Wet.

There were a couple of sunny spells first thing in the morning but for most of the day it has been raining. I busied myself with indoor jobs including  trying to deal with that pile of papers that lives on the kitchen table. I didn't quite manage to clear everything but it's been reduced to a few items which is a good start. As it's Peter's birthday tomorrow I made a batch of special flapjacks with sunflower seeds, mixed fruit and a chopped up bar of 70% dark chocolate. Naturally I had a taste when I cut it up into squares and it's not bad, if I say so myself.

With virtually no dry spells my only outside work was a bit of tidying up in the scree garden outbuilding and driving the rubbish up to the road. I stopped for a while to listen to a skylark which was singing away even in the rain. It had a main theme but every now and then it would throw in a bar of a new tune, repeat it a few times and then try something else.

One job that I had been putting off for a rainy day was to make some pj shorts out of 2 pairs of long pj's that I had bought for that purpose. It took me all afternoon to cut, pin, iron, try on and then re-pin until I was satisfied that they were the correct length and the same on both legs. That was a bit of a challenge for me as I'm not naturally good at things like sewing. Then I looked in 3 rooms before I found where I had moved my sewing machine to from its long time home in a kitchen cupboard. Sewing took minutes but I've left the machine on the kitchen table in case I think of something else I want to sew before I lug the heavy machine back upstairs.

Windy.

Red sky (or at least pink) last night correctly predicting a dry day today. It has been very windy with both sun and clouds giving spells of warmth.

Out in the garden I pulled up brambles, dug out bracken from under rocks and generally tidied up.  The last job of the day was to paint weed killer onto the undersides of the leaves of the rubus and some brambles that have grown right into the stone wall. With only 2 weeks to go it is hard to prioritise the garden jobs. Clearing out the weeds has got to be the main job though I need to clear some gutters and weed in between the paving slabs. I was going to try a home-made weed killer using vinegar and salt but then I had a brainwave that is even more eco-friendly (except to weeds) and costs me nothing - boiling water! It does the job pretty well especially where there are lots of tiny seedlings in the spaces between the slabs. 

The first of the buddlia are flowering so hopefully we will have lots of butterfly visitors. 

Sunny.

After Friday's rain it was good to have sunshine for our school Summer Fayre. I took these photos at the end of the event when a lot of people were in the hall for the drawing of the raffles and an auction of the prize winning cakes but for most of the time the playground and field were full of adults and children enjoying the various stalls and activities.

I arrived a bit before my time slot to help and had a long chat with a dad whose daughter spends a lot of time at the stables next door. I've known them for a while but I didn't realise that he is an architect at a local firm that specialises in Passivehaus (no heat loss) designs so we had a very interesting conversation.

I was assigned the hook-a-duck, or rather hook-a-Christmas pudding and the Splat-the Rat games for my hour and a half. Business was brisk as every one got a prize for the Hook-a-duck. One child hit the rat so enthusiastically that he split the plank of wood even with a plastic bat and I had to repair it by wrapping sellotape around it. The classroom behind is my Friday Reception class. Foolishly I had set up the classroom ready for Monday; chairs back at the tables, baskets of reading books set out etc. Most of the tables and chairs had been taken outside to use for the various stalls so the classroom was kind of re-arranged. I've sent the class teacher an email so that she allows herself time to sort it out on Monday. I brought home a couple of slices of baked blueberry cheesecake, mmm.

I stopped on the way home to take some pictures of the rose-bay-willow-herb growing along the road. I do like the old names for some of our native plants. This morning I was pulling up Speedwell and Herb Robert from the stone wall.

As I turned into our drive a buzzard was sitting on a fence post. The car was only coasting so I was able to pull up right next to it. My camera was in my lap but by the time I turned it on the buzzard had flown off. This morning while I was still in bed I watched a woodpecker pecking his way up the branch of one of the big trees. This place just abounds with nature.

Rain.

A typical British summer's day with light rain in the morning which worsened as the day went on so that by afternoon playtime it was far too wet to venture outside with the children. Right now, 6.30, the heavens have opened and I glad I made a check of the dam as I drove down into the garden. 

It was a shame about afternoon playtime as we had spent an hour singing and dancing in quite humid conditions and a bit of fresh air was sorely needed. Instead I found some YouTube clips from 'Frozen' for the children to watch. They were so sweet singing 'Let it go'. I was busy putting leaflets in the children's book bags and setting out the book bags for hometime while the teaching assistant did reading assessments. Our music and dancing to Shakira's La la la is coming along nicely though possibly with more enthusiasm than accuracy.

I do hope this rain clears up as we have the school's Summer Fayre tomorrow afternoon. 

Horrible news from France of a primary teacher fatally stabbed in front of her class of 5&6 year olds. Somebody saw it on their phone at lunchtime and it made us all go cold. 

Windy.

