The caravan's on the fire!

Yes, as you do, we've put the caravan on the fire  . . . . well, doesn't everyone do that?  Over the last few days Bob has worked hard sorting out all the rubbish generated by Friday's mass destruction - I've been working every day unfortunately.  First he had to clean up the aluminium from the walls and roof and take out all the screws and staples (of which there were millions).  The scrap man will only take it if it's clean.  Then he ripped the walls apart - taking the hardboard off the struts.  We can saw up the struts for kindling - tonnes of it!  The rest will make a good bonfire before too long.  Next was the carpet (which has got well and truly sodden with all the rain of the last few days) and the lino that was under that.  Today I haven't been at work so we took the plywood floor up.  We've cut some of that up to make new sides and floor for the trailer and the rest we took to the tip - they're getting to know us there now after so many trips over the last week and we had quite a chat with them today.  Last thing was to take out the wooden struts under the floor and those we sawed into short lengths for fire wood.  We've run out of logs that are dry enough to burn because we didn't really expect to still be having fires in July!  This wood is nice and dry having seasoned under the caravan for about 30 years and it burns really well.  So, all we have left is a neat pile of aluminium, a bonfire pile, tonnes of potential kindling and the chassis.  The scrap man from the next village said he'd come round and cut that up for us and take it away along with the aluminium and we should get a bit of cash for it.

So, this is our very own scrap yard.  Can you see the green
thing sticking up from the end of the chassis?  That's the bird
table Dad made us with an upturned mixing bowl painted green
to stop squirrels climbing up onto it.  Looks funny with just that
left, but even that's gone now.

Here you can see just a bit of the kindling wood.  I've already
cut up the wood from the internal walls into two tightly packed
sacks and there's much more here to do!  We'll have
to have a log store just for kindling.  Still, 'waste not want not' and
you can never have enough kindling.  Other people have Kindles, we
have kindling . . . . . and books!

We really have had a lot of rain over the last few days (though not as horrendous as some people, so I'm not complaining), but it has meant that the oak barrel water butt has filled up and the overflow system well and truly tested - and it works beautifully.  The sweet peas we planted round the door seem to have enjoyed the rain and they are now at least a foot higher than they are in this picture which I took a week ago - you can almost see them growing.  I've picked my first little bunch - I just love sweet peas.

The quarry have now moved their operations back to our end which means it is a bit noisier, but also means we get a better view of what they're doing and it's quite interesting trying to work out what they are up to.  It also means we can provide entertainment for visitors as we did for Carol and Graham on Friday when we arrranged a blast specially for them!  This is what you can see from our garden when they blast at the moment.  We didn't really arrange the blast for Friday by the way, we don't have that much influence on the quarry!

We are still feeding the birds (feeling sorry for them in this horrid weather I suppose).  It does mean that the jays are getting much tamer than they were.  When we were in the caravan a jay would come to the bird table for just a couple of weeks and sometimes land on the peanut feeder, but only while it's chicks were in the nest and needing constant feeding and then it would revert to being very shy and staying in the woods across the lane.  We now have them in the garden almost constantly and for the last couple of days there have been four of them there nearly all the time.  There's either three kiddies and one parent or two parents and two babies, not sure which.  There may even be more of them, but we've definitely seen four at once quite a lot.  It's really nice to see so much of them as they're usually so shy, but I do wish they'd learn to sing nicely - they have a horrible raspy squawk.  One of them left a little bright blue feather on the ground for us which was very kind and I have stuck it in the oak beam above the kitchen window.  Last weekend we went round to the rocks to see if we could spot the peregrine and, sure enough, there it was sat on exactly the same ledge as when Ben took his photo.  After a while we could hear another one call to it and then it flew off and we watched the two of them cirlcling around before they landed on a jutting out corner at the top of the cliff.  We walked along and could see one of them standing on the top before it turned and walked away from the edge - could this be where the nest is?  I don't imagine they do much walking except around the nest site.  We then walked a bit further on to see if we could see it from the other side of the jutting out bit and there was one just standing there, but it looked as though it had a teddy bear outfit on because it was browner and fluffy.  It was a baby!  It was quite happily standing there having a bit of a preen and looking out at the world and we could see it with our naked eye instead of through RSPB telescopes as we have in other places.  Just amazing!  AND  the ground was absolutely covered in wild orchids - thousands of them.  We had one of those odd moments where we just looked at each other and said 'Do you realise how lucky we are to live here'.  Now that sounds corny, but  . . .baby peregrines and wild orchids just around the corner - what can we say!