Pimms on the lawn!

The mystery object is the little piece of metal under the
beam by the way!

First of all, here's a mystery object for you to identify - we bought it off a blacksmith at the craft fair in Oswestry where we had a stall - less said about that the better as we didn't even take enough to cover the cost of tea and cake for one!.  The following weekend we had a two day show in Ludlow which was supposed to be a prestigious one run by the Shropshire Guild of Designer Craftsmen (of which Bob is a member).  It was a nice looking show with really good quality stalls and no tat, but again not much happened from our point of view and it was all a bit demoralising.  Seem to do better standing outside on a market stall in the weather!

I went up to Scotland during my week off to collect Laura who has now finished her stint as a Buddhist nun.  She is staying here until the end of the month and is then off to Edinburgh with all sorts of possibilities in the pipeline which is all quite exciting (if a little scary I should think).  Her hair has grown a bit and she has sorted out all her clothes - when we stopped at the service station on the way home she said how strange it was not to be stared at!

So, look what we've been up to!

For the last few years we have had a soil mountain outside the
kitchen.  It was free from the chap who came with his digger to
tidy up around the extension for us.  He was working on another
job and had to get rid of some topsoil and thought of us!  Brill!

We decided it was finally time to do something about this eyesore
and so we put down some gravel boards and . . . .

. . . . with Laura's help we started weeding it and breaking
it up . . . .  

. . . and spreading it out and levelling it . . . . 

. . . . and then moving the remaining mountain (there was quite
a lot of soil there!).  Laura couldn't sleep that night because her
arms ached so much!

And so instead of a weedy mountain to look at, we had a lovely,
clean Gardener's World-type patch of soil - all fine tilth and everything! This has never been known here (well not since we've been here).  It
was quite a novelty for the chickens.  Now, you can guess what's
coming next . . .

Yep - we're making a lawn!

Darn, we were just a tiny bit short - how annoying.

Luckily though we were able to pick up another couple of
pieces and finish the job!

Oh, how strange it seems to have a real, live lawn!  We spent about an hour after we'd finished just looking at it from different vantage points and giggling.  We'll be sitting out drinking Pimms on the lawn before you know it!  Just need to keep watering it and stop the chickens scratching it up.

While we were gazing lovingly at our lawn, Bob got 'buzzed' by a sparrow hawk - it flew at great speed just a few inches from his head - so close that he felt it rather than saw it and didn't realise what it was until he turned to see it flying off and over the quarry.  While we were laying the lawn yesterday there was a cuckoo calling in the woods across the lane.  It was there for most of the day.  Apparently they are really struggling at the moment and are quite rare.  You know I have real mixed feelings - everyone gets so excited at the sound of a cuckoo (indeed it was the talk of the pub last night) and as an iconic sound of the British Spring I'm with them there, but cuckoos are actually really horrible birds when you think about it.  Now, a much cuter bird is the wren and we have them nesting under the eves of Bob's workshop.  In past years they nested in the old wriggly tin barn (which Bob's workshop has replaced) and we wasted hours watching the babies fledge.  So Bob made a little platform for them under the eves and, because we didn't know which way they'd like their nest to face, he put an upright piece of wood in the middle so they could choose which side to build.  Guess what?  They've built a nest each side - so we have semi-detached wren's nests!  I don't suppose they'll both get used, but it'd be nice if they do use one.

Oh, nearly forgot - this is what the mystery piece of metal is for:

CHEERS!!