Birthdays, Beef and Birds

Tuesday 9 March 2013

The girls came home with their partners on Friday evening to a steak supper excellently prepared by Gordon who has completely hijacked the kitchen lately after discovering he likes to cook.  On Saturday evening we had a gathering with friends and family and I prepared a buffet of a roast ham, a massive piece of beef, roast potatoes and bits to go with it.  There wasn’t much left afterwards and the meat was eaten in bread rolls for breakfast on Sunday morning.

My sister and her husband joined us on Sunday for a roast beef lunch and we spent the rest of the day lounging around chatting.  Alex’s partner Mike celebrated his 30th birthday so there was even more cake following two from the day before – one for Steph and one for my father since they share a birthday.  By the end of the day we decided we’d definitely eaten too much beef!

There were lots of birds around the feeder in the afternoon as well as one really persistent blue tit that spent most of the day fluttering up and down the window before landing on a twig in the planter outside, walking to the top of the twig, flying away and coming back again within a few seconds.  I’m pretty sure it’s looking for insects against the glass, but this has been going on for weeks now and starts as soon as the sun comes up.  Consequently I’m woken every morning by the sound of a small feathery body hitting glass!  I took a few photos through the window of both the blue tit and a rare sight in our garden, a woodpecker who’d come down for the peanuts.

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Well, What Do You Think About The Weather Then?

Personally, I’ve had more than enough of it!  We have maize in the field waiting to be cut and hopefully we’ll be able to salvage that before it’s had it.  It didn’t have the best of starts to be honest and grew in an interesting shade of yellow due to the excessive rain.  At the beginning of last year we were despairing about whether the 2011 crop would even germinate and this year we’re worrying that it’ll drown.  Gordon still talks optimistically about a second-cut of silage, but I can’t see that happening either.

We had to have Tiger put down last week and are still missing him a great deal.  Thomas especially keeps looking for him beside the Aga, but he’d reached the stage where there was no way he was ever going to improve.  I think he might have had something like leukaemia.  Since Gordon and I are both fairly wimpy when it comes to having animals euthanised, Daniel volunteered to take him to the vets for us and I was fine with that – until he brought him back afterwards.  I’d kind of resolved to be hard-hearted about the whole thing – after all, it was for the best – but I was under the impression the vet would keep him there.  Apparently they charge for that so Dan brought him home again.

Gordon had a birthday this weekend and both the girls came home for a few days for the occasion.  They bought him a little remote-control helicopter and a blu-ray disk.  He’s played with the helicopter a lot already and had to recharge the very small battery about ten times.  I bought him a pocket camcorder – dangerous really since it just fuels his paranoia!  He’s now talking about hiding it in his pocket and filming people when they’re talking to him.  As we often say here – “just because he’s paranoid doesn’t mean he’s wrong” even though he occasionally is.  It keeps him occupied, bless him.

I’ve been playing with my new camera and taken some very long-distance stuff as well as trying out the macro.  So far it’s an impressive camera.

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Since I’ve Been Gone

Sunday 9 September 2012

I’d like to say I gave myself a ‘summer break’ from the old blogging thing, but truth is I’ve been either too busy, too lazy or too completely apathetic to get around to it.  However, today I’m feeling a little more enthusiastic so here goes (warning: could be a photo-heavy post!).

The girls came home with their respective partners shortly after my last blog entry and we went on the West Somerset Railway to Blue Anchor, then on from there in a coach to Chapel Cleeve Manor for the ghost tour.  Although the girls have been on the train before they were obviously too young to remember and spent most of the previous journey asking whether we were there yet.  This time they found it much more exciting; we trailed up and down the train comparing the various carriages, most of which are different, until we came to what Steph called ‘the Harry Potter section’.  I think this carriage would have originally been a first-class car and had compartments with doors.  The seats were extremely squishy but we had it to ourselves and their excitement was contagious so it felt like a proper adventure.

This is Stephanie and her partner Carl in the first choice of seats before we decided to move around the train.

And this is Alex and Mike who were sitting opposite Steph and Carl – they took photos of each other!

Blue Anchor station.

Alex got told off for sitting here “in case a train came along”.  “Without me noticing?” she asked.  “Well, they do move quite quickly” the Station Master said, despite all evidence to the contrary and the fact that the line was long, straight and you could see for about half a mile in either direction!

At Blue Anchor we waited until greeted by our guide in a long, black sweeping Victorian coat which he wore with flair despite the fact that it was really warm, who escorted us to our coach.  There were six of us and four other people on the tour and we were taken to the house.  As ghost tours go it wasn’t very scary – in fact it was quite hammy – but the little bit of the house we saw was interesting.

This is the ‘ghost’ of a bride who drowned herself in the pond after being told her fiance was killed in the war.  I wonder if the actress realised that whilst she was dancing around in front of the large window, her dress was almost transparent?

