For no particular reason, other than that we have lots of snow, I’ve decided to write an irritating ‘top ten’ style list of music vaguely related to snow. This might be annoying, but I couldn’t just say it was snowing and leave it at that, because I did that last year. Don’t despair though, because I think it’s actually quite an interesting list, and I’ll try and make it even more interesting by rambling on about things as I go along. So, without any further ado, on with the list:

1. Doves – Snowden: This would probably wind up in any kind of top ten I made, whether connected with snow or not. I don’t know what the song’s title actually refers to – maybe it’s someone’s surname? Obviously it’s not the mountain because that’s Snowdon. For what it’s worth, I’ve never seen any snow on any of the occasions I’ve been to Snowdon.

2. Red Hot Chili Peppers – Snow: As with the previous song, this band ought to appear in any top ten. Catch a fantastic performance of it here on YouTube from the Jools Holland show, the undisputed home of fantastic performances.

3. O.R.N. – Snow: Good luck getting your hands on this classic. You can make me an offer for the CD single, or the vinyl version, if you like. Otherwise you’ll probably just have to take my word for it being worth of being in the list.

4. Sister Sledge – He’s The Greatest Dancer: I was torn between this and Lost In Music, but I chose this. It’s so good that Will Smith took a small sample and made a hit record from it, with that sample being the only redeeming feature. As usual.

5. Andy McKee – Drifting: Everyone on the internet has seen this video at least four times, according to the stats, but forget the video and buy the album, it’s worth it. If you haven’t seen the video, see it. Be warned though, if you play guitar, you’ll probably do nothing else until you’ve learned to play this.

6. Kings of Leon – Velvet Snow: What’s not to like about Kings of Leon? Doesn’t everyone like them? You decide.

7. Emily Remler – Snowfall: Not really my favourite Emily Remler track, by any stretch of the imagination, but I sneaked it in here because it has the word snow in the title, and because of the brilliant album it’s from, East to Wes. That’s not a typo, Wes refers to Wes Montgomery, another favourite guitarist of mine. Foolishly though, he never recorded anything snow-related so he can’t be in the list.

8. µ-ziq – Iced Jem: The most tenuous snow connection in the whole list. Almost everything by Mike Paradinas is good though. If you don’t know that already (and the odds are very much against it) then educate yourself.

9. Snow Patrol – Chasing Cars: I feel like I ought to be a teenage girl to like this, but I like it anyway, although if challenged I’ll just claim I was running out of snow music.

10. Faithless – Drifting Away: I know I did the drifting thing already, but this is a classy track from a classic album, Reverence. It’s every bit as good as the other nine – I wasn’t running out at all, and these aren’t in order anyway.

11. (Bonus Track) Underworld – Blueski: On it’s own, probably not likely to end up in anyone’s top ten eleven of anything. Not that it doesn’t deserve it, mind you. But it doesn’t exist on it’s own, it’s part of Second Toughest In The Infants, a truly magnificent album.

Ok, end of list. I’m going to make a bet that nobody on the planet but me is familiar with all eleven of those. But what would be in your list that I missed? Answers below…

For some reason last weekend seemed to be nicer than any we had over the so-called summer, so it was a perfect opportunity to get started on cutting the hedges. I have a crappy electric hedge trimmer that gets stuck on a hawthorn branch every 30 seconds, and I’ve also sliced through the cable three times previously, so it’s all done by hand these days.

Mia had to help out of course, and yes that’s her pictured right, two years old and up a wobbly stepladder with a pair of scissors. And yes, that’s a plaster on her finger, but she didn’t do it with the scissors – that was the day before with the kitchen knife. I guess that when Mia gets to the age where she can use the internet, she might read this blog and then head on over to Wikipedia to find that most other children have ten whole fingers. If so, Mia, however many fingers you have now, that’s how many you were born with and I can produce photoshopped evidence if necessary.

More seriously, I don’t advocate that anyone lets their toddlers use knives and scissors or climb ladders. On the other hand, I don’t recommend that anyone tries to tell me what my toddler should and shouldn’t do when under my close supervision.

Another weekend task was rot-proofing the chicken house, slightly too late but better that than never. Unfortunately, when I bought the ‘stuff’ I failed to notice something quite important and at no point during the transaction did the shopkeeper helpfully say “you do know that stuff is bright chuffing orange don’t you sir?” Therefore, due to the shopkeeper’s neglect, we have a glow-in-the-dark chicken house that people will probably use as a landmark when giving directions.

Unfortunately there’s still quite a lot of hedge left to cut (I assume that people who call it trimming have a totally different kind of hedge) but in the meantime I can take pictures that only include the bits that are straight-ish and pretend it’s all like that.

Finally sunshine is upon us. This means gardening, and during the week the ability to work in the garden, at least when it’s possible to angle the laptop away from the sun so the screen is still visible. The orchard is a mass of blossom at the moment. The apple tree pictured right is probably the best apple tree in the world. When they’re ready, which will be around mid-September, they’re enormous, deep red, and pink in the middle. The picture below is a close-up of the blossom from the same tree, hacked about with using qtpfsgui to make it look arty farty. For once I’m quite pleased with the results.

Having said that, I did the processing in the garden with the sun on my dirty laptop screen, so it might well be hideous for all I know.

While we’re out here, some more garden-related stuff you’re not interested in. To the right, vegetable patches all planted up and surrounded by netting to keep out the cat (thinks it’s a litter tray), the puppy (learning to dig) and Mia (big clompy welly boots). Below, Mia feeding the chickens in the aforementioned boots.

If the image looks odd, it’s a result of me inexpertly playing with multiple exposures to create an HDR image using qtpfsgui.

Wind is probably my least favourite kind of weather, and moreso when we’ve had what seems to be weeks of it. What’s normally an easy journey up and down the A1 on Friday was made a lot less pleasant by various obstacles in the way, ranging from lorries lying on their sides to bits of signage that had become detached and blown into the road.

To make matters worse, I arrived home to find that I’d spoken too soon about the shed standing up to the constant wind. Half the roof has detached itself and flown across the garden (narrowly missing the gas man, it turned out) and one of the windows has blown out and smashed into pieces. Luckily the turkeys who lived inside are long gone (very tasty they were too), so there’s no desperate rush to fix things.

We had what seems to have become our annual day of snow last week. Sadly I spent all of it working, so here’s a picture of it from my office window to commemorate the non-event. As it turns out, I didn’t miss much as there wasn’t even enough to build a snowman.

Also in the picture you can see that my anti-chicken/turkey fence which I cleverly made out of untreated wood hasn’t rotted away yet, and perhaps even more miraculously the hastily constructed shed hasn’t blown away in the perpetual gales.

It occurred to me that I haven’t posted anything here for a while, and strangely I haven’t received any complaints. If it wasn’t obvious, I posted this purely for the sake of it.