A Day Spent Looking At Photos.

It's has been very autumnal today. We've had about 8mm of rain most of it in one heavy shower early this morning. The rest of the day has been very windy with some sunshine and lots of short heavy showers. We had to go into town first thing in the morning and I was able to find some spiral bound scrap books in the cut price shop. They are very nice with board covers and black pages. I bought the 5 they had on the shelf as I want to continue having separate albums for each of the boys as well as for other topics. In fact I like the new albums so much I will try and buy more, (if they have them), to transfer all my photos from the big scrap books I originally put them in. For the rest of the day I sorted out all the negatives which luckily were mainly already dated and then throwing away all the double and dud photos I was storing. Now that I have gone digital I will still print out some pictures for the albums as I get so much pleasure seeing how much the boys/friends/ pets/ the garden, have changed over the years. Every time the boys came into the kitchen they were called over to reminisce over another set of photos. On our way back from town we came across a buzzard sitting on the fence. It kept flying to a new spot down the fence before the camera would focus so I settled for some long distance shots.

Linas and Romas cooked up a hearty spaghetti bolognaise for supper so I went up the hill for a walk afterwards. It is so good that we can walk straight into the countryside though of course I'm never satisfied and long to be able to walk by the sea or on the moors rather than through the fields. I blame it on my early childhood where the sea was five minutes from our front door.

A Dragonfly Day.

It's been quite warm today. Mainly overcast in the morning but with a few very hot sunny spells in the afternoon. I've spent a lot of time working outdoors alternating weeding with chopping up those branches. The buddleias have been covered with butterflies and bees making up for yesterday's damp conditions which stopped them from flying.

There have also been a lot of dragonflies around. I counted at least 3 species though the golden-ringed dragonfly didn't stop long enough for me to get a picture.

The stones in the scree garden hold a lot of warmth and I often see butterflies and other insects resting on them. This one might be a female black-lined skimmer.

A male Ruddy Darter, what a name.

One of my holiday jobs is to go through all my packets of photos and negatives from my 35mm camera and transfer them onto the pc. First I had to go through my 20 albums reliving all those memories, (the boys were so sweet when they were little), and tomorrow I can start putting dates to the negatives because that was something I didn't do on the actual packets. Once that is done I have a little gizmo that scans negatives. I might even bring myself to dispose of the photos that didn't make it into the albums or were doubles. I also need to get some more spiral bound scrap books which I like to use as photo albums so that I can put in the last few years of 35mm photos.

An Ordinary Tuesday.

It has been warm and dry but overcast today. I had to take Linas into town and fitted in a visit to the bank and the post office. All the local village post offices have closed down and you have to go to the main Post Office which often has a queue of 20+ people. Today there were only 6 people in front of me so that wasn't too bad. We also dropped of a load of stuff at one of the charity shops. I started doing some weeding in the garden until I discovered that although the boys had cleared some big overhanging branches from the chickens' run they had simply dumped them on my neighbour's land. So I've had to start sawing up the branches so that they are not such a mess and can be discretely burnt before my neighbour gets upset about me using his land. The various crocosmia in the garden are giving lots of cheery colour in the garden. Especially good on these dismal grey days.

As soon as the morning damp had cleared out came the butterflies and bees. This Small Tortoiseshell was warming itself on a rock in the scree garden.

Garden Visitors.

We had a visitor in our garden last night. Linas spotted this Red Deer hind just 20 ft from the conservatory. I went out quietly with my camera and even though the deer moved up near the pond it stayed there quite calmly.

The light was quite low so the pictures didn't come out that well even though I took lots.It was even relaxed enough to eat though it did keep its eyes on me. Look at those big white ears.

Eventually I tried creeping nearer to it and it ran off up the valley along the little stream. It is all farm land around here with the nearest woods a few miles away but we do see deer occasionally.