The following day we were going to go to Hestercombe House to look around the gardens, but the rain was pretty heavy so we decided somewhere indoors might be better.  This is Tyntesfield House near Bristol, a National Trust property.

By early afternoon the rain had stopped so we were able to look around the gardens.

The bees were out in force.

Once the girls had returned to Cheltenham life got fairly boring!  I’ve made several things – runner bean chutney from a recipe on the internet, mozzarella cheese (which actually tasted like mozzarella cheese, much to my surprise), and a large selection of birthday cards.

Gordon and I were invited to view a canal a friend had worked out during the early part of the year so we went to Chepstow, walked the canal, had some lunch then came home.  On the way along the canal bank I found some excellent fossils that had obviously been turfed up when they were clearing sludge from the waterways.  My friend told me one is called a devil’s toenail and the other is a small ammonite on top of a piece of a larger one.  I’ll photograph them soon to show you.

Part of a series of locks still waiting to be cleared.

My shadow on the opposite wall of a lock.  Looks harmless, but there was a drop of about twenty feet directly in front of me.

On Friday this week I went with friends to Clevedon to see the Waverley come in at the pier.  Even though I live fairly close I don’t think I’ve ever been to Clevedon and I’m told the Waverley is the only sea-going paddle-steamer left in the world.

It was quite impressive tying up alongside the pier at high tide.

Once the passengers were on board it set off and I was surprised how quickly it was going.

We walked along the seafront, had lunch and were still there to see the Waverley return in the afternoon from Wales.

This week Gordon and Daniel have been busy haymaking – just in time judging from the weather conditions outside now.  We’ve had a week of fairly dry weather and now the rain’s returned.  Luckily most of it is safely stacked in the barn.

 

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Nope – Still No Silage

Tuesday 24 July 2011

Despite the beautiful weather of the last few days, our ground remains underwater and so the silage is still unmade.  There are tales of woe from all directions: silage fields that have rotted off at the bottom, ground underneath that’s slimy and waterlogged.  I suspect ours may be the same.  When Gordon walked out to inspect the first field yesterday he came back to report that the majority of it still lay under four inches of water.  A lot of our fields have ‘gutters’, a remnant of older farming days before mole-drainage and more modern forms of water run-off, and at the moment they are more like ditches.  Dan is desperate to make a start but I think that even if we did we’d be stopping again fairly soon.  A tractor pulling a silage trailer of cut grass can be pretty heavy and the grounds aren’t up to it yet.  So we continue to wait.

In the meantime my father and his partner have moved into a small bungalow in a retirement community.  Considering that he’d lived in his previous three-bedroomed, semi-detached house since 1960 there was a lot of stuff that had to go.  Sadly the photographs were amongst the discarded, but they’ve come to live with me until I can scan them on to the computer.  Although this sounds straightforward, my mother was an avid photographer and before the invention of digital cameras this meant a lot of paper.  My grandfather too took hundreds of photos, mostly in black and white since he developed them himself in the converted garden shed.  I can still remember the smell of the shed and the fact that as children we weren’t allowed to so much as sneeze in there!  When we were moving things and cleaning I brought home eight large suitcases full of photographs and many boxfuls of albums so it might take quite a while!  With any luck I’ll get it done before I die and leave it all to my own children!  Alex would have it in the bin straight away and she probably has a point, but once they’re scanned in the paper versions can go whilst the digital versions can be burned to a disk.

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We Went To The Seaside Again!

Saturday 30 June 2012

Yesterday after breakfast and after Gordon had peered gloomily at the rain he suggested an outing!  Yes!  Another one!  This time he thought we should go to Minehead on the West Somerset Railway from Bishops Lydeard so that’s what we did.  It rained and was cold, but we sat like an elderly couple on the seafront eating our fish and chips (becoming a habit) and discussing things for an hour or so until it was time to return.

The steam train was great.  I’m not a train enthusiast by any means, but there’s something about a steam train chuff-chuff-chuffing along the track beside the sea and past fields.  We didn’t have a cream tea from the buffet car as we’d already eaten fish and chips but it was still an enjoyable day out.

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We Went To The Seaside

Friday 15 June 2012

Stephanie came home last week in preparation for silage-making.  She’s finished her uni work for this academic year and was kicking around whilst her friends had either gone home or were working.  It was raining when she came home and continued to do so for the majority of her visit, so she went back again to wait until we really need her.  The silage-making is, in the meantime, on hold.  The ground is waterlogged to such an extent that even the cows are struggling to walk across it so the prospect of driving tractors over it looks bleak.  To add insult to injury, the forecasters are gleefully telling us the horrible weather is set to continue for the rest of the month, but I’m sure it will eventually stop raining long enough for the ground to dry.  The delay has given Gordon plenty of time to get the machines ready to roll so we wait.

