Sunny.

It's been a lovely sunny day making this the 5th summery day of August. First thing this morning the BT men came to sort out the pipe that carries a telephone wire across the stream. The initial survey and plan to do the work was over 2 years ago. I hadn't expected it to happen straight away and eventually I kind of forgot about it and so did they. Then the surveyor whom we know, made a social visit in the spring and was most surprised that the work hadn't been done. I've been phoning every week or so since May and at last they turned up. However they hadn't known the pipe was steel (?) and didn't have the right tools. Now I have to wait for a contractor to come and do the work. That pipe has been trapping sticks and caused the stream bed to be raised by a good 12-18" so I shall be glad when it's gone. When they left I painted the final coat of gloss paint on the wood in the porch. I'm almost tempted not to put the hooks in the wood as the walls look much better bare. After that I sawed up the wooden pallet, all by hand, and stacked the dry boards by the woodburner. I also brought in the rest of the small logs from the wood shed. We don't have much wood this year but we might as well use what we've got.

My afternoon was spent working up in the chicken's run sawing down big branches that were overhanging my washing lines. The flies found me quite quickly so my bee keeper's net which arrived the other day came in handy. It was hot work but satisfying to chop down so many branches. The final job of the day was to drive the rubbish up to the road for tomorrow's collection.

I stopped halfway down the drive and climbed a big mound of  soil/old straw to take these pictures for Mary.

 Indicott.

 Holwell.

 Wigmore Farm.