Joan's Place

More American Exposure!

2012-01-24T17:39:00.000Z

We've been featured on the Columbus Audubon website!

The Annual Christmas Card Bird List

2012-01-18T18:11:00.002Z

John's annual Christmas card bird count is getting more and more famous - he made it to the Audubon blog this year! http://magblog.audubon.org/chore-fun-go-birding-you-sort-your-holiday-cards. Now I don't have to publish it here!

Greetings!

2011-12-16T17:47:00.000Z

I am very conscious of the fact that it has been three years since we last wrote a Christmas Letter. Furthermore, if you received a Christmas card during this period, you were very lucky. Sorry for staying out of touch so long! You can blame it on me – I (Joan) have been quite depressed for many months, but now that I’m off the cancer treatment and back on my normal anti-depressants things are looking up. I know a lot of people are embarrassed to talk about mental illness, but it’s a fact of life for me and I’m just happy that it can be controlled by chemistry. So I’ll keep taking the pills and we’ll keep on smiling!

John is taking over with this letter, now:

So here goes - the news highlights from 2009, 2010 and 2011. If you already were aware of these momentous events, or if you actually took part in them, please accept my apologies. The situation is such that it's either a generic letter or nowt.

We remain in our little hollow in Shropshire, although there have been quite a few changes to Peel Wyke and its garden over the last three years. A new heating system back in 2009 brought with it the added expense of removing asbestos, which cost us a fortune to remove a 6" x 6" square of the stuff. Early this year we had a major revamp of the inside of the house when we had a kitchen renovation which involved knocking what had been my library through to the old kitchen and putting in new work surfaces, storage, appliances, lighting and floor. It looks wonderful and makes it easy for both of us to cook together without stabbing, flouring, sautéing or basting one another. To be honest, we don't do this too often as we have adopted a system whereby we take it in turns to cook. It is two months on and two months off, and "cooking" includes the washing up and the shopping, so the two months off is very restful. Anyway, the kitchen remodelling meant I lost the area where I stored by books and files so I took over what used to be the guest bedroom as a study, incorporating both my library and my study, and my old study became the new (smaller) guest quarters. At the same time, we had solar tubes put in to improve the light levels in a couple of places in the house and Joan had two new windows in her study/studio and we changed the paint scheme to up the level of illumination downstairs.

There have been changes in the garden of equal magnitude. We continue in our endeavour to garden in a fashion that sustains wildlife to the greatest extent possible as well as subscribing to the concept of "slow gardening". We don't fret about the fact that we are not going to win any Chelsea medals, nor do we beat ourselves up about keeping a "tidy" garden. The more mess, the more bugs and the more bugs, the more birds. Nevertheless, we have made some changes of note. We started by removing a fence between our property and the adjacent garden (which is a wooded hillside that the neighbours don't use at all) and planting a hedge of native species. The old fence was stacked to make a huge insect habitat and I even took a hedge laying course in late 2010, although it will be a long while before our hedge is ready to receive my ministrations at the rate it is growing. We removed some old ugly concrete paths, put in a path of pavers along the edge of the lawn and added more windy paths of wood chips and stones through the shrubs. I used the old concrete to build a "dry stone wall" along the edge of the stream - yet more habitat for invertebrates, reptiles and small mammals. Last year we replaced a section of lawn with a wildflower mini-meadow. The nurse crop did well this year but we have yet to see what the final result will be. At the same time, we had some folk in to weave a willow "nest" below a large tree in the back garden, which is cool and pleasant in the summer. Joan has hung up her hammock in there and, in summer, can lie there in the dark with badgers running and snuffling under her.

Finally, we have improved our wildlife pond. We already had a small pond between the house and the stream but we replaced this with a larger one this summer in the same place. This involved carefully moving all of the wildlife (newts, beetles etc) from the old one into a temporary pool while the new one was dug. It is fed by runoff from about half our roof and overflows through a causeway into a marsh garden, where we are planning to put some carnivorous plants and other wetland species next year. The runoff from the marsh goes into the stream. The pond has shelving edges for birds and mammals to get to the water and is lined with rocks to create lots of habitat for newts, insects and the like. Everything that we found in the old pond was reintroduced to the new one and we have had several interesting new insect species and have seen two species of dragonflies laying eggs in it just in the few months we have had it up and running. For the humans, it has a water feature to create a restful noise and a small deck for eating (and drinking) outside. We put a new door in our revamped kitchen to connect to the deck. Bliss!

If you are a Web user, you can find out more about our garden at the Peel Wyke blog, which has pictures of many of the things I have written about above. The address is http://peelwyke.wordpress.com/.

In 2009 we became boat owners (well, part-owners). We have enjoyed renting canal boats in the past and had always thought about buying one. As a compromise, we are now one of a syndicate of twelve owners of the "Longsdon", a 58 foot narrowboat that sleeps six at a pinch (although it is far more comfortable with four or two). After some initial difficulties with the management company the syndicate employed to take care of the day-to-day technical and administrative tasks going bust (as a result of fraud), things have now settled down and are running smoothly. Annually, we get at least three weeks cruising on the canals, two high season and one low season for our share, plus any other time the boat is not in use and has not been allocated. This is all run in a fair manner with priority choice lists that vary each year. My sister and her husband are also owners so we can collaborate to give us some flexibility in choosing cruising periods. The boat currently resides at Great Haywood marina (near Stafford), on the Trent and Mersey Canal, close to the junction with the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal, just 90 minutes drive from home. We have been on trips on "Longsdon" in various months of the year, including with guests from Canada and Australia, and it is always a splendid antidote to stress. The only exception was in 2009, when we elected to try mid-December. For those reading this who are not UK residents, the winters of 09-10 and 10-11 were extremely cold here. We were doing reasonably well at the start of the trip but were aware of the threat of a cold outbreak and were monitoring the weather forecasts closely. We had already turned around early to head back to the marina based on the forecast and had had some snow. On the morning of the 18th, after a night at a canalside pub on the Ashby Canal celebrating Joan's birthday, we awoke to find the canal frozen. We pushed on through the ice, which was relatively thin, and moored up that evening, hoping for a thaw but the following morning the ice was even thicker. Again, we tried to head towards the marina but it was not a pleasant experience. Not only was the helmsman (me) very cold but it was hard to make headway through the ice and occasionally icebreaker tactics were required (riding the bow up on the ice to break it). This is not good for the boat's undercoating and paintwork and sounds appalling inside a steel hull. The situation was finally clinched when we came round a corner to find a narrowboat that had slipped its moorings and was now frozen in across the canal, blocking our way. We moored up and abandoned ship, returning many days later during a brief warmer period to make a mad dash back to the marina. The picture was taken during our rescue trip. There was still a lot of ice on the canal and you can see if if you look carefully! All-in-all, though, we are very happy with our decision to buy 1/12th of a narrowboat.

The "Longsdon" blog is http://longsdon.blogspot.com/ if you want to see pictures.

Naturally, many of our holidays were taken on the canal but we have had a few more trips, the most exotic of which was to Costa Rica in March 2009. This was a birding trip primarily which was arranged by a few folk from Columbus Audubon which we were invited to join. It was a small group with a Costa Rican guide and driver. We started in the capital San José and then headed south into the Talamanca Mountains. We then returned through the capital and headed to Tarcoles on the Pacific coast and then north up the coast to the Gulf of Nicoya. We then headed west into the spine of mountains through the centre of the country to stay at a lodge by the active volcano of Arenal and then on into the Caribbean lowland rainforest at La Selva. Finally we made a boat trip to Tortuguero on the Caribbean coast and then back to San José to leave. We were in Costa Rica for about two weeks and saw 292 species of birds (not many by an average "twitchers" total but this was a relaxed trip) as well as lots of interesting reptiles, amphibians, mammals and insects. We very much enjoyed the country and would recommend it to anyone. The only other trip abroad was my trip to Montreal in late 2009 to attend the workshop of the EPiCC (Environmental Prediction in Canadian Cities) project. Since that was a business trip, and close to Christmas, it was short and sweet.

Within the UK, we visited the Peak District in 2009, where we met up with Australian friends Jan and Ric, who were doing genealogical investigations. I could not resist a visit to Arnfield in northern Derbyshire, just north of Tintwhistle, while there - it was a bit of a dump. Spring 2011 saw us in Dorset in a lovely farm B&B, a Christmas present from my sister and her hubby. Finally, this autumn we went to Scotland with Columbus friends Bill Fenner and Julie Breeding, starting south of the border investigating Hadrian's Wall (I had never seen it), then moving to Loch Lomond, on to Mull, up to the Great Glen and back again. White-tailed and Golden Eagles, otters and malt whisky distilleries all in one trip - wonderful! Other than a few day trips, that is the sum of our domestic travel although I have done a few trips to Norfolk in February for birding on the north coast and I go to the British Birdwatching Fair at Rutland Water each August.

Take a look at the archives on this blog to see pictures of some of the things we have done. I hope to get some more up soon.

So other than boating and gadding about, what do we do? I have almost ceased working in climatology. There is one project I would like to conclude but the motivation is weak. I still do a bit of reviewing of manuscripts for journals and am associated with an urban climate project in Birmingham but that is about the limit of it. I was very pleased to learn recently, however, that I have been awarded the Luke Howard Award by the International Association for Urban Climate. This is "given annually to an individual who has made outstanding contributions to the field of urban climatology in a combination of research, teaching, and/or service to the international community of urban climatologists" (from the IAUC website). I was surprised but very happy about this and am planning to attend the next IAUC conference in Dublin to receive it.

Otherwise, much of my time is spent on various bird surveys. I work on both the national and county bird atlas projects that are mapping species for both winter and the breeding season (at the 10 km scale for the national and 2 km scale for the Shropshire projects). Apart from my own surveys, I am an area co-ordinator for a region of Shropshire and data manager for the whole of the county for both the national and county surveys. It is quite a bit of work but is interesting, particularly once the maps start rolling off my printer.

I am also an "Ambassador" (sounds grand doesn't it) for the British Trust for Ornithology Garden Birdwatch survey, which involves folk surveying the birds seen in their gardens on a weekly basis to study patterns and trends in garden birds presence and abundance. The "ambassadorship" involves mostly giving illustrated talks to groups in southern Shropshire about garden birds, gardening for birds and the like - I specialise in the Women's Institute! I also write monthly articles in a local magazine on garden birds.

The other birdy thing I am involved with is teaching an introductory course (with friends from the local National Trust) on bird watching. This involves monthly indoor sessions on the birds of particular seasons and habitats, followed by a field excursion to look for as many as possible. It lasts a year with the summer months off as the birding is not so good then. I have been doing this for the last three years but am not sure whether we will repeat it next year yet.

That's about it other than helping to run the local branch of the Shropshire Ornithological Society and representing that group on the management committee of the Coppice Leasowes nature reserve on the outskirts of Church Stretton, as well as taking part in a Red Grouse survey on the Long Mynd, a process that involves mainly freezing one's proverbial off at sunset at high elevation in late autumn.

Some of Joan's volunteering responsibilities ceased when the Church Stretton Food Festival ended in 2008 but she straightway got involved with the Church Stretton Arts Festival and now co-ordinates the Arts Exhibition (painting, photography, crafts, 3-D objects etc). This involves a lot of preparatory work whipping the exhibitors in to shape, sorting out a guest artist etc and is quite stressful. She is also on the general organising committee for the Festival, runs its website and makes most of the advertising posters and the like. I have no role in this event other than as "official photographer", which involves taking any needed images, including those at the performances.

She used to work a lot for "Scrappies", a local scrapstore that provides recycled materials for use in artistic endeavours by kids and adults alike but she has withdrawn from that commitment to some extent, although she still maintains their website and runs membership services. The time released by lowering her level of activity with that organisation has, however, been used up on the town website, which is currently undergoing a major renovation and Joan has been involved in much of the preparatory work on the new pages. The new site is due to "go live" on Monday so, with a bit of luck, that job will then take less of her time.