I've had a very nice day teaching the 'other' reception class (not my Friday class). Early on I got message to say that the teaching assistant wasn't coming in (tummy bug!) but no sooner had I scaled down the day's plan than a very experienced teaching assistant came to take her place so we ended up getting all the work done. The only slight problem was that we were looking at a good children's maths site with lots of relevant games but nearly all of them needed sound and unfortunately only 2 of the 5 children's pcs had headphones and the speaker for the main interactive whiteboard was so crackly it was impossible to hear anything. Not to mention the projector over heating every 5 mins. At least that problem was solved by taking out and cleaning the filter at playtime. I'm going to be doing the same activities with my Friday class but all the headphones are there and the main board has sound.

After work I went down to the Co-Op as I had run out of my Earl Grey tea and I picked up lots of 50 &75% reduced items as well; smoked salmon, cherry tomatoes, stuffed crust pizzas, cucumber and living salad to name a few. Our big freezer is packed full but once the summer holidays start I won't be going in to town at all.

It's been overcast all day but with a very warm wind blowing. Even after shopping I was able to spend an hour tidying up the London Pride that grows in the stone wall. It is colder up here in the hills and almost feels as if it is going to rain. 

Overnight Visitor.

I looked out of the window this morning and saw something had happened to the back lawn. There were a number of  brown marks on the grass. They were too small and irregular to be molehills so I wondered if they had been made by a squirrel, a bird or even a badger.

When I went out to look more closely I could see they were cloven hoof prints. Had a deer come out of the woodland ? But as they were bigger than a man's hand it would have had to be a very large deer. That's when I realised they were cow footprints and sure enough when I checked the wire fence at the bottom of the cows' field it had been broken down. There were no more prints or other signs of a cow in the garden so I rang Martin and told him about the broken fence. He was most apologetic about the damage to our lawn which wasn't that bad. He came down and spent most of the morning putting up a new fence so we shouldn't have any more bovine visitors.

It was a lovely sunny morning with a cooling breeze as I went out for my walk up the hill. This large, 8cms, Golden-ringed dragon fly was patrolling part of the road and settled long enough for me to take some photos.

I didn't have to go to school until 3.15 so I tackled another small project, filling in the trench in the outbuilding. Originally there was a concrete block and stone bar there which was one of the first things I took down but I had never got round to filling in the resulting hole. We had some sand and cement left over from building the chimney so I carefully counted the spade loads of cement into the wheelbarrow and then realised it was going to take an awful lot of sand to make up the correct ratio. The hardest part of the whole job was pushing that wheelbarrow up the drive and then up the steps to the scree garden. At that point I was thinking that I would have far too much concrete and was planning where I could use up the excess. But when I mixed it with water and began to fill in the trench I saw that even with using broken slabs there wasn't going to be enough concrete. Luckily there was another half bag of cement so I made up a slightly smaller load which nearly completed the job. At that point I had to clean up and go to school but when I returned I was able to scrape together enough sand and cement to finish off. There is a little bit at the front which needs doing but the main part of the job is done.

Sunny at Times.

I was at school for the whole day again. All good for the back balance. I was teaching my usual Year 2 class. Their teacher had suggested that they do maths activities in the morning while small groups were taken out to pose for photos for their Leavers' Assembly. Last year that teacher put together an excellent video/slide show with music featuring all the children that were leaving the school in the summer and she is doing the same this year. I got the children to design their own board games using all the different mathematical symbols and language they been using over the year. That was fun but got quite noisy at times. In the afternoon we had pe and went out on the field to play some games. The weather couldn't make up its mind and kept changing from overcast and mild to sunny and hot.

The Rambling Rector rose over the woodshed.

After work I wanted to drive across town to BJ's and Lidl's. There are a new set of roadworks on the main road and the traffic was horrendous. I sneaked round the back way through the industrial estate to get up on the bridge so my journey in was fairly easy. At one point I could see stationary traffic from one side of the bridge to the other (going in the opposite direction to me), all around the big 'Stones' roundabout and on the 3 approach roads for as far as I could see. At BJ's I got 2 of the 3 things I had planned, a pair of sturdy outdoor 'relaxer' chairs and a gas fueled lighter for the barbecue but I forgot to get a can of teak oil for the outdoor table and chairs. Having seen the state of the traffic coming back over the bridge I drove over the old bridge and swung around the other side of town. I got stuck in heavy traffic for 15 mins but once I got back to Pilton it was a clear run home. 

When I got home I popped around to the stables to pick up some parcels for Peter that had been delivered there. I got a bit nostalgic when I chatted to some ladies tacking up horses for their riding lesson but cheered up when Jack made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Would I like to see the new kittens? Yes, yes, yes was the answer to that. I didn't have my camera with me otherwise this post would have been filled with ultra-cute kitten pictures. They are at the stage of still having round blue eyes that make them look very surprised, especially the black kittens. There are 2 mainly tabby kittens and one is especially sweet with half its face light ginger. That's the one Jack thinks they'll keep. I would so love to have one of those kittens but it is going to be hard enough to decide what to do with the 4 cats we have when the time comes to move in a year or so.