Saturday

I woke up rather early today as the dog needed to go out which set Henry off, and despite listening to a few Farming Today podcasts about TB in badgers, ragwort, and the East Anglian pea harvest, I didn't manage to drop back off to sleep.

Anyway I haven't blogged for a few days as it's been a bit of a case of bees, studying and fielding arguments between the children but today was fun. Ma and Pa came over and took the children out for a bike ride and I went for lunch with Charles at the Rose Cottage (which has a no children under 10 policy...it's one of our favourites!) and we went and sat up at Bo Peep bostal and admired just how bloomin' beautiful Sussex is in the summer. He also bought me a book of ice creams and lolly recipes, yum. Came back to find Maud hiding behind the greenhouse having been savaged by Henry, horrible cockerel }:-( but after some wound powder on the gash over her eye and some TLC from Amber, she seemed to be ok, if a bit shocked. I hope she's ok tonight...

Then this evening Nicky came round bearing gifts! Of homemade elderflower jam and strawberry jam, courgette and Brussels sprout plants, and pressies in the form of her hand made soap, and knitting needles and nice wool. We then spent a very happy couple of hours knitting (me) and crocheting (Nicky) interspersed with cups of tea and aforementioned jam on my home made bread. How lovely. I am knitting a wooden coathanger cover and Nick was trying to work out how to crochet but doing a very convincing job! We both would like to make these among other things, but I can see the Winterton houseshold enjoying unbruised apples well ahead of us.

My knitting

Roses and sweet peas from my garden

Amber with a maybug

The maybug

My hollyhocks...thought they'd be dark red, oops

Daylight

It is, of course, about the longest day length in the year for us at the moment and given that we seem to have had summer in April, it is feeling slightly autumnal to me. Having found the camera (under a bag) I thought I'd take some pictures of nature's status in the growing season as I am always amazed at how early plants actually start setting seed:

This....

...plus this = embryonic crumble

A future champion?

Elderberry cordial to be

New Scots pine trees

So I know it might seem a bit depressing to be thinking about autumn but I am a bit obsessed with day length as I am studying the Cretaceous period when the global temperature was such that we had polar forests - Alaska was covered in cycads, ferns and conifers as well as flowering plants but because of the incredibly short growing period of about 3 months they were all deciduous. Of course, most of the 3 months was continous daylight but I find it incredible that plants adapted so brilliantly to the intense growth whilst still protecting themselves from maruading, migrating herbivorous dinosaurs...

Anyway, dragging myself back to the Cainozoic, my soap is now airing or curing or whatever:

 

It bears a disturbing resemblance to rum-and-raisin fudge

Oh yes I know I said in my last blog that it would have to wait til I got the proper stuff but everyone reading this knows I'm far too impatient to do that so having googled, I used milk instead of water and guessed the temperature.

And here's the regulation chicken picture - Maud and Mary in their rural idyll:

Not going to make it in to Country Living magazine is it

And just to make up for the lack of pictures yesterday, Tristan with the cake he made:

Clever lad

:-)

Misplaced camera

No pictures from me today as the girls borrowed my camera to do Morgana Show movies and we have yet to locate it again, which is a shame as I took a picture of my raspberries (all 8 of them) - my first harvest of soft fruit! The strawberry is plumping up nicely too; no doubt the chickens are waiting until it is at peak ripeness before hopping over the fence and treading on it.

Anyway I now have the ingredients to make soap, thanks to Nicky, but I need a thermometer and some distilled water so it will have to wait til I can make it although it does give me a few days to finish drying the rose petals that I'd like to put in the soap.

I was out by the car this afternoon looking for the dog's lead when a large white van stopped in the road. My heart sank as I presumed the driver was going to put my appalling lack of observation/sense of direction to the test and ask me where a particular house was but no! phew! he pointed down the road and said "Is that your pig?" so I said no, but I knew where it lived. So, being the neighbourly soul that I am, I grabbed a feed bucket and half a dozen apples out of the fruit bowl and yelled for the children to come and help me retrieve nextdoor's pig who lives in the field diagonally opposite. The pig was almost down to the bridlepath by the time we caught up with him but some judicious apple-throwing tempted him back up the road towards his pen and with some encouragement, more apple and an impromptu pig board we got him back to the field. I never thought my agricultural training would come in so handy :-)

This isn't him but he's similar