She still does a little polymer clay modelling and has a couple of friends who come round on Wednesdays to do projects. She has also taken up the ukulele and is planning on rejoining the Shropshire Strummers once she has practiced a bit.

What else do we do? We have been trying to go to concerts and the theatre more often (generally, inertia, not dislike, kept us away from performances). Memorable among performances over the past three years were "The Tempest", by RSC and a South African company at Stratford, "Swan Lake" the Guangdong Acrobatic Troupe (cheesy in places but spectacular) and the play "Pitmen Painters", but there have been many more conventional performances, especially at Birmingham Symphony Hall and the theatre at Malvern.

We have resisted so far getting another dog but take care of cravings by dog-sitting for friends. We managed to reach our 40th Wedding Anniversary in 2009, which should deserve some congratulations. Is it too late to request a free celebratory drink?

So it remains for us to wish you all a very Happy Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanza, Solstice, New Year or whatever else you celebrate at this time of year. May the next year bring you peace, happiness, health and laughter.

Very Best Wishes from Joan and John.

Photo by Jenny Bowman who came to visit in August, 2011

We are still alive!

2011-10-20T11:55:00.000+01:00

Hello friends!

Yes, we are still alive down here in windy valley. But we've been so busy we haven't had time to write. I promise to summarise our doings very soon, so please come back and visit again. Here's a bit of a tease to get you to come back:

Newly Renovated Kitchen

Bug from our new pond

Trip to Hadrians Wall, Mull and the Great Glen with Julie and Bill

Scrapstores

2011-04-22T15:05:00.000+01:00

A lot of people want to know about scrap stores, so I've just found this video on-line that tells you all about it.

Sculpting

2011-01-16T12:11:00.003Z

Sally came over on Wednesday afternoon to do a bit of polymer clay sculpting. I spent the time mixing old sculpey with new translucent to try to refresh it and make it easier to work with, but she got inspired and did a lovely reclining figure. Here it is:

John's 66th Birthday ...

2011-01-03T13:06:00.002Z

... January 2nd.

We had Sunday Lunch at the Station Inn in Marshbrook. They're developing a mountain bike centre there and it was interesting to look around at their "Camping Pods" and at the new shop. However, it was too cold to spend too much time lurking, so we went in for a lovely lunch at the carvery.

The car thermometer informed us it was 3C outside as we set off afterwards to drive up the Mynd for a walk. It's a nasty road - single track with passing places - and at one point we met a Circus truck towing a caravan coming the other way. Hard to imagine where it came from. Surely the driver wasn't foolhardy enough to attempt to bring that whacking great thing up the Burway from Church Stretton and then down the really steep road from the top of the Mynd? In winter the road is often closed and most sensible people drive the long way round.

There were no "road-closed" notices, so we carried on up. By the time we got to the top the temperature had dropped to 0C and there was slush and ice on the road. We also found a dusting of snow. However, we parked at Pole Cottage and took a little walk to the highest point on the Mynd - Pole Bank. The visibility was good - we could see the Malvern Hills to the southeast and the mountains of Mid-Wales (probably the Berwyns) to the west. If you click on the picture below, which was taken at Pole Bank, you can enlarge it and then you will see Corndon Hill on the left. That is the nearest part of Wales to us - just about 10 miles away from our house if you go in a straight line over the two ridges of hills that separate us.

A laugh a day ...

2011-01-01T15:20:00.001Z

.....keeps the doctor away!

John and I have been tidying the loft. I found this old Peanuts cartoon and had to scan it and include it here (hope I'm not infringing any copyright laws!). It used to be pinned up on my office wall, and I still think it's one of the funniest I've ever seen - but then, we've had dogs and hampsters!!!!

A Family Christmas

2011-01-01T01:01:00.003Z

Happy New Year, Everyone!

Since we returned to the UK we've spent every Christmas in Nuneaton with John's sister, Joy, and her family. As usual, we set off for Nuneaton on Christmas eve; this time we were leaving frozen pipes, a dodgy central heating system and a leaking dishwasher! For the first time, though, we stayed with Betty, (Joy's mother-in-law) who lives around the corner. This change being necessitated by the arrival of Oscar (Joy's grandchild), his parents and a car full of baby accoutrements.

The snowman on the right is Mr. Pickles, now sadly departed! Our nephew, Nick, built him, but by the time we arrived, he had become a shadow of his former self. As you can see, his carroty nose is shrivelled and dark, his chestnut buttons and eyes have sunk into his flesh and he must have been suffering from osteoporosis - he'd lost several inches in height in a matter of days!

Mr. Pickles was fun, but he wasn't the centre of attention. Oh no! That honour went to Oscar the newest arrival in the family. Oscar is the son of Nick and Sam and the grandson of Joy. The hard part is realising that he's our great nephew - boy that makes us sound really old! I suppose we're getting there - I turned 65 in mid-December and John will be 66 on January 2nd.

Here are a couple of pictures of Nick, Sam and Oscar as they opened Oscar's presents. Nick is the one with the Tea Cosy on his head (note there's a Santa hat under that!). Sam's the lovely motherly one, and Oscar is the one who hasn't a clue what all the fuss is about!

Once presents were openend on Christmas day, we proceded to the main event - dinner! As you can seen, John was the only one allowed in the kitchen with his sister, and from the looks of him, she didn't have much choice!

It was a smashing dinner with a starter of smoked salmon, followed by a multibird roast (goose, stuffed with chicken, stuffed with pheasant, stuffed with sausage stuffing) from Shropshire and all the trimmings. Amazingly, we all found room for a small portion of rich chocolate torte for dessert! That's John F. carving the roast!

For our U.S. friends; you need to understand about the wearing of hats at Christmas. Although you can see that we wear Santa Hats and Tea Cosies, the more usual hat is the paper one as found in Christmas crackers. In the first picture you can see that Joy has just pulled her cracker and is now inspecting the contents. There is always a hat, a really stupid joke (called a motto for some unfathomable reason) and a toy. Everyone puts on their hat, reads out their joke (accompanied by groans from the assembled multitude) and tries to work out why they got the dumb toy.

This year the toys included a pencil sharpener, a plastic thingy with holes in that you could use to draw simple shapes, a springy hair clip, a set of cards printed like dominos, a spinning top (that was the best because it really worked) and a giant paper clip!

The prize for best looking lady in a hat goes to Betty, don't you think?

On Boxing Day we did it all again. Eating lots more food, baby sitting for Oscar while his parents had a well-deserved night off (they went out with friends, and wisely chose to spend the night with Sam's parents), putting away a fair amount of wine and watching lots of really dozey stuff on telly.

We did take a walk on Boxing Day. It was very cold, but still and partly sunny and we enjoyed exploring the woods at Hartshill Hayes. Here's a picture of John A., with Joy and her husband John F. The funniest sight of the walk was seeing a grown man get into a big plastic bag, convince his dog to sit on top of him and then set off to slide down the hill. The dog jumped off at first opportunity and then there was lots of yelling and laughter as the man lost control and rolled and slid helplessly into the next field! We don't see much snow around here, you know.

Thankfully, the snow has melted now. The traffic chaos is at an end. Burst pipes are slowly being mended and we've just tipped over from 2010 to 2011.

Cold weather activities

2010-12-12T23:06:00.002Z

Ahah! I've just found out how to make my own jigsaw puzzles and embed them here. This one is based on a picture I took during the recent snow.

» More free online jigsaw puzzles at TheJigsawPuzzles.com

Winter is a comin' in!

2010-11-25T17:03:00.001Z

Since I last wrote winter has descended on us. The leaves fell quickly as gales swept across the country and now we're having a blast of Arctic air, driving in from the northeast bringing freezing temperatures to most of the UK and snow to the eastern seabord. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

But we're warm and cozy at home, tonight. It's Thanksgiving and we're having pan-fried Pheasant Breasts with Sweet Potatoes and Green Beans followed by Chocolate Cake. It's OK - the pheasants in the garden have gone to roost and we won't tell them if you don't!

We have a lot to be thankful for - good friends, relatively good health, a comfortable house and a lovely environment. We hope you're all well and comfortable, too.

Memories of Costa Rica

2010-10-27T19:09:00.003+01:00

One of today's puzzles from the Free Puzzle site was this one of Arenal Volcano. Ah, happy memories of a lovely trip!

October already

2010-10-15T20:13:00.003+01:00

We're past the equinox, the nights are drawing in and it's definitely feeling fallish now. Most of the leaves are still on the trees, but it's chilly and windy. But, just before we sink into the depths of Autumn here are a couple of pictures taken in September:

Later in the month, the Crabbs came to visit from Edmonton, Alberta. The picture on the left shows them with John getting ready to have a smashing dinner at the Wenlock Edge Inn after a long day exploring the delights of our nearby Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage Site. I've written about Ironbridge before, so I won't do it again. You can follow this link if you're interested in the site.

Earlier, our smashing lunch at Ye Olde Robin Hood pub in the gorge was enlivened by the sight of this lovely, friendly dog, who not only visited everyone to say "Hello", but also sat very politely at the table while his master finished his pint!

John and Molly also joined us for the first part of our two-week cruise on Longsdon. Click here to see some photos and read about the cruise.s Barry and Sheila were with us on the return leg of the journey and I hope all our visitors enjoyed it as much as we did!

I wish you could feel the muscles in my arms, now! Too bad the rest of me is in such poor shape.... I've started going to a pilates class on Fridays. Today I was so tired I had to go to bed when I got home!

And now, it's time to turn to winter activities. Planning for next year's Art Exhibition is progressing. I've found a guest artist, but I'm not going to say who it is yet. I need to get confirmation and then announce it at the AGM.

I've started to meet with two friends to do polymer clay. This week we made hand-feet! Next week we're going to do some embellished jewellery. I have yet to decide exactly what we're going to do, but I hope to get some pictures of the finished articles. It was good to get back to doing it and a wonderful excuse to clean and tidy my study!

I guess that's all for now, folks. Please stay in touch - email is good, but letters and phone calls are also welcome and visits are always a joy.

Mikes Show Garden Video

2010-09-03T12:36:00.003+01:00

Mike Russells Show Garden has just won gold and best in show at Shrewsbury Flower Show. Here's the video on You-Tube:

The Wait is Over

2010-08-19T22:17:00.000+01:00

For five years I've been counting. First I counted years, then months and finally I was counting weeks, days, hours: and now it's all over. I had my final appointment with my oncologist, Dr. Agrawal, today and he's discharged me. I didn't cry when they told me I had cancer, but I certainly cried tears of joy today.

Afterwards we celebrated by going to the site of the Battle of Shrewsbury - made famous by Shakespeare in Henry IV pt.1. This is where Henry IV and his son Hal defeated Hotspur and established the power of the Plantagenet kings in 1403. It was a bloody battle and many were killed on both sides. You can read about it here.

A Royal memorial chapel was built near the battlefield, probably over the burial pit for the men killed in the battle. It was replaced by this church in 1460. The church has been renovated a couple of times since then and it's beautiful inside. There's a lovely hammerbeam roof, superb stained glass windows and a little exhibition about the battle. We got the key from the shop and had a good look round. The pictures were taken in and around the church.

And now for something completely different! The Art Festival ended about two weeks ago. It was an exhausting but exhilarating fortnight with nightly performances and daily stints at the Art Exhibition. John took most of the photos and they've all be processed and posted on the Arts Festival Web Site. Click here to see the photos. The whole committee was delighted with attendance figures and the quality of the shows, but I was especially delighted that the Art Exhibition, which is my special baby, did incredibly well. We had over a thousand visitors, sold nearly £6000 worth of art, craft, photography and cards and doubled our takings from last year.

