Welcome to family, friends and visitors. Here you will find interesting (hopefully) pictures of my part of the world, news of our household and probably, long ramblings about anything that catches my interest.

Wednesday 30 July 2014

Where There's A Will .....

Still windy with sunny spells but an increasing amount of cool moments too. It looks as if we are in for some rain soon. 
When the postman arrived today he must have thought I was bonkers when he saw me hoovering the raised flower bed at the side of the front patio. But this was my solution to all the leaves that had fallen due to the hot weather. My usual method of kneeling down to pick out the leaves makes my back ache at the best of times and I did think it would be a bit silly to try that. My next thought was the garden vac but that is bulky and heavy to use. Then I thought - Why not try the hoover, or rather my trusty Vax? Such an easy solution and I shall carry on doing this when the leaves are dry. Wet leaves probably still have to picked up by hand. 
This morning I heard an unusual bird cry outside. When I spotted the bird up in the tree I wasn't sure what it was. It was the size of a wood pigeon but with a large head, fluffy brown feathers and sitting upright like a parrot. It was only when a couple more similar birds and an adult joined it that I saw it was a young Greater Spotted Woodpecker. The adults are fairly frequent visitors to the bird feeder but I've never seen the juveniles before. Another new sight this evening was a hen pheasant followed by 3 small fluffy chicks. Pheasants are usually captive bred in pens and released into the countryside so that stupid rich men with guns can then shoot them. 
Apart from hoovering up leaves I've had a quiet day, did the usual jobs, got on with some knitting and made a batch of flapjacks for Peter. 

No comments: