A quick post before February is out

I have been hibernating.
Not since 2011 has the winter seemed so long, so bleak, so grey, so wet, and so dismal.
From 2012 to 2020 we spent an increasing amount of time during The Dark Weeks in South Africa, then we were busy doing renovations and extensions up north, and finally (in autumn 2024) finishing relocating, so this is the first year for 13 years that we have had nothing major going on at this time of year to distract us. I did not enjoy it.
We have occasionally ventured out to collect glass (beautiful remnants of the north’s industrial past), on beaches, from junk shops and from auctions. And we’ve been making our own marbles to make up for the lost ones.
Mr BW is currently outside triangulating his new all-singing all-dancing auto-finding, auto-tracking telescope – which arrived on 18th January – to see tonight’s planetary alignment. This is only the third night in the last 6 weeks that the skies have been clear enough to see anything.
The amaryllis (*nods down*) has only just finished flowering. 5 blooms on one stalk and one on another. 2 months. Must be a record.
We have also adopted a dog. An old collie, that I found sadly abandoned in a cardboard box in a big shed. Mr BW has named it Shep.