Wild Orchids and dead weeds

Bob has finally been able to start making some furniture and has started a couple of chairs.  We had a good sort out of timber on Wednesday and have a few pieces we'd brought with us that were chair seat size, quite a few ready bent pieces for arms and bow backs and some legs and spindles.

So, here is one of them roughly knocked together.  This one is made out of Sycamore and the seat is especially nice because the timber has a ripple in it so when it is polished up it looks rippled like silk but is dead smooth to touch.  We are now waiting for the legs to dry out properly - they are the ones we put in the oven last week.  This week they have spent their evenings in front of the lounge woodburner to continue drying and I think they are just about there now. 

On Wednesday we went to the auction at Montgomery and it took us about 3 minutes to look round and decide that there really wasn't anything of interest.  There is a new antique shop in the town though so we went for a mooch in there and were looking closely at the couple of chairs they had.  I thought the poor chap was starting to think we might actually buy one and so had to stop him building his hopes by telling him Bob makes chairs.  He was really interested and asked if he would do repairs and took our number.  This morning he brought a chair round for repair!  That could be a useful contact as he has two shops and obviously deals in good quality pieces.

I worked pretty much full-time last week, so haven't really done much here, but I did finish knitted cushion number two.  This one has red flowers with tiny buttons for the middles.  Now I need to look at the other settee and decide what cushioning is required there.  Do you know, I was looking through the Guardian magazine at work last weekend and they showed a cushion which was made from Harris Tweed or something, but was absolutely plain and square, no decoration at all and would take about 7 minutes to make. It was about £345!!!  How can anyone get away with charging that much?  And who on earth buys them  . . . . . does anyone buy them?   I'm thinking it may be worth getting into you know!  Apart from cushioning, I did some pointing on the outside of the house on Friday.  At one point I was doing it in the rain . . . then blazing sun . . . . then a bitterly cold wind and so on.

This afternoon we went to see how the orchids are doing at the place where we saw Peregrines last year.  No sign of the Peregrines, but the orchids are lovely.

This is a Butterfly Orchid - we only saw about
three of these.

 

But there were loads of these which are very pretty
and quite tall this year.  All the wild plants seem to have
gone mad this year and we've had huge dandelions about
three feet tall with massive leaves, cowslips with loads and
loads of flowers on and likewise with the primroses.

 

These should be even more impressive in a week or so as
there are still lots ready to come out.

And so from the beautiful carpet of wild orchids to our sickly-looking garden.  That Roundup is good stuff you know, but it does look horrible at the moment.  We're telling everyone there's been a very bad drought just here!



 

The garden's not all bad though and the roses round the
kitchen door look lovely with loads of buds on.  The one this
side of the door is not quite so good due to its early pruning
by rabbits, but it has lots of buds too . . . just much lower down!

As well as roses, we have baby birds flourishing in the garden this week (apart from the baby Great Tit that flew into the lounge window this afternoon and is now having a 'little sleep').  If you stand still out there the trees are teeming with fluffy little birds darting all over the place, chirruping and tweeting and the poor parents are looking very bedraggled.  We had a Great Tit on the feeder that had a completely bald head - new species the Great Vulture Tit - it did look very funny.  You've got to feel sorry for them though, they have to work so hard just now I guess new feathers just aren't high on the list of priorities.