To relax at the end of the Festival, John and I took the train to Cardiff for a day of shopping, eating and sightseeing. The first picture was taken on the platform at Church Stretton. There is a group of dedicated volunteers who maintain the station in picture perfect condition and the flowers are fabulous right now. We left about 8 am and were there by 10. It's a very fast, comfortable journey and we whiled away the time reading and looking out of the windows.

Cardiff is also full of flowers - this is the scene that greeted us outside the station there. We went straight to the new John Lewis store. For our Columbus friends, John Lewis is a lot like Lazarus was in its heyday. We wanted to look at their kitchens as we're planning to replace ours very soon. We also took coffee in their espresso bar - below, there's a picture of John in this very modern class enclosed cafe.

Later we wandered through malls and arcades, lunching in "YO!", a sushi restaurant where the plates are colour coded according to price and are on a belt that moves past the end of the table. You just grab whatever looks good and they bill you by counting the plates.

Late in the afternoon, we took an open top double decker bus tour of the city. It was very interesting, if somewhat chilly, taking in the sights of the city center and the newly redeveloped dock areas.

Dinner was again Japanese style - this time a big bowl of ramen noodles in broth at Wagamama's! And so we made our way back to the station and back home on the train.

So now - it's off to bed. For the first time in 5 years I WON'T be taking my arimidex pill before I go to sleep. I WILL be hoping for an improvement in the various aches and pains and other problems I've had over the past years, but who knows how much of that was due to the drugs and how much to other factors. We'll see over the next few weeks as the arimidex slowly leaves my body and the estrogen builds up a little bit again. Maybe my hair will thicken up - that would be nice - or maybe my brain will function more efficiently - others might appreciate that!

Experimental Jigsaw Puzzle

2010-07-02T22:51:00.005+01:00

Many of you know I like on-line jigsaw puzzles. I just found a new site and I'm doing an experiment here to see if I can include one of the puzzles I found. It appears that I can. Have a go with this!

» More free jigsaw puzzles at TheJigsawPuzzles.com

Woooo Hooooo!!!!!

2010-05-29T21:12:00.001+01:00

Yesterday I received the letter I had been waiting for. My 5th year mammogram showed no abnormalities. That means I'm all clear! Yippeeeeeeee!

This is the best news, because the mammogram is probably the most thorough test I will have this year. I have one more visit with the oncologist in August and if everything is still OK I'll be given the go-ahead to come off the dreaded Arimidex. Then, maybe, my hair will thicken up again, some of the other side effects will go away and I'll get back to a normal life.

This time 6 years ago we were just starting to get hints that I might have breast cancer. It wasn't definite yet, but I was in the middle of tests and more tests. It was to be another few days before we cancelled our flight home and then found out the bad news. We went to Matt and Karlyn's wedding and then sold our house to them! Happy Anniversary, you two!!!!!

As the summer progressed we managed to go through an excision biopsy that developed into an abscess, find a flat, move in, go through a lumpectomy and axillary dissection, develop another abscess and then start the process of chemo and radiation.

I say "we" because John was with me every step of the way. He was the one who pushed bandages into the abscess twice a day for 6 months; he was the one who sat with me through endless doctor appointments and every chemo session; he was the one who cooked and cleaned and did laundry when I was too weak and depressed to do anything and he was the one who took me out to fun places and brought in friends to entertain me. John helped me through by showing me the funny side of the whole process and in that way we were also able to amuse and help other cancer patients at the centre.

Thank you, John!

A walk in the woods

2010-05-16T16:41:00.005+01:00

Ella and I took a walk in Rectory Wood this morning. I managed it ok although I had to stop and cough a few times. I really think I’m getting a bit better, but it looks as though it’s going to be a long recovery.

The bluebells are glorious, although I think they are not yet quite at their peak.

I found this little inch-worm on a railing.

Quintessential English woodlands in spring - lovely!

Sad News, Happy News.

2010-05-12T23:11:00.008+01:00

Hello all!

The last few months have been a bit fraught, which is why I haven't done any blogging. I'm at home with a cold and am finding it difficult to work on all the stuff I ought to be doing. So I thought writing this would be a good alternative. The cold is clearly my body telling me to slow down a bit. I had another one 2 months ago and I've been coughing and exhausted ever since. I'd just decided to go to the doctor when this latest cold developed. It's really horrible. Everytime I move or laugh I start this chesty hacking cough. I don't want to spread the germs around so I'm waiting to go to the doc. till next week when I hope the infectious part will be over. You all know that I'm a hypochondriac - when I start coughing I think I've got pneumonia or lung cancer, when I have a headache it's a brain tumour, etc. etc.

It has been a bit of sad/happy time. The saddest news of all was the death of our good friend David Matthews. David lived in the house at the top of our drive with his wife Pam and the four of us became firm friends. He was the first person to welcome us when we moved in and he was always ready to help with a project or advise on technical issues. David and I worked together, took long walks, discussed all sorts of things (sometimes quite rudely, but always in the spirit of good fun), and of course, I was always giving him advice which he ignored completely! Here's a picture I took of David on one of our walks with Ella, their lovely dog. I really miss David.

We've also seen quite a bit of Ella over the last couple of months as Pam has been up and down to London a couple of times. Ella stayed over and now thinks this is her second home. It's not unusual to open the back door and find her sunning herself on the driveway! When the door's open she comes in and makes herself at home.

Last week I went to a workshop on relief modelling. I needed to learn how to do it, because I have tried it in polymer clay and failed. Our teacher, Jane Robbins, was fantastic and here's what I produced. Yes!!!!! A portrait of Ellla!!!!!

In March we cancelled our trip on Longsdon because we had a lot of things to do. I think, now, that this was a mistake because we're both tired and a rest on the boat would have done us good. Still we have had a few trips out. Most notably a day out with Joy and John when we visited two very interesting National Trust properties in the northeast midlands. The first was Mr. Straw's House, which is an early 20th century house complete with all the furnishings and trappings of life from the 20's and 30's. It was fascinating, not least because we recognised so many things from our grandparents houses. The second property was the Work House and I include a picture. This is where poor, sick and indigent people lived and worked in Victorian times. It was a hard life, designed to deter people from living off charity.

On the way back from our outing we saw a beautifully ploughed and prepared field - is it banked up for potatoes?

In between work on birding courses, birding atlasses, Scrappies, Church Stretton Arts Festival and all the other things we do, there has been progress in the garden. After a slow, cold spring we're finally seeing some green as the buds burst and lots of colour as the flowers come out. There's more information and photos on the Peel Wyke Gardening site, but this is a picture I took from my study window this morning.

Finally, I want to tell you about a very happy event. On May 1st, John's cousin Janice married her fiance Ian. It was a beautiful, happy day, full of love, laughter and fun. Here's a picture of Janice and her dad (John's uncle Wilf) as they prepared to enter the church. Wilf is 98 - it's not polite to tell you how old Janice is! We're all happy that Janice has found someone to love and who loves her, and that he comes from a good and caring family. We wish them all the best for their future lives together.

I’m doing a test

2010-02-24T20:46:00.001Z

This is a test of the Windows Live Blog editor. I doubt if I’ll use it, but I have a new computer with Windows 7 on it and I want to try everything out. It give me the opportunity to insert a lot of stuff I’ve never tried before like tables:

here it is	row 1 column 2
	our wedding picture – 41 years and counting!

Let’s see, what else will it do? This is the map I chose from Bing – Church Stretton has DISAPPEARED! Are they trying to tell us something or is it just a crappy map?

Enough of this – I don’t think it’s worth it.

Just a Couple of Days!

2010-01-22T15:01:00.000Z

Some of you know that "Just a Couple of Days" is the title of Tony Vigorito's first book, but today I'm thinking of it in a different way. Here's what a difference a couple of days can make to the view from our living room!

This first picture was taken on Wednesday of this week. We had a heavy, wet snowfall overnight and this is what we woke up to. The bamboo is doing an octopus imitation. This in turn exposes the dark woods on our southern bank. It really shows you how dark it is under the beastly laurels.

Now here's the view today. It's taken from almost the same spot. As you can see, the bamboo recovered - helped by me bashing the snow off with my walking stick. It has been raining on and off for two days and it's very grey and foggy.

I worked down at Scrappies yesterday. It's the first time anyone has opened the store since before Christmas. Irene is finding it difficult to get in from Clun in the van because of all the snow and ice. We had a few customers and it was very cold. I lost the will to live about 3:30 and was home by 4:30. It took most of the night for my body to warm up, in spite of going up the drive to Pam and Dave's for a lovely duck dinner.

Today, I saw our first heron in the garden. It's a Great Grey Heron, very similar to the Great Blue of the US. We saw its footprints in the snow at the weekend and people have been seeing it further up the valley along the stream, but it's a bit odd for it to be at our house where access to the stream is more difficult for such a bird. I'm quite sure it's not after anything in our pond - there's still a lot of ice in it, no fish and probably no frogs or newts. Unfortunately, it saw me as I came to the window and took off, so John didn't see it. He's been lurking by the windows all day in the hopes that it will come back again!

On Monday we had a cock pheasant on that table on the patio. When it saw John coming it didn't fly away - it calmly jumped off the table and walked towards the door as if it knew he had food. Mr. Pheasant seemed to like the peanuts we threw out for him, but we haven't seen him since.

Britain Comes to a Standstill

2010-01-06T16:13:00.000Z

I expect you've all heard about the "big freeze" we're having here in the UK. Our American and Canadian friends will be laughing their heads off. So far we've had about 6" of snow and the temperature hasn't dipped below -10C (23F) here. Some places have had more snow and some are colder, but it's still nothing compared to what we experienced in North America.

However, we're not prepared for it here. This cold snap has gone on for about 3-4 weeks and promises to last at least till the end of next week. Grit and salt supplies are running out, and we don't have the snow ploughs to cope with all the snow. Farmers are coming out with tractors and they're using front-loaders to shift the snow off the roads. The big worry is that the snow melts a bit during the day and then freezes into "black ice" at night. With no snow tires and very little experience in driving in icey conditions people are getting into horrible jams. Lorries are jack-knifing up and down the country, cars are ending up in ditches, the railways are having signalling and points trouble and they can't keep the airport runways clear.

Scrappies is closed. Their toilet has frozen and there is no heat in the shop, so it's too cold to shop or work there. Our heating packed up overnight on Monday night when the condensation overflow pipe froze up and water backed up to the boiler. Fortunately, we guessed that might be a problem and poured hot water all over the outside pipes. We got it thawed out and the boiler started working again. We breathed a big sigh of relief because one of our neighbours has no heat and the service people can't get to them till next week!!!!!

John and I are staying in today. Our road has been ploughed, but we're not sure we can make it up the driveway! Tomorrow we'll walk down to the market and get supplies. We had a quick foray into the garden to feed the birds and take pictures and now we're settled inside with glasses of port. I've posted some of my pictures on my Peel Wyke site and a couple here to show you what it looks like.

Greetings!

2010-01-02T15:53:00.001Z

It's 2010 already! Today John turned 65 - can you believe it?

And on Monday we have our 41st wedding anniversary!

We hope all our friends have had a good holiday - we're sorry we're so tardy in sending out greetings but December absolutely flew by and we don't really know where it went. We're determined to catch up on letters and e-mails in the New Year.

When John got back from Montreal, I had several meetings to go to and we only had a few days to prepare before we were off on our narrow boat for my birthday trip. This turned out to be more of an adventure than we bargained for. You can read all about it by clicking here. The final disaster came when we got stuck in the ice and had to be rescued by our brother-in-law, John! Don't get me wrong, we enjoyed most of it - it was just the ice and cold weather that put a damper on things.

A few more days went by as we did washing and shopping and prepared to go to Joy and John's for Christmas. Christmas day was lovely - a quiet, warm family affair with lots of wonderful things to eat and drink. Strefford Hall Farm did us proud with a multi-bird roast (goose, stuffed with chicken, stuffed with pheasant and all lined with sausage!) and the whole dinner was delicious and cooked to perfection.

Boxing Day saw us out on our traditional walk. It was cold, but that added to the pleasure as it made the ground firm underfoot. The sun shone, there were lots of people out with lovely dogs and the mince-pies came as a welcome break halfway round the walk!

We managed to get the boat home on the Sunday. And it's a good job we did since it has been cold and icy ever since. In spite of our 4-wheel drive and ABS breaks we have been slithering and sliding down the driveway with very little, if any, control. This is a picture I've just taken from my study window. If you look very carefully, you can see little black dots in the central field - that's people sledding! You can click on the picture to enlarge it, if you want to.

Pre-Christmas Updates

2009-12-06T17:58:00.001Z

It's December already! I've been working to catch up on all sorts of indoor jobs because the weather has been too wet to go outside. Of course, I couldn't do much outside anyway since I haven't been able to kneel down for the last few weeks. That being said, my knee surgery has been quite successful. I can straighten it a lot better and I can almost do a squat now! Getting it completely bent is now the object of exercises and stretchings and then we must work on strength so that my knees are stable enough to go rough walking in the hills.

Last month I was busy making stars like those you can see in the picture above. Each one can be made from a sheet of A4 or letter sized paper. Or you can make a huge one by making each point from one piece of A4 or letter sized paper and joining them together. I made one of those from white card and it's on our front door - it's the biggest snowflake you ever saw!!!!! We're selling the shiny ones pictured above at Scrappies and I've also posted the instructions on the Scrappies web site - they're really easy to make.

John has been away in Montreal this week on his annual EPIIC meetings. I stayed here this time. I took the opportunity to live on smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels and get on with my filing. I've invested in a nice new filing cabinet and I'm slowly getting my room sorted out. What a chore! I have un-filed things that have been piling up for three years!

I'm also taking the time to catch up on on all the blogs and websites. The Arts Festival events are now fixed for next year and Scrappies is ready for Christmas. There are some new pictures on the Peel Wyke Gardening site, even though there's been no work! I've also started a new blog for the owners of our shared boat, the Narrow Boat Lon gsdon. It will be open for all the boat owners to post logs and photos, but I'm the only user so far. We bought our share back in May (I think) but the boat went into the water in August and we had our maiden voyage (down the Oxford Canal) in early September, click here for photos. The boat is part of the Ownerships scheme. This is a long running scheme where multiple people buy shares in a boat and the boat is looked after by a central organization. It's not a time share as such. You don't get the same weeks on the boat each year, but there's a rota where each owner's choosing priority changes each year. So some years you get to choose your weeks early, and other years you're further down the list. Joy and John have bought a share in the same boat.

Longsdon is 58ft long and only 7ft wide. It has a rear galley and is steered from the outside at the back of the boat. Many of our friends from overseas aren't familiar with the UK Canal system, but it's a large network of canals which were used commercially up till the 1950s and which are now maintained mostly for tourism. Boaters run and steer their own boats and manipulate the locks by themselves, also. For a plan of the boat, click here then click on the link for a plan. For a series of interactive panoramic shots of the inside and outside of the narrow boat Torksey click here. Longsdon is very similar except for slightly different patterns and fabrics in the upholstery and curtains.

Well, it's Sunday night - that means its time for a nice roast dinner (duck tonight - yum) and an evening in front of the fire and the telly! Gotta go and get the table ready.

Ooops - a little problem in the operating theatre!

2009-11-02T18:14:00.003Z

Well, that was interesting!

On Saturday I went to the Orthopaedic Hospital in Oswestry to have minor arthroscopic surgery on my right knee. I had a torn meniscus and my knee kept "locking up". In addition, I couldn't straighten it completely and I couldn't bend it as far as the other one.

After a bit of discussion it was decided that I could have a spinal block, so I would be awake during the surgery. If I had general anaesthesia they would keep me over-night in the high dependancy ward because of my sleep apnoea. I was hoping they could do the 20 minute operation and there would be nothing to stop me going home later in the day.

Unfortunately, this didn't work out. The block spread up my spine as well as down, so the paralysis and numbness first made me feel sick and then made me faint. Apparently, my blood pressure fell and my pulse rate dropped to about 20. I'm not sure but I think the block reached the nerves controlling my heart. It got most of the thoracic nerves, but didn't get up into the cervical nerves, so it didn't stop my diaphragm and I kept breathing. There's a good article on spinals at this web site.

They treated the problem with atropine and ephedrine and after a little while (I don't know how long it took, but the anaesthetist said it seemed like ages!) I came round to find the anaesthetis calling my name and looking very anxious. Once my blood pressure started to go up they got on with the operation and since I was concious I was able to watch the action on a monitor.

So now I've seen the inside of my knee! The surgeon found a tear in the meniscus and cut it off and then clipped off lots of rough bits of cartilage. At the end he showed me the healthy bone (white) and the parts that have osteo-arthritis (pink). There's not much can be done for that, but it isn't bothering me much yet, so we'll hope it doesn't progress much further.

When I got back to the recovery room, they tested to see how high the block had reached. It was up to my armpits! It shouldn't have gone above my waist! The aneasthetist stopped by to make sure I was all right and to explain what had happened. I was pleased to see him - he's very attractive! He came by to see me on the ward, too, twice(!) - a really nice guy!

Eventually, they wheeled me off to a ward and I was told I would stay the night. I'd pretty much figured that out ahead of time ;-) The anaesthetic slowly wore off. I felt the numbness leave my chest and then found I could wiggle my toes. As all this was happening I was making friends with the three other people in my bay. They were all very nice and we had a good laugh. But they are all in there for far worse stuff than me. Two have had hip replacements and one a knee replacement.

After a while I was just able to lift my legs off the bed and sometime after supper they let me use a zimmer frame to walk to the loo! I was glad about that as I didn't want to have to use a bottle or a bed-pan.

That first walk was very weird. Not particularly painful, but my knee felt like it didn't belong to me. Since then I've been exercising it and walking about on it and now 48 hours after the op I'm able to walk about the house, including up and down stairs, without the crutches they sent me home with.

They also sent me home with painkillers that I haven't had to take, exercises which I am doing faithfully and letters for doctors and physios. It appears that I will be doing some physio with a local practitioner and I'm glad of that for my knees need strengthening if I'm to tackle the hills and take my friend's dogs out for walks.

The bandages have come off and I'm left with two small dressings covering the places where the instruments went into my knee. It's still a bit stiff and swollen but I made it to the neighbour's on crutches this afternoon and let them feed me with tea and cake! I haven't tried the hill up the drive, yet. I may leave that for a day or two!

Well, that's all the gory details - I'm glad it's over and really pleased at my progress so far.

Nothing Since April?

2009-09-26T18:48:00.005+01:00

I last posted on this blog in April. You might be tempted to think that we've done nothing since then, but you'd be wrong! We've done a lot!

May:

We spent most of the month of May at home, working on the garden and our volunteer commitments. The willow nest got finished and is absolutely lovely, though we haven't been able to sit in it much because the weather for the rest of the summer was abysmal. There's more garden information at peelwyke.wordpress.com. Helen and Kelvan kindly let us do a couple of rows of the weaving ourselves, so we learned first hand what hard work it ways! The second photo shows Helen and Kelvan helping us celebrate when the whole thing was done. You can see how tired and mucky they look.

We had a great deal of fun with Helen and Kelvan. We sat on the patio and swapped craft ideas and did a bit of willow work at the table. I also made a polymer clay head to embellish the nest. I'm planning to do some more embellishment, but it may take a while - it's so hard to find time.

But the most exciting thing about May was that we became boat owners. Well, part owners. We now have a 1/12 share in Longsdon, a Narrow Boat moored on the Grand Union Canal at Stockton Top Marina near Leamington Spa. In my next post, I'll be telling you more about this and about our maiden voyage!

June:

June was spent mostly working on volunteer activities, particularly the Arts Festival. Entry forms were coming in from artists, publicity had to be distributed and there seemed to be a hundred and one things to do. However, we did have a wonderful day with Joy and John's Swiss Relatives who all came to visit. After they walked around our garden, we all had coffee and cake on the patio, then took off in three cars (there were 12 of us!) for a tour of the Mynd. We had lunch at the Crown in Wentnor. I think everyone enjoyed that. It's a very traditional English pub, with low ceilings and a cosy interior and they make superb pies!

July:

July was another busy month. A look at our diary shows activities almost every day. The beginning of the month was taken up with last minute work for the Arts Festival - delivering and setting up notice boards, data entry, web site work, making sure we had all the necessary supplies for the exhibition, etc. etc.

Then the last two weeks were taken up with the actual festival itself. This was a resounding success this year. We managed to break even on funds, even though we had no external funding. We had three sell-out performances and most of the rest were well attended. The program of events was spectacular beginning with a lovely concert by Emma Johnson and ended with a raucous evening of entertainment by Kenny Ball and the Jazzmen. I hope to have the photos on-line soon (the Arts Festival web-site is down right now for unknown reasons), but in the meantime, this is a picture of me at the opening of the Art Exhibition (I'm the organizer right now). The gentleman in black to my right is Jon Baker - the guest artist. Visit his on-line gallery to see some lovely images.

August:

In August we started to relax and take a breather, but there was still lots to do. Apart from gardening, I had to finish up the paperwork from the Arts Festival and catch up on work for Scrappies which I had severely neglected in July!

Towards the end of the month we took a few days off to visit the British Bird Watching Fair or Birdfair. This is an amazing three day event, which attracts thousands of people from all over Europe. It's the biggest fair of its kind and it makes lots of money for conservation projects. There are lectures; demos; entertainments; lots of marquees with stalls advertising and selling books, art, optics, clothes and holidays; all with a birding theme. The weather was lovely and we really enjoyed browsing. We had a beer with Peter Carty, Malcolm and Helen Loft and friends from the Strettons, but were particularly pleased to catch up with Paco Madrigal, our tour guide in Costa Rica. He was at the fair to publicise his company and it was a joy to meet him again and to make the aquaintance of his brother-in-law, Marco.

We also took a day to tour around the Rutland area and after a smashing lunch in Wing, found ourselves in a fabulous sculpture garden called artdejardin. Do click on this link to see examples of the lovely work and the beautiful landscaping.

We came back with lots of "stuff". John got a couple of books and we shelled out for a lovely recycled iron sculpture of a Dodo from Baobab Trading Company! We've called him Frodo and he is standing proudly in the west part of our garden. Other purchases for the garden this month included a wire-work love seat (also in the picture with Frodo) with two matching chairs and a naughtly concrete gnome who flashes at people when they emerge from the willow nest!

That's all for now, folks! With a bit of luck I'll be able to catch you up on September tomorrow!!!!!

Is it, or isn't it?

2009-04-24T18:46:00.008+01:00

Check out this photo. Does this dog remind you of another you once knew? If you've ever visited us in Columbus, you'll know the answer. Of course it isn't the late departed Monty, but it sure looks like him! This is Ruby, a mixed border collie/lurcher and we've been looking after her for a couple of weeks. Needless to say, with that mix she has immense energy and stamina. We've been taking her for long walks, but we can't tire her out. When we go up on the hills she runs up and down them as if they were flat while we're puffing and blowing and staggering about.

Here she is, hiding in a stream, waiting to run after the stick at John's feet. She can run as fast as we can throw it! As we walk along, she'll grab the stick and run ahead. Then she'll drop it and hide till we come by. Sometimes she lets us pick it up and throw it, sometimes she'll burst out of the undergrowth, grab it and run on ahead. The only times she drops the stick are when you get the lead out and she realises she has to get leashed up, or when she gets the scent of rabbit - if that happens she takes off and can run from one hilltop to the next in no time flat! Mostly she keeps us in sight and will eventually come back when she's looked in every rabbit hole on the hillside! Fortunately, she doesn't chase sheep as the hills are full of ewes with lambs. To the left is a pair we came across on one of our walks.