I’m not sure whether I’ve mentioned this before (I could look back, but probably won’t!) but since Gordon has given up smoking (last July and still counting) he’s got a bit ….. well, odd!  He’s taken over the cooking for a start, something I did for the first twenty-four years of our marriage.  Not only has he taken up cooking, but he’s inviting people round and cooking for them.  The other day whilst I was out lunching he took it upon himself to do the weekly shop!  The weekly shop, for goodness sake.  Now he’s suggesting outings.  Day-time outings for no good reason.  Never one to look a gift-horse in the mouth, I’m just going along with the whole thing and enjoying spending a little bit of extra time with him, even though I’m a bit perturbed by this whole new person.  I’m beginning to wonder if he’s mentally winding down in preparation for giving up the whole farming thing, but time will tell.

Subsequently, on Tuesday we went to Lyme Regis.  I thought it was only a year or so ago that we went there for a walk along the Cobb, but when I looked back at my photos it was in 2007 so another visit was overdue.  It was his suggestion and the reason for it?  He “wanted to eat fish and chips on the seafront”!  We helped out with the morning milking then set off in the rain.  It took an hour or so to get there and was pretty cold initially, but we walked along the Cobb, looked at the boats and even spoke to a couple of fishermen before coming back to find fish and chips.

This is Gordon’s idea of funny!  The Cobb is narrow, high and sloping and I asked him to stand on the end so I could take a photograph.  He stood on the very end with his heels overhanging, grinning at me like a loon whilst I worried he was going to drop on to the rocks.  It doesn’t look high, but it’s a good twenty feet down!

This has to be the biggest plug I’ve seen – plug for what though?  Whatever it was, it hasn’t been used for a while judging from the rust.

I don’t actually like seagulls ‘in the flesh’ but still think they’re impressive looking birds.  These two were very noisy.

Almost a dance!

As usual, I’m fascinated by texture.  This rope looked like it was tied up to the remains of an old cannon!

It was still too cold to go paddling and these pebbles were pretty uncomfortable to walk over as well as constantly shifting.

We bought fish and chips from a kiosk that was advertising the fact they’d been mentioned in The Times, and once we got the meal we could see why!  The fish was very fresh, came with two sachets of tartar sauce and a quarter of lemon whereas the chips were crunchy and cooked to perfection.  By then the rain had stopped so we did get to sit looking at the sea whilst we munched our way though them.  Neither of us could finish the whole meal.

On the way home we saw a sign for the Lyme Bay Winery so followed that down a country lane until we got there.  Gordon did a little ‘sampling’ and we came away with four bottles of speciality wine as well as some cider called Jack Ratt.

Last night he took me out for tea and now he’s hankering to have cream tea on a steam train!  Odd indeed.

Yesterday a cow called Grace had twin heifers, so that’s good news although she’s only feeding one.  We’ve taken over the feeding of the other one with the teat bucket.  She had a heifer last year too on 27 July so in under a year has brought the number of Graces in our herd up from one to four!  Our current heifer count is twenty-five which outweighs the number of bulls born by quite a few.

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Long Weekend

Tuesday 5 June 2012

Daniel is away on holiday and has been since last Wednesday, so all we’ve really done is work.  We’ve watched a little of the jubilee celebrations on the tv, but it’s gone on until late into the evening and we’re in bed early!  They were lighting a beacon on the top of our nearby hill, visible from my kitchen window but I forgot all about it and was in bed by ten so missed that.  I’m glad the weather was good yesterday: shame about the rain today.

When it was warm yesterday I walked out to fetch the cows with my camera, stopping by way of the garden first because Gordon said he’d seen a woodpecker.  I couldn’t find it to photograph, but did notice my foxgloves are out in force.  The seeds were ‘Apricot Beauty’, but the flowers say otherwise.  Of the eight or so I planted in the garden, only one is vaguely apricot-coloured and the rest are either deep pink or cream.  Never mind, they make a good show.

On Friday I made the trip to Minehead to visit my friend Julie of KC’s Court.  We went out to lunch (thank you Julie) and then to her local garden centre where I bought some lovely herbs.  I’m gradually allowing herbs to take over my garden but decided to pot these up for now until they get bigger.  The first night the basil was attacked by visiting snails so the following day I put slug pellets around them.

They are two types of thyme (at the front) a tricolour sage, applemint, basil and sweet woodruff in the centre.

The cows were reluctant to walk in as there was plenty of grass, but they were also quite thirsty.

The photo below amused me simply because this cow was happily grazing on stinging nettles.  You’d have thought they would have stung her tongue, but she was totally unconcerned.

Today when I walked out for the cows I put on my waterproof trousers and coat as the weather was completely different and the cows came in quickly.

