three jars though.