Ruby does like lying in streams and this is a bit of a problem as she is in and out of our stream all day. She'll swim too, if you throw a stick in a pool and she's not averse to a good wallow in a stinking mud puddle, either!

We were only supposed to have her for a week, but she is such a darling that we asked to keep her for another few days. She is a lot like Monty in her looks, but she's got her own personality and behaviours and she's made us both very happy. I haven't heard so much laughter about the house for a long time.

Columbus Motmots Explore Costa Rica

2009-04-21T16:36:00.018+01:00

This post is based on an article I've just sent off to the Song Sparrow, which is the newsletter of the Columbus Audubon Society. That article also has some extra stuff from Dave Horn and I've modified this one to make it more personal and add a few more photos.

The Columbus Motmots are a group of friends (including me and John) who have just returned from a “relaxed” birding trip to Costa Rica. Most days began soon after dawn with a bird walk. We took walks or trips in the morning and late afternoon, but after lunch most of us avoided the heat by taking a siesta or a dip in the pool (except for the mad butterfly hunters who made chase amongst the vividly coloured tropical flowers). After dark we would meet to compile our daily list and later there were evening rambles to seek out moths, amphibians and reptiles.

This trip was organized for us by Cotinga Tours and our guide was co-owner Paco Madrigal, who gave a talk in Columbus a couple of years ago. Paco and Carlos, our super bus driver, took great care of us throughout the two week adventure. Both men kept a keen lookout as we travelled along. When they spotted something interesting (mostly birds, but also rattlesnakes, monkeys, sloths, iguanas, turtles, crocodiles, etc.) they would quickly stop the bus, set up the scope, and we’d all pile out to see it. Paco can spot birds when no-one else can, identify them and set up a scope in the wink of an eye! Carlos was pretty good too!

The first region visited by the whole group was the central mountains. At 10,000ft, beside the Savegre River and in the cool cloud forest, we searched for Resplendent Quetzals. It took a while, but we were finally rewarded with really good views. Other highlights of this region included lots of hummingbirds (especially Fiery-throated, Magnificent, and Volcano Hummingbirds, Green Violet-ear and White-throated Mountain-Gem - what a delight!), lying on our backs watching the Swallow-tailed Kites circle overhead and some spectacularly-colorful species such as Flame-colored Tanager, Golden-browed Chlorophonia, Sulfur-winged Parakeet and Collared Trogon.

Dropping down to the Pacific coastal lowlands, we were lucky enough to see Double-toothed Kite, Crested Guan, Baird’s Trogon and yet more hummingbirds in Carara National Park. A highlight of this stay was a boat trip on the Orotina River where we were treated to great views of Turquoise-browed Motmot, many herons (including Bare-throated Tiger-Herons) and Amazon Kingfisher.

Moving further north along the Pacific coast, we found ourselves in the dry forest of Guanacaste, where we had our first encounter with Howler Monkeys. These guys make strange, grunting, moaning howls, especially in the very early morning! This is a region of deciduous tropical forest as the trees here shed their leaves during the dry season. We stayed on a large hacienda and visited marshes, lagoons and salt ponds. Among the treats at this location were Jabiru, Snail Kite, Yellow-naped Parrot, Passerini’s Tanager and Laughing Falcon. One of the lagoons was crowded with a large, noisy mixed flock of water birds including Jacanas, Wood Storks, Roseate Spoonbills, and Black-bellied Whistling Ducks.

It was really hot and humid in the lowlands, so it was a relief to climb up into the mountains again. We stayed at the Arenal Volcano Observatory where we could lie in bed and watch the volcano spitting out boulders and steam! Our only tropical downpour caught us just as most of the party had descended a steep flight of steps to see a waterfall but it brought out the fireflies in the evening, so it wasn’t all bad!

The lovely gardens of the Observatory were teaming with wildlife. White-necked Jacobins, Black-crested Coquettes and Bananaquits flocked to the Jamaican vervain plants, and when fruit was put out on the bird feeders we were able to admire Montezuma’s Oropendulas, various tanagers and both Red-legged and Green Honeycreepers. The feeders were also raided by two tropical members of the raccoon family – Kinkajou and Coati.

Crossing the mountainous backbone of the country, we descended to the Caribbean lowlands. We lodged by the Serapiqui river and on our early morning walk were treated to great views of the elusive Great Tinamou. We visited the famous La Selva Biological Station, run by the Organization for Tropical Studies where we found White-winged Becard, Vermiculated Screech-Owl, Slaty-tailed and Violaceous Trogons and Pygmy Kingfisher. A boat trip on the Serapiqui river yielded Bay Wren, Green Ibis and, for some, King Vulture.

Our final stop of the trip was at Tortuguero. This village is on the Caribbean coast and only accessible by boat. In fact, we spent most of our stay in boats as we explored the rivers and canals of this region. Paco explained that the land was too swampy for people to explore on foot. Here we found the smaller Caimans, Howler, Spider and White-faced Monkeys, turtles, Red-eyed Tree-Frogs, Poison Dart Frogs and a host of interesting birds including White-faced Puffbird, Green-Rufous Kingfisher, Great Potoo and a splendid Agami Heron.

All in all, it was a wonderful trip. The group as a whole saw more than 350 species. John wrote:

I have finally got around to finishing my bird list for Costa Rica. (I delay gratification with impunity!). Overall, I saw 291 species (meaning I saw their field marks and stand some chance of identifying them again on my own), of which 212 (73%) were life birds. Joan and I had never been to Central America before
and had only limited experience birding in the south-west of the US - hence the
high percentage of new birds.

Good food and lodgings, excellent company, a skilful bus driver and a superb guide combined to make this a holiday we’ll never forget. I would unreservedly recommend Cotinga Tours to anyone.

More photos can be found on my Picassa web space.

Feel free to send me e-mail when you have time!

A Busy Week!

2009-02-28T23:55:00.005Z

We've been preoccupied with work around the house and garden this week. Monday and Tuesday were taken up with asbestos removal, Wednesday with the installation of our new combi boiler and Thursday and Friday we were in the garden with Nick and Mike. The latter will be covered in our sister blog http://peelwyke.wordpress.com/.

I'll try to update that tomorrow, meanwhile here's a picture of Nick and Mike working hard!

I mentioned the asbestos removal in my previous post. After the guys in the hazmat suits removed it, another guy came the next day and did tests on the air around the boiler and in the containment unit. We passed the tests with flying colours, so they took down all the stuff and Neil (from British Gas) moved in to take out the old boiler and install the new.

For the sake of our American friends, who do things a little differently, I should explain how our old water system worked. It is fairly typical of many houses in England. The boiler is located in the kitchen (it's the white object on the right of the picture). It heats the hot water for household use and the hot water which circulates through the central heating radiators. Very few places in Britain have basements, neither do they have forced air central heating like they do in the US.

In the old days all of our water systems, except the tap in the kitchen would be tank fed. In our case there was a cold water tank in the attic that supplied water to the heating system and to the taps in the bathrooms. Hot water was stored in a copper hot water tank found in the airing cupboard (it's on the left of the picture, the tank is enclosed in an insulating jacket). Keeping the hot water tank in a cupboard gives you a nice warm place to finish drying your washing and air your damp clothes. Most tank fed systems give you rather low water pressure.

The thing we have installed is called a combi boiler. It still heats the water for the hot taps and the central heating, but it does it "on demand". There is no hot water tank and it works with water on mains pressure. Here's what it looks like in the kitchen now. The flue pipe is gone. The boiler is a condensing boiler with a counter-current heat exchanger and it vents to the side. Condensation is collected and drained away. The little red object just above the ground is a large magnet that collects up some of the rust and iron that circulates through the central heating system. The airing cupboard is now empty - it's going to become a larder for me and a cupboard for John's study. Believe it or not, it has two doors!

In the foreground of this picture you can just see our double oven. I'm in the middle of cleaning it. In fact, we spent most of today cleaning up in the kitchen. There was quite a bit of dust on all the surfaces, and it was time for a spring-clean anyway!

Later today I took my first long hot bath. Now we're on mains pressure we get a much better flow of water and I was able to fill the bath in 5 minutes rather than 20 minutes. And there was no worry about draining a tank. The water was lovely and hot the whole time! If I'd needed to I could have topped it up at any time. What luxury!

Alien Invasion?

2009-02-23T16:05:00.004Z

I took this picture in my kitchen today!

What is this masked creature you ask? Well, he's obviously not too dangerous as I lived to tell the tale.

The next picture explains it all. While we were being surveyed for a new gas boiler they found a small asbestos board stuck to the ceiling around the flue of the old boiler. We had to have it removed before they could work on the boiler.

So we've been invaded by men in hazmat suits. They came down the driveway in a very big van and towing a portable decontamination shower-unit. They just made it down and were able to separate van and trailer to get them turned around.

They sealed off the part of the kitchen where the asbestos is and joined that up to a polythene tunnel leading outside. They set up a negative air pressure in the house and air in the tunnel has to be filtered several times as it is drawn out.

The guy doing the work wore a red suit while working in the tent in the kitchen. Then he had to change into this blue one before coming out. The red one is in the bag and will be disposed of. He then walked about 10 feet to the portable decontamination unit where he showered and disposed of his blue suit.

All this for a board which was no more than a foot square!

A New Pheasant in the Garden

2009-02-15T10:49:00.005Z

Mr. Magnificent, our lovely tame male pheasant disappeared last summer. We think he'd been in the garden for about 3 years, so it's not surprising - they don't last much longer around here.

We now have another cock. We've called him "Greenback" for obvious reasons. He's much shyer than Mr. M., won't come for peanuts and visits at quiet times of the day (like early in the morning). However, this morning he hung around for quite a while and I was able to get some pictures. They're not very good, but they do show how green his back is.

I was playing around with Picassa and really love what happens to pheasant colouring when you saturate it.

Check out the Peel Wyke site, I'm just going over there to post about this week's work.

Encaustic Art - WOW!!!!!

2009-02-08T21:23:00.008Z

We've just had a volunteer's craft day at Scrappies. Irene and Sheila taught us some of the basic techniques of encaustic painting. This is where you use melted wax to make a image. We used small irons and stylus's to make some wonderful images. I've just updated the Scrappies web site with lots of photos from the workshop. You can find them by clicking here. The pictures above are some of my experiments. I was very pleased with them and would like to have another go at it sometime in the future. I went out on the web and found the site of the guys who developed the technique. They have lots of examples in their galleries - take a look!

Sun and Snow!

2009-02-03T14:37:00.006Z

Today is a red letter day. We saw a sunbeam in the house for the first time since November. Here's photographic evidence of it. I love that first sight of the sun, it means that spring isn't far away and that we shouldn't see much more of winter's depression.

You'll notice that there's plenty of snow in these photos. We've had about 6" in the last couple of days. Actually, it's been quite a cold winter altogether and there's more to come. There's so much snow that we've had to cancel this week's gardening session. More about that on our sister site.

We were finally able to test the 4-wheel drive on the RAV4 today. John drove up and down the drive - he said it was a piece of cake. That's a relief as it's a pretty steep, shady drive and the snow takes a long while to melt off. It's good to know we're not snowed in if there's an emergency. It's different for Steve and Marjorie next door. They face a hairpin bend to get onto our drive and with a normal car I don't think Steve would be able to make it. Never mind, we're here if they need us and we check up on them from time to time.

Here's another photo from the garden. It's of our lovely old Mahonia. Right now it's in full bloom, but the snow is hiding all that. However, we were impressed with how the snow emphasised the shape of the leaves. Hope you like it too!

It's snowing again!

2009-02-01T23:31:00.006Z

The snow is falling in the valley, the wind is howling and the temperature is dropping rapidly. So I'm staying in to do some catching up on blogs, websites and volunteer jobs.