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Camera Repair

Sunday 27 May 2012

Since we went to Wales last year I’ve had a problem with my bestest camera.  I assumed it was a grain of sand which had somehow worked its way inside and was showing on each photo.  Most of the time it wasn’t particularly visible, but when the background was completely blank such as painted wall or the sky it meant I had to retouch the photo.  I rang Sony and they told me their nearest store was in Cheltenham and they would be prepared to have a look at it for me so the last time we visited the girls I took it.  The guy in the shop was quite patronising, advising me that changing my lens on the beach was a bad idea, even though I’d already told him no such thing had happened.  He assured me this was the only way anything could get inside but when I asked if they could fix it, he immediately declined and suggested I took it to my nearest London Camera Exchage, which as it turns out is a whole lot closer than Cheltenham.

On Thursday, when the weather was so glorious for the first time in a while we went for a walk around the farm in the evening then sat in the garden until it was dark.  My camera came too of course, as it tends to, especially since the blue tits are back in our wall above the patio door.  Even though we were there for ages, it was very tricky to actually catch them going in and out so this is the best one I was able to take.

We sat under the eucalyptus tree in the garden.  It’s a nice tree but constantly peeling bark and dropping leaves.

Just before we went in I took a picture of the moon where the spot on the camera is quite obvious.

The following day (after viewing the photos) Gordon and I took it to Taunton to be mended.  The man in the London Camera Exchange was a lot more helpful and suggested that rather than sand, it looked like pollen.  Once he said that it made perfect sense as originally the spot on my photos was a black dot which has gradually altered over time to become a bigger circle.  He said it will take about a week to fix unless they’re not able to do it there, in which case they’ll send it away.

In the meantime I keep getting the sensation that I’ve lost something!  Isn’t it weird how we come to rely on things like cameras?

This is a cropped photo of the moon with the offending mark removed.

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Catch Up

Monday 21 May 2012

As you can see, whilst drinking our tea yesterday morning, Alex started investigating my new phone and its interesting apps, and before I knew it she’d published a post on my blog.  She’s gone back to Cheltenham again now as she’s back to work tomorrow, so for the timebeing I shall be writing my own again.

She was only able to visit for a whole day plus the end of Saturday and the beginning of today.  It was nice to see her though.

Last week Steph came home for a slightly longer period as she’s in the middle of revising for her last exam of the year and is finding the constant noise in Cheltenham too distracting.  You can tell she’s a country girl!  The thing she finds the worst is the noise of people shouting, and in some cases arguing in the surrounding houses.  By the time she went back she was totally chilled.

I’ve been crafting, gardening and even (surprise, surprise) baking.  Strangely enough I’ve started to enjoy doing that again.

My sister and I went to the walled garden in Cannington today.  We’ve lived near all our lives but never been there.  An app on the phone threw it at me this morning as a ‘local attraction’ so we made the trip partly fuelled with the knowledge that there was a tea room there too.  Once we arrived we had lunch then spend a pleasant hour or so mooching around the garden in the sunshine.  It’s been a while since there were flower photos here and it’s about time to remedy that.

The garden was themed into colours.

The smell in this greenhouse was beautiful, like parma violets.

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Muddling Along

Wednesday 11 April 2012

As you may remember, Gordon is a member of the local parish council and much to his delight (not!) was appointed councillor in charge of footpaths and bridleways.  If you know any farmers you may be aware they don’t really like people walking around on their land since ‘the general public’ tend to leave gates open, drop litter, allow their dogs to poop wherever they like (and not pick it up since it is the countryside), and generally flatten crops by walking over them – and yes, grass is a crop too!

Since the end of the financial year has arrived and reports need to be written he suggested we should walk the local paths so he had an idea of their condition.  We set out for “a short walk” at 1.00 pm on Monday, him with a map and a large pair of clippers for clearing away brambles and me with a camera.  I thought we should perhaps take food and drink, but he reckoned we’d only be gone for forty-five minutes or so and it wouldn’t be necessary.  Two and a half hours later we were still walking, but by now I was hungry, thirsty and desperately needed the loo.  He helpfully pointed at the nearest bush and assured me he would tell me if anyone was around, but I still couldn’t bring myself to go.  He was fine, having no such modesty!

Having said all of that, I really quite enjoyed the afternoon and saw all kinds of animals, wild and domestic, as well as trees in bud and signs of spring all over the place.  I slept well that night, I can tell you!

Man on a mission!

We disturbed these two who made a bolt for the hedge.

Just tidying up the stile so it’s passable again rather than overgrown.

Confused mayflowers, coming out in April.

We went through a farmyard with ‘guard chickens’.

This pair looked like twins and were the only black sheep in the field!

The chestnut trees were in bud.

Proof that the sheep have been squeezing under the fences.

A slightly surreal Spanish moment until we realised she was female.  Doesn’t mean you can trust her though especially since there were calves in the field!

I liked the markings on these lambs, but don’t know a great deal about sheep.  Are they Jacobs sheep?

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