We had some rain this morning but it cleared up by lunchtime. Romas and I managed to saw up a metal bedframe and then packed my little car full of stuff for the dump. I felt bad about throwing out a perfectly good tv but I've offered it on freecycle and to Vytas but nobody wants it and it has just been moved from one bedroom to another taking up space.

Before it goes over I had to show this giant surfinia flower in one of my hanging baskets. It is easily twice the size of any of the other flowers. I wonder if the other buds on that branch will also produce such big flowers.

I found this moth, The Lackey, caught outside in some cobweb on one of the windows. I found one of these flying around my pc the other day but the photos were blurry.It was very mild this evening so I went for a stroll up the hill. There were 3 buzzards in the ponies' field. They have been hanging around the valley for the last week calling away and I wonder if they are youngsters who have been turfed out of their nest.
The sky was quite pretty in shades of pink and blue but the air was heavy with the smell of slurry as the farmer had been out muck spreading the silage fields.

Goodbye To Friends And Family.

The house is very quiet, (apart from the distant sound of drumming from Romas' room), as all our guests have now left to head north up the M5 away from rainy Devon. As I always do I took photos of the youngsters just before they left. I have done this at the end of every visit and I thought it would be fun to show how they have grown over the years.

2009

Linas, Kate, Vytas, Alex & Romas.

2007

2006

1999

Vytas, Rachel, Alex with Milo, Linas,

Romas & Zulu.

1998

1996

Alex with Smudge.

1995

Don't they all look sweet.

Now that Vytas has a reasonable sized place and his own transport I was finally able to get him to sort through his belongings and take away the things he wants to keep. I've also got a satisfyingly large pile of black bags ready to go to the dump as well as some stuff for the charity shop. All the 40K scenery and bits in the conservatory have also been cleared, hooray ! And now that there is more room in the study Peter is sorting through his stuff and I should be able to make some more trips to the dump. I've got 2 weeks to go mad on a general de-clutter, that would be so good.

Big Dogs, Little Dogs.

Low clouds and rain for most of the day. I've been mainly pottering around in the kitchen, baking bread rolls and making a hearty soup for lunch which certainly filled everyone up. A group of us went into town in the afternoon and once we were down below the cloud level it was mostly dry but rather humid. The man in the antique shop wants to buy most of the stuff we showed him photos of though I don't expect he'll offer us very much. I'll be happy to clear the stuff out of the way as I can't see myself having time to finish stripping and restoring old chairs and other bits of furniture.

In town I saw this lovely Irish Wolfhound. He's called Henry and is only 3 years old.

We had a little fun with Milo at the kitchen table. He doesn't mind.

And here he is looking more dignified down at the beach yesterday.

Down on the beach there was lots of ooing and aahing over this 8 week old collie puppy called Bramble. The owners had only had her 1 day. They were trying to take her for a walk but kept having to stop so people could come and give her a cuddle. She was very good at collapsing in a heap and waving her legs in the air. ( When we went to the party last week one lady showed us pictures of her pet skunk which she had because she 'wanted something soft and fluffy to love'.)

An Afternoon At Putsborough.

It was a typical holiday morning, soft rain which kept us indoors. The rain stopped in the afternoon so we decided to head down to Putsborough Beach. Despite the overcast sky it was surprisingly warm. The Sam, Vytas, Kate B and Romas headed into the waves with bodyboards, (I can't go in because of my eyes, shame), but there wasn't any surf. Instead they all went running down to the other end of the beach and back , about 3 1/2 miles.

Kate and I guarded the encampment and looked after the flasks of tea. Milo dug lots of holes in the sand in his usual terrier like fashion. That's OK until the sand starts flying in your direction.

We've always preferred the Putsborough end of the beach as it is hardly developed. Just a few houses, car park, beach shop and the caravan site. I think it would be lovely to have a holiday there, long evening walks along the sea watching the sun go down and then waking in the morning with the sea lapping down below.

Looking right down the beach to the village of Woolacombe.

Linas went with Peter this morning to Exeter and then onto Plymouth by train to collect the last of his belongings before handing back his flat key. He is now officially living back at home.