The Birds (as in Alfred Hitchcock's horror film!)

Well, we didn't need to worry too much about watering the lawn!  We had a couple of days of watering it morning and evening and then nature took over and we have had soooo much rain!  Saved us a job I suppose (and undoubtedly did a much more thorough job of it), but we are a little fed up with it now.  After the statutory three weeks of not walking on the lawn, we couldn't walk on it anyway because it was so wet.  The grass was certainly lush and green . . . . and very long.  The chickens stopped walking on it too because it was longer than their legs and they got soaked every time they tried.  Eventually we had a night without rain and so I got on and cut it.  Because I didn't want to do too much tramping about on it, I did it very quickly and not very carefully and it ended up looking a real mess.  It reminded me of a little lad at one of the schools I worked at years ago whose dad decided to do a home job on his hair with the clippers, but the poor boy ended up looking like a badly shorn sheep with short bits and tufty bits.  Anyway, the lawn has now had its second cut and looks much neater.

 Elsewhere the garden is looking quite cottagey (basically, the geraniums have taken over - that's the more natural pink, blue and lilac ones rather than the bright red hanging basket types).  Laura and I had a good old weeding session on this border which makes it look much better.  So, now we need to sort out the bit between this and the lawn.  The plum and damson trees have absolutely loads of fruit on them (all little and green at the moment of course), so barring disasters it should be a good year.  The peas are growing well, we have loads of garlic, beans just shooting and tomato plants ready to go in the baskets against the sunny lounge wall.


We have had an incredibly busy time with visitors recently.  Laura went off to Edinburgh to start the next episode in her life just over a week ago, but during her last week Jan (Bob's stepmum) came to visit on the Monday, then on the Wednesday Mum and Dad came on their way back from the Lake District.  They stayed until Friday and then a couple of hours after they left, Carol and Graham came. 

In addition to Graham wanting to do a bit more to the rocking chair he's making, they came to do the annual hillwalk in the next village.  It is a lovely walk (although as it's name suggests, it's very up and downy), but this year it was very, very muddy.  We did the 10 mile walk (there is an option to add another 6 miles in the middle up a very steep hill) but as the weather was pretty rubbish we didn't do that.  Well, that's why the rest of them didn't do it, I just don't think I'm fit enough!  Next visitor is Ben who is arriving tomorrow for the weekend for a break between finishing the taught part of his Masters and getting on with all the lab work for his dissertation.

While Laura was here we had a bit of a project going - to knit lots of floppy rabbits.  She then took most of them to Samye Ling on her way to Edinburgh for ROKPA (the charity she worked for there) to sell at their summer teaparty.  They looked quite cute all huddled together.  For quite a while the lounge was a mess off various colours and sizes of rabbit parts.  Talking of rabbits, we've finally put the first length of rabbit wire in the garden, all along the hedge.  The rabbits can still get in (we have quite a lot more to do!), but it was funny the first couple of mornings to watch them trying to find their way out when we clapped our hands at them.  The chickens were a bit put out by it too!

So, to the birds.  As you know, I'm always going on about all the lovely birds we have around here, but I'm now ready to shoot these particular ones!  When we first moved here, the crow/rooky things all lived on the other side of the quarry which is fine by me as their 'song' is not the most melodious to say the least.  I think last year they started visiting this end occasionally which was still OK.  This last week or so though they have become a major nuisance.  They wake us at 4.30am with their version of the dawn chorus (which totally drowns out the nice tweety version).  Even worse, two of them have taken to pecking persistently at the windows.  Last year and the year before we had a solitary blackbird that used to do that.  These two crows come together though and make a really loud banging on the glass.  As we put string or mesh across one window, they moved to another until we now have stuff up at all the windows to try to deter them.  It really does remind me of that Alfred Hitchcock film as they are very big close-to and could easily be seen as quite menacing . . . prisoners in our own home, bullied by huge black birds  . . . . well, no it's not that bad, but we are both really tired and would love to sleep peacefully until 6am as we used to do!

All that said though, we do still have lots of lovely birds.  The Jay and the Woodpeckers have got very brave and happily come to the peanut feeder even if we are in the garden.  The other evening when Bob went out to say night-night to the chickens, there were two baby Tawny Owls just across the path from the door making very funny squeaky noises.  The grown up Tawny Owl has visited the garden quite a few evenings, sitting in the little Ash tree in perfect view from the lounge.  A few evenings ago, there was a lot of twittering just down the lane so I went to see what was going on and, after I'd stood very still and quiet for about 10 minutes, an ivy-covered tree exploded with baby Wrens.  They seemed to be everywhere flying around and landing haphazardly on anything that got in their way.  We have had baby Great Tits and Blue Tits on the peanuts and are now waiting for the Woodpeckers and Jays to introduce their offspring.