First I want to ask all of you to do me a favour. If you have time, please check out the Church Stretton Arts Festival Web Site at:

http://www.strettonfestival.org.uk/

I want you to imagine that you're visiting Church Stretton and you want to know what's on. Tell me what you think of the web pages. Do they make you want to visit us? Do you find them exiting or interesting? Can you find all the information you need? Is there anything else I should include?

Please send me e-mail with your comments. Thanks.

So far it's been quite a cold winter. I'm not really complaining because it's really nowhere near as cold as it was in North America, and we need a cold spell to kill off the bugs and convince the plants that summer is coming. However, it's sad to see that some of the plants had already started to put out leaves. We're expecting it to be a very cold wind with cold air flowing into Britain from Siberia, so there will be freezing temperatures every night for the next few days.

In addition there are dire warnings of more (and possibly heavy) snow to come. Now over here that means anything over a few centimeters of snow so we may not be able to get our cross-country skis out!

Our snowdrops are out already. In fact, they've been out for over a week. Unfortunately, we managed to trample a few of them when we were working in the garden last week. There are big works going on in our garden. We're working with a real live garden designer to give it a makeover and make it more wildlife friendly. I've started a new blog for this, with pictures and descriptions of the work as it goes on. You can find that at the following address:

http://peelwyke.wordpress.com/

We've been working on the garden for the last three weeks, in spite of the low temperatures. I guess it's been between 2 and 8 C while we've been working (in the 30s for the Americans!), and some of the time it's been windy or drizzling. But we Brits don't let that stop us. If we did we'd never do anything outside!!!! Last week you would have been amused to see us serenely drinking coffee and eating cookies outside. We've even set up a table and comfy chairs so we can relax during our coffee breaks!

The picture shows us piling up the old fence sections to make a habitat pile. The thing that looks like a dead dog is in fact a soggy mess of old newsprint paper that we found behind the garage. We moved it out there after it got wet when the upper garage roof leaked on it. I had been keeping the paper to make into paper mache - yet another brilliant craft idea that never went anywhere! That's me behind the fence and in front is Mike Russell who is our designer. Mike specialises in Nature Gardens, so he's the perfect person to work with. He's not only designing the new garden, he's helping us to do the work.

One of the benefits of staying out all day is that we've seen some new wildlife in the garden. We've spotted a goldcrest several times (it's a close relative of the Golden Crowned Kinglet of the US) and we saw a tree-creeper one day too.

We've been a bit worried that we would disturb our badgers, but two of them showed up on the patio a couple of nights ago and today we saw our diurnal badger for the first time since before Christmas. He still seems to be doing well, even though he continues to make forays during the afternoon. Here's a nice picture of him that I took in December. You can really see those strong claws in this picture. No wonder they do so much digging about the place. Now that we've taken down our fence we'll be able to watch the badgers as they walk about on the bank to the south of us. Hopefully, we'll be able to see the babies playing when they first come up from underground.

Oh well ... I suppose I'd better get back to work .....

The Mom Song

2009-01-12T12:57:00.004Z

Jane sent me this wonderful video and I'm going to try to post it here. Enjoy!

New Year, New Colours!

2009-01-05T12:50:00.002Z

Hi all!

Messing about with blogs, webpages, templates, stylesheets and the like and decided to change the way my blog looks! It's the same old material, in a new wrapper - I suppose I should put the price up to match. Isn't that what they do in the shops?

Bah humbug!!!!!

Happy New Year!

2009-01-03T12:11:00.009Z

Well, we're well into the New Year already! I expected to spend New Year's day doing this post, but I had a bit of a hangover and John was in bed with a feverish cold, so I loafed around the house doing absolutely nothing all day!

On New Year's eve John was well in the morning and we spent it with Mike Russell, going around the garden and doing some planning. There will be more about that in my next posting. In the afternoon John's temperature started to climb and he went off to bed. Dave and Pam came down the drive for their dinner and the three of us saw the New Year in, while I ferried small amounts of food and drink up to the invalid in bed!

Yesterday was John's birthday and he insisted on a bit of birdwatching. That was a mistake as he is now coughing and feeling quite poorly again. Tomorrow is our Ruby (40th) wedding anniversary and we have plans to go to a local carvery for a big Sunday lunch. We'll see if he's up to it.

John did quite a good review of the year for his Christmas letter, so I'm going to include it here [with comments, of course!]:

"In February we spent a few days on the "Jurassic Coast" (http://www.jurassiccoast.com/) in Dorset and Devon, in the Lyme Regis area. An artist friend (Karel Hughes) was having an opening of her work in a Devon gallery and another artist friend (Pam Jordan) was contributing to the show, so we decided to make an appearance. Not totally irrelevant to this decision was the fact that many of the people there were old Swansea University cronies and that a party of significant proportions and intensity has been promised. The show and the party were excellent (we bought paintings by both artists), the scenery and bird watching were very good and the walking along the coast invigorating.

In April, I went to Norfolk for some birding and a meeting that requires a bit of explanation. Every 10-15 years, the BTO (British Trust for Ornithology), http://www.bto.org/, in conjunction with other bird watching organisations, seeks to produce an atlas of bird distributions and abundance for the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland (http://www.bto.org/birdatlas/). This involves organising a vast number of volunteers to survey bird populations in 10 km x 10 km grid squares over the two countries, both in winter and the breeding season. At the same time, the Shropshire Ornithological Society (SOS) is "piggybacking" on this effort to produce a county wintering and breeding bird atlas, with sampling at 2 km x 2 km (http://www.shropshirebirds.com/Atlas%20Intro%20Page.htm). These data are invaluable in studying the changes in the fortunes of different bird species and to inform conservation and biodiversity efforts by government departments and other nature-oriented groups. Well, I am the organiser of this effort for the south-central area of Shropshire and it falls to me to find volunteers, assign sampling areas, provide support and assistance etc. In addition, I am "Data Manager" for the Shropshire atlas project and am responsible for statistical analysis and mapping of the data collected in the surveys. The Norfolk meeting (at the BTO headquarters in Thetford) was for local atlas workers to be briefed by the BTO and to exchange ideas etc. I took the opportunity to go two days early and explore the very birdy north Norfolk coast.

In late May, it was again off to the east coast, to Suffolk this time. Joan and I had been invited to a wedding of the son of an old school friend of hers [actually older than that - friends from the womb!]. The wedding was made notable by the fact that we met there a woman who we had last seen in Columbus, Ohio, as a postgraduate student in Geography, and with whom we had had no contact since. It turned out that she had been to university with the bride. Weird coincidence (but then aren't all coincidences weird by definition). Unable to forego the ornithological attractions of Suffolk, we spent some time at the RSPB reserve at Minsmere before returning home. [John's emphasis on birding means he forgot the mention the wonderful day at Sutton Hoo!]

June took us further afield - to Cucugnan in Languedoc-Roussillon in southern France. Our friends Dolly and Chris have a house there are were driving down for a few weeks so we accompanied them for the first part of their stay. The weather was quite stunning while we were there and we spent time touring around taking in the sights, especially the Cathar castles perched impossibly in the rugged terrain. Naturally, there was good bird watching to be done, so trips to inland hills and coastal lagoons were part of the plan and some superb species unfamiliar to northern Europe were seen. Naturally, eating good French country food and assisting the natives in disposing of recent wine grape harvests were major foci of the trip too. Following just over a week in Cucugnan, we took the train back to Church Stretton (TGV to Lille where we spent the night and most of the next day, Eurostar to London, and from there back home).

In July were almost became boat owners. You may be aware that we love boating on the British canals and have been looking to buy a part share in a narrowboat for some time. So has my sister Joy and her husband. Two shares in a boat of the type we were interested in came up for sale in July, so we went to look at it with the possibility of both couples taking a share each. Unfortunately, the craft was not quite as well looked after as we thought (it was quite old), so we decided against the purchase. However, looking at that one has helped to crystallise our ideas about what we want so we are still looking.

Later in July was the Church Stretton and South Shropshire Arts Festival (http://www.strettonfestival.org.uk/). Joan is heavily involved with the visual arts part of this event (painting, sculpture, photography, fabrics etc). That show runs for two weeks but there are many other performances during that period, mostly of a musical nature. I have no official role to play in the arts festival but do get involved as manual labour, setting up and tearing down displays, and was also conned into taking photographs at all of the events. An additional duty is putting up and feeding some of the guests to keep festival costs down. This year we had two members of the Wihan Quartet (http://www.wihanquartet.com/) and also three singers and one orchestra member from the Opera East performance of "The Marriage of Figaro". Joan takes over running the visual arts part of the festival this year and is also their web designer and maintainer.

August brought bathroom renovations. The previous owner of this house took out all of the baths and replaced them with showers. Joan wanted a bath back so we had the downstairs bathroom knocked through to include the adjacent toilet and put in a whirlpool bath, along with a complete renovation of the room (which was looking a bit "tired"). The job was done very professionally and we are very happy with it. Joan now spends time submerged in foam bubbles in there, "thinking through the problems that face her"! [One of the problems being that we havn't painted the ceiling yet, or fixed up the hallway where the old door was blocked up. Oh well, there's more important things in life than working on the house!]

Also in August was the Church Stretton Food Fayre (yes, I know the quaint spelling is appalling but it's not my fault). Joan and I were both involved with this event, which has been a successful promotion for the town and source of money for local charities for several years, ever since foot and mouth disease closed the countryside to walkers and devastated the economy of Church Stretton, which is very much oriented towards walking tourism. This year we almost had a disaster due to the weather, which would have meant that the large balance we had accumulated over the years would have been dissipated. As it happened, the rains let up for the two days of the fair (mostly) and the event was a great success, despite a soggy site and no proper car parking because of the state of the ground. Nevertheless, the committee decided that this was to be the last Food Fayre in this form and we disbanded, which meant about £37,000 went to local good causes, including our new Leisure Centre being built at the school (but for the general public). I had responsibility for the Food Fayre website as well as general labouring during the fair (including seven hours of directing traffic this year due to poor parking conditions). It is a relief to be done with the website but I have now been dragooned into continuing to do the web pages for the Church Stretton Walking Festival, which was part of the food event due to an accident of history but which will now continue independently (www.churchstrettonwalkingfestival.co.uk/).

August and September brought overseas visitors. HaPe Schmid (http://imk-ifu.fzk.de/21_900.php), a fellow climatologist (erstwhile of Indiana University and now in Germany) and his family stayed with us overnight on their Father Cadfael (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadfael) odyssey.

Shortly thereafter we received a longer visit from various polymer clay artist friends of Joan's from Columbus. They spent a few days in London, Bath and Stonehenge with Joan before coming on to Shropshire. [Our three days in London were crammed - went straight to Windsor Castle from the airport on the first day. Then the other two days included Tower of London, St. Paul's, Greenwich, a ride on the Thames and lots of rubber necking walking around town. Our journey back to C.S. was beset by rain and flood, but we managed to see Stonehenge and Bath so we did OK!]

In September I was conned into giving a talk to the Ludlow branch of the Probus organisation on "Global Warming: a Review of the Science and its Critics", which seemed to go pretty well although there were a few rather vocal sceptics in the audience raising the usual criticisms. (This is not to say there might not be some valid arguments against a human origin for recent warming but these weren't those arguments!)

Immediately after that we drove up for a few days in Skipton, Yorkshire, where Joan was representing Church Stretton at a meeting on the revitalisation of market towns, along with a local councillor and friend. [Not a very productive meeting, but we made a few contacts which may serve well one day - who knows?] Needless to say, I avoided that and spent the time walking in the Yorkshire Dales (http://www.yorkshiredales.org.uk/) and (what a surprise!) birding. The weather was not great but we did all have a superb walk in the Malham Tarn and Cove area on the one sunny but very windy day after the meeting was over.

Nov 4th saw us staying up very late, with a bottle of wine and a few snacks, watching the US election results come in. It was an exciting election that attracted quite a bit of interest this side of the Atlantic, not least because of the impact that the health of the American economy has here in Europe. There was also quite a bit of interest in Barack Obama and a type of uncomprehending perplexity about Sarah Palin. The outcome was as WE had hoped but it still astounds me that so many ordinary Americans find it possible to vote for candidates whose interests diverge so markedly from their own, whose agenda are so transparently self-serving, who are associated with an administration that has been characterised by corruption and constitutional jiggery-pokery, and are imbeciles into the bargain. I did have a great deal of respect for John McCain as an individual (although I was not sure his particular strengths were quite those needed by the US right now) but his choice of Sarah Palin as his running-mate raised in me issues about his grip on reality. The most benevolent interpretation I can come up with is that she was forced on him by the Republican Right. Apart from the fact that she possessed no qualifications to be president (and given McCain's age, that is what she stood a good chance of becoming), she was a very scary woman (maybe even scarier than Dick Cheney). How is it possible that a goodly fraction of the voters of a civilised, developed, forward-looking country like the US could bring themselves to endorse a person like Ms Palin? On this line, I very much like <http://www.feministpeacenetwork.org/2008/10/29/dont-cry-for-me-sarah-palin>.

Joan and I continue to volunteer at the Shrewsbury Museum (http://www.shrewsburymuseums.com/). After completing the identification and cataloguing of Victorian bird taxidermy specimens, we are now identifying, cleaning, cataloguing and conserving birds eggs. The eggs are largely from amateur collections established in the late 1800s and early 1900s. (It is, of course, now illegal to collect wild birds's eggs in the UK.) Many of these collections have been poorly looked after over the years and take quite an effort to conserve. Since the museum is moving in the next few years to new facilities, there is something of an incentive to get the job done before the move. Also, next year is a big one for Shrewsbury as it is the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, and he is a son of the town. All sorts of celebratory events are planned, some of which will involve the Museum and our bird Victorian taxidermy and egg specimens.

Much of my other activities are bird-related, as you might guess. I write regular articles for the "Buzzard", the SOS magazine, [his Buzzard articles are also published on a web site] do assorted bird surveys and help run the Church Stretton branch of the SOS.

We have recently decided that we need more help with our garden, which is quite large and not that easy to maintain. We have employed a garden designer to suggest limited modifications to make it easier to look after but to enhance its wildlife potential. It already is pretty good for nature but we would like to extend this by introducing some different types of habitats (e.g. meadow) without losing the environments we already have. Additionally, we will work with him in person doing most of the work required. I am paranoid about losing cover and nesting habitat for birds but he seems to understand my perspective as he specialises in nature gardening and has a background in conservation. Keep your eyes on Joan's blog for developments in this area.

Joan's health check-ups have been good with no recurrence of cancer. We are hoping that in a couple of years she will be able to finish with the drugs she was prescribed for five years, which have lots of nasty side-effects. She is making something of a name for herself as a local wheeler-dealer, working on the sustainable tourism initiative and insinuating herself into various aspects of local politics. She also takes a major role both in the Church Stretton and South Shropshire Arts Festival and in Scrappies - a local charity "scrap for arts and crafts" store, for which she is again web person (http://www.scrappies.org/). She has not yet agreed to run for the local council but I see it in the future! [Forget it - there is NO WAY!!!!!] She is a one-woman non-governmental organisation!

The downturn in the economy is, of course, very evident here as this area depends quite heavily on tourism and folk have less disposable cash to spend of travelling. However, as most of the tourist focus here is on hill walking and mountain biking, I don't think we have been affected as much as areas depending on more expensive leisure pursuits. From a personal point of view, the drop in the value of the pound relative to the dollar has been a great boon to us as our pensions are paid in US dollars and are, hence, buying more pounds here.

We have just returned from a week in Montreal [where I took the picture at the top of this post!]. I am on the oversight board of the EPiCC (Environmental Prediction in Canadian Cities) project, which is concerned with urban climates in Canada (http://www.epicc.uwo.ca/). The board meets annually and the Montreal trip was for this purpose, although we stayed on for a few more days of city life, museums, concerts etc. We had a great time although it was pretty cold (-19 deg C was the coldest while we were there) with lots of snow.

Christmas will be with my sister Joy in Nuneaton, a pattern we have followed since our return to the UK. We will, of course, overeat, over-drink and lie about like bloated walruses before being consumed by guilt and shame, prompting plans to look after ourselves in 2009 (which we will be unable to do, thus leading to depression and low self-esteem). Tidings of comfort and joy to you too! [We've been and done that - It was lovely!]

What else? I continue my involvement with photography, especially nature photography [me too, but I mostly take snaps! This is one of the waxwings we saw on New Year's Eve]. We have frequent trips to Symphony Hall Birmingham for concerts by the CBSO and other orchestras and also take in a few plays each year. I have become increasingly interested in cookery and have improved considerably, having shaken off the tendency to panic when things don't go quite as I had planned, although I still have a long way to go. I do virtually all of the day-to-day cooking now and, as long as I have my glass of wine and some music on, I find it very relaxing. [So do I as I'm off the hook! And he is making the most delicious meals - YUM!]

Next year will be our ruby wedding anniversary (!!!!!!) so we are planning a few special occasions. One will be a trip to Costa Rica in March for a bird watching trip. The tour is a small group one organised by some friends from Columbus Audubon, who asked whether we would be interested in joining them. We have never been anywhere like Costa Rica and it should be very interesting, with lots of new (and spectacular) bird species to see."

Well, that's all for now. I hope to be posting a lot of stuff about the garden this year as the renovations go ahead. This is going to be the place where we document what we did and how it's all working out.

Stay tuned ... and write when you can.

Virtual Tour of Columbus

2008-11-25T17:52:00.002Z

John just forwarded this article to me from OSU today. Some of you will have seen this already, but for others it will be new. If you have Google Earth, take the tour - it's really interesting. If you don't have it, this may be just the incentive you need to download it. Google Earth is really amazing - I love it!

"Geography students create virtual field trip of Columbus"

"A group of undergraduates in Geography professor Ola Ahlqvist's computer based mapping class have developed a digital version of emeritus professor Henry Hunker's "Time and Change" tour of Columbus. Places and events described in Hunker's original 1956 narrative and later updates come alive in this interactive mapping environment. Hunker's text serves as the primary guide, but students have added themes and resources, videos and 3-D graphics for an interesting result. <http://www.geography.osu.edu/get-connected/hunker>..."

Diurnal Badger

2008-11-16T13:09:00.008Z

We've been seeing a badger in the daytime. This is extremely unusual, and we're not sure why it's happening. Is he a young male that has been made unwelcome in the sett? Is he/she unwell? In the States we would immediately worry about rabies, but that isn't at all likely over here.

This behaviour has been going on for several weeks, so if the badger is ill, it isn't very ill, and it certainly doesn't look ill at all. Maybe this is just a response to a safe environment.

Once or twice we spotted the badger crossing the driveway on his way between two wooded areas, and a neighbour saw him trotting up the driveway and along the road to someone else's house, but today he was out feeding on the lawn for several minutes and I was able to take a few pictures looking down on him from my study window.

It may happen after a rainy night. We're not sure about this, but perhaps some part of the sett is getting wet for some reason. We're going to have to look into this in more detail.

Musings on town websites

2008-11-06T17:22:00.002Z

Hi there friends! I know it's been a long time since I last posted. The post below this explains why!

Right now, I'm involved in helping our Mayor - Bob Welch - understand our town website and answer the various criticisms that have been levelled against it. I need to post some links for various people on various committees, too, and I've decided to do it here. Some of you won't be very interested in this but others might, so feel free to read on if you want!

There has been quite a bit of discussion about the Church Stretton town website. Is it doing the job? What job is it supposed to be doing anyway?

Most towns now have some sort of presence on the web. Here are some links to other towns’ websites. I've been browsing around to see what I like and don’t like about them.

Shropshire Town sites include Ludlow, Bishop’s Castle, Clun, Wem, Ellesmere, Market Drayton.
There’s a large range here. Some towns have town council sites. These in turn may include tourist information or may just list council facilities or events or may not even be complete. Ludlow has lots of information and looks quite upbeat, but it’s still a bit “busy” for my taste.

Yorkshire Towns: Why Yorkshire? I’ve just spent time in Skipton at the Action for Market Towns Conference and was impressed that North Yorkshire is doing a lot to promote its towns and tourism. Skipton, for instance, has two sites: one from the council and one from a local web design firm, whereas Ilkley has a comprehensive but amateurish-looking site. Here’s Hebden Bridge’s site.

Lots of towns have sites run by the borough council. Here’s Tamworth’s. It’s quite typical. In fact, as I look at town sites on the web, I find many of them have very similar structures. I wonder if they are following some template that I could find out there somewhere. Nuneaton and Bedworth follow the same typical pattern.

The thing about many of these sites is that they have to do everything for the town/borough council. Tourism is just a tiny part of it. These sites are dealing with everything from benefits to transport, from dead animal removal to adult education. It’s no wonder that the tourism stuff gets buried in all the other stuff.

On the other hand, you can just chuck a lot of stuff on a page and get a bit of a mess. Looe in Cornwall has a website like that!

Here’s a newly re-vamped web site that looks promising - Telscombe in East Sussex. It looks as though it isn’t completely ready for prime time, but the design is fresh and exiting.

Some other good sites that I have come across:

Alcester in Warwickshire - a bit busy, but something about the site hums with activity and draws you in.
Seaford in East Sussex - a clean, fresh looking website
Hythe in Hampshire - this is the place that did the snow machine thing last Christmas.

I’ve just come across a web design firm that can make a cheap website from a template. They are Spider solutions. They have designed websites for several towns including Diss, Wymondham and Thetford. All the websites are similar - obviously put together as one template and then just the colours and copy changed from town to town. At the bottom of any one of the sites, you can find links to all the others.

Having seen all these sites, I’m underimpressed. I think our site is on the right track and covers most of the salient points. There are problems, however. One is the home page, which is dull and busy. Another is difficulty of navigation. For some reason I can’t find my way to the pages I want, when I want them. A third problem is copy. Unfortunately, that is a universal problem and not limited to the Church Stretton Web Site. How do we get people to contribute information? How do we make it easy for them to submit it on-line? How do we get it up and displayed in a timely manner?

Does anyone have any ideas?

We are still alive!

2008-08-06T15:29:00.006+01:00

The rumour that we have disappeared off the face of the earth is grossly exaggerated! We are still here!

But we've been horribly busy:

I somehow volunteered to prepare the brochure for the Food Fayre. You can download a pdf of it here. The colours are not my choice - we were constrained by the Co-op who use those colours to "brand" their eco-friendly, healthy eating campaign. Brochure prep. somehow led to flyer design, power-point display construction and all sorts of other design work!
May was spent preparing for the opening of Scraptastic, the new craft shop at Scrappies. Click here to see photos of the preparation and the opening.
Early June and all of July were spent preparing for and working at the 2008 Church Stretton Arts Festival. In particular I helped with the Art Exhibition, which is a big one - 160 exhibitors, 600 art works, over 1000 visitors and over £5000 in sales. I will be the Exhibition organiser next year.
Late June was spent in Cucugnan with Dolly and Chris. It was a lovely restful time and we enjoyed every minute of it. I hope to post pictures and further information later.
Now I'm developing a new web site for the Arts Festival. This is a work in progress, but feel free to check it out.
John is preparing a talk on Climate Change for the Ludlow Probus group.
He is also still coordinating Bird Surveys for his area and is now starting on the big task of mapping the results of various surveys for the new version of the Shropshire Bird Atlas.
I'm now the Deputy Chair of the Steering group of the Church Stretton Partnership, I'm not sure what it means, but I have a lot of reading to do and several meetings and a conference to attend.

I've been so busy, I'm really, really tired. But I've never felt so ALIVE in all my life!

Write when you can!

My Diary

2008-04-10T14:48:00.004+01:00

April 1.

11:00 am. It's April Fool's day and I've foolishly decided to keep a diary for a while so that I can post it on my blog and show everyone what our lives look like right now. I'm not much of a diarist, so who knows how long I can keep it up. Anyway, here's the first week:

Today started off windy and cloudy, but there's no rain forecast and we're hoping it will get sunnier as the day goes on. Up at 8 to the sounds of Simon Bates on Classic FM. After a leisurely breakfast of cereal and tea we've been pottering around for the morning. I've been looking into travel stuff on the web. First I was intrigued by an ad for the Orient Express to Venice so I went to look. It looks lovely, but it's frightfully expensive. Then I started looking at the possibilities for going up to London for the marathon as my cousin Jaques is running. I'm not going to be able to do it. John is going off to Thetford for a birding meeting and I don't fancy going on the train and then fighting the crowds in the city. Now that that decision is over I also have to decide whether to go to Thetford with John. It's a nice area with lots of interesting history, but he wants to go to the coast and that means hours of standing around peering through a telescope, so I think I'll give it a miss.

Now I'm getting down to business - phone calls to get an appointment for the sleep apnea clinic and to get another firm in to make an estimate on renovating the bathroom, then database stuff.

This afternoon I went down to Scrappies. Spent the first hour or so making a mess with all the new stock that has come in. This was all in the name of photography. I was trying to get a nice photo of all the crafty things to go with an article I am writing for the Stretton Focus. This is our town monthly magazine. It's sponsored by the local churches so there's always a few religious articles in it, but it also has all the other news - club meetings, parish council decisions and stories about the school - as well as articles about local walks, gardening, cooking and other miscellanea. I'm doing an article about the new Craft Shop. Anyway, I digress. I didn't realise how difficult it is to make sequins, rhinestones, card makings and other stuff look good in a picture and after I got home I realised that I had been totally unsuccessful.

When I finished picture taking and cleared up my mess I sat down and did a bit of pricing. All the new stock has to have prices written on it in preparation for the opening. Lots of thought has gone into this. We need to be similar to the other stockists, but cheaper to get people into the store but not so cheap that our members discounts will put us in the red! It's all very tricky! Irene and Sheila worked it out when we unpacked a couple of weeks ago, but since then we've been comparing prices with shops and catalogs and some of the prices have been put up a bit! We may as well make as much money from this as possible.

Home for a quick dinner and an even quicker tidy up because some friends were coming over in the evening for a drink and some badger watching. We saved the fat from our pork chops for the badgers, but it turned out that they preferred their usual diet of peanuts and didn't eat any fat till they'd polished off all the nuts. We had a jolly good evening. Wine was drunk, badgers were watched and the conversation ranged over many subjects. What more could anyone want?

The video below was actually taken some time ago, but I've only just realise that the blogger now allows video uploads! Sorry about the background buzz on the sound, but I wanted you to hear how much noise the badgers make when they are eating.

April 2

Off to the gym in the morning. I haven't been for a week because I had cellulitis in my arm last week and I didn't want to do anything "exertious" and spread the infection. It's all better now so I have no more excuses. I should have started back on Monday, but we went to a staff meeeting at the museum first and then ended up working most of the day shifting stuffed birds about the building. After that we didn't feel like working out and we came straight home! But that was Monday and this is Wednesday and we did the right thing and got on the 9:38 train and zoomed off to Shrewsbury. Into the gym by 10 and doing the rounds of the various machines. We do a combination of aerobics and weights. Today we concentrated on the legs with the weights and I used the cross-trainer to warm up and did an aerobic stint on a treadmill. Normally I do rowing when we're using the leg weights, but I didn't want to stress my silly arm too much.

Came back on our usual train: the 11:48 from Shrewsbury arriving back at about 12:30 starving for lunch!

After lunch I went off to Scrappies again. I had a date to meet Serena from Shropshire Youth Association to get my Criminal Record Check started off. I have to have a check so I can do craft workshops and work with children. Over here you have to have checks whenever you work with a vulnerable section of the population, although I believe that it sometimes takes so long to get the results that the job is over before the checks are done! Serena had to vouch that she'd seen my various forms of identification. I think she was impressed as I produced Passport, Driving Licence, Birth Cert., Marriage Cert., Council Tax bill, Gas Bill and other good stuff. They were all impressed when I said I also have birth certs for family members going back into the 1850s! At Scrappies, Laura was watching the desk as John Roberts was supposed to be having his hernia operation. I stayed around to help with more pricing and ended up staying there till 7 pm because Laura had to leave early to catch a train. In the end I helped get the workroom tidy and cleaned up ready for a kids birthday party which was scheduled for the next day. I've now sorted all the new stock into boxes of similar things and I've also sorted them according to whether they've been priced or not. Yesterday I got fed up clawing through all the boxes looking for stuff I wanted. Now I know where it is.

John had dinner when I got back and I collapsed in front of the telly after dinner. That often happens, or I go up to my room and play games on the computer. I'm nearly always too tired in the evening to do much of anything. This, I think, is a result of the beastly arimidex. I often go up early thinking that I'll get an early night and then I end up playing a stupid shoot-em-up game on MSN or Yahoo. When we go to bed, John usually reads for a while, and I used to just drop off, but now I generally do a Sudoku or two on my little electronic gizmo and sometimes I just fall asleep doing it!

April 3

Hooray! Nothing on the calendar all day! But there's plenty to do. It was a lovely morning so, for the first time since we got here, I got out Eve's old bike and rode up the Cardingmill Valley to the National Trust Office. It was quite mild so I was sweating by the time I got there. It's a heavy old bike with a 3-speed Sturmey Archer and I found it hard going. I always thought it was relatively flat up the valley, but it ain't! Peter Carty, the land manager, wasn't there which was a pity as I was really trying to see him to see if we could work out something co-operative between the NT and the Arts Festival, but I saw the education man - Chris Stratton - and we had a nice chat and he gave me the phone number and e-mail address I needed to write the Chris Doyle. She's the publicity woman for the West Midlands National Trust and I need to get to her to get the Food Fayre brochure printed up.

Riding back was easy - I free-wheeled all the way home! In fact, the hill was steep enough that I had to brake once or twice.

After lunch I went out to help John in the garden. He was putting up trellises on the front wall under and beside the guest room window. While he put up the trellises I pruned and re-arranged the climbers alongside the patio. There's a Virginia Creeper there which keeps trying to move over and swamp the other plants (climbing Hydrangea, Clematis and Honeysuckle). Around the corner where the trellises went up, we have an undisciplined jasmin there and last year we cut it back drastically meaning to train it up the trellis. Well, we didn't get it up on the wall and the jasmin grew and grew and made a great tangled mass hanging over the flower bed. After John did the hard work of screwing the trellis to the wall I spent an hour or so weaving all the vines and now it looks very tidy. Let's hope it grows, puts out leaves and flowers this year. If there are a lot of flowers the scent will waft into the guest room and it should be really delicious.

It was a lovely warm afternoon and we had our mugs of tea sitting on the patio. The sun was shining, the wind had calmed a bit (it's never really calm here) and we were able to relax and enjoy all the daffodils, forsythia and other spring flowers. When tea was over John continued in the garden - cleaning off the patio. There were last year's leaves, large lumps of moss which had fallen off the roof (helped by the magpies and crows who dig it up when looking for grubs and insects), all the vines I had pruned, pheasant poop and all the other winter detritus. It still needs a good hose down to get the moss up from the cracks between the paving stones, but it does look a hell of a lot better than it did a few days ago.

I made dinner tonight - veggie lasagna. I'm not cooking as much as I used to. John is doing it, and doing it well. I've taken over more of the other jobs like the washing and the washing up. I don't mind as they're things I can slot in around all the volunteer work I'm doing.

It was so warm today that we thought we might have some wildlife in the pond. Sure enough we found a couple of frogs when we shone the torch around the pond. Both of them were off away from the water - maybe the pebbles that surround the pond were warm and comfy for them tonight. Most evenings we can see newts in the pond, too, although they usually swim off and hide under rocks when we shine the light on them.

April 4.

Another morning at the gym. I must say I resented it this morning. I woke up tired and I didn't want to get dressed and go out. I dragged all the way there and my work out was difficult and draggy too. Needless to say I was not well pleased to find the locker room wide open and full of cleaning materials. I decided not to bother with a shower so got dressed and nipped out to buy a birthday card for Steve while John showered and dressed.

We picked up a few supplies on the way home and settled in for the rest of the day. It's turned cold and windy again so there was no gardening or sitting outside! I spent the afternoon working on my focus article and some other bits and pieces and after dinner (the rest of the lasagna) we vegged out for the evening watching telly and playing on the computer.

April 5.

It's Saturday but we don't get to sleep in. I had a quick shower and then got ready to go out. Stopped at Steve and Marjorie's to deliver a bit of cake and Steve's birthday card. He's 89! (And she just turned 91 - the cradle snatcher!!!!). Then on to Scrappies to help hold the fort. Laura was late arriving, John never did show up and Irene called in Delphine to help out. Saturday is my normal day to work at Scrappies. I usually go in and enter the membership data onto my laptop. Normally the only others there are John Roberts and Irene so they're glad of an extra body around in case of emergencies. We can't keep the shop open unless there are two people around.

After I'd entered data I was able to start more pricing. Delphine agreed to take some home to do and I was able to find it quickly because I'd sorted and labelled all the boxes. Irene and I looked over the latest draft of the focus article and discussed some other issues. The Management Committee meeting is coming up and we need to get the agenda sorted out. In fact, we need to see if we can change the date as we've already had a few apologies!

I got home at 3 and had a late lunch. Good job I did. About half past 5 David, who lives at the top of the drive, showed up at the door with a streaming nose bleed. Ella followed him down, of course. He's on his own this weekend as Pam has gone off to visit her daughters in London and Hampshire. We got him sat down with paper towels and ice packs but it just wouldn't stop. It was bleeding pretty strongly - much stronger than mine are usually - and because we were worried about his various illnesses and drugs (including warfarin) we ended up calling the squad. The standby guy was on his way into Church Stretton, fortunately, and we heard him coming down the drive before John finished the phone call! The ambulance arrived a few minutes later. It was the same team we had when Marjorie had her fall last summer so we knew them. They also knew David as they'd rushed him to hospital with heart problems at about the same time. Anyway, they decided not to drive down so they took David up in the ambulance car and transferred him to the real ambulance at the top.

I went to the hospital in Shrewsbury with David, while John took Ella home and locked up the house for David. I was able to chat to the ambulance driver the whole way. They took us straight to the head and neck department (which stays open for emergencies) so we bypassed the queues in the emergency room. In no time at all they cleaned out David's nose, numbed it and cauterised it. The bleeding stopped immediately. We hung around in the waiting room till the doctor was satisfied that the bleeding was truly stopped and then we called John who picked us up and took us home via the fish and chip shop. The three of us had a very good meal at David's house. Ella spent most of the time sitting by me watching in the hopes that I would drop a chip! We came home about 10. We left David looking pretty perky and although we told him he needed to rest, it was really me that needed to come home and chill out! We told him we'd be back to take Ella for a walk in the morning.

April 6.

We woke to see snow lying about this morning. It wasn't a complete layer and it was melting fast, but it looked very pretty for a while. The poor old daffs didn't like it very much - they were all bowed down - but I don't think it did a lot of long-term damage.

After breakfast we took Ella for a walk in Rectory Field and Woods. This is a lovely area in town which used to be the pleasure grounds of our rectory. Our rectors must have been quite wealthy as it is a large area. Now it belongs to the Civil Parish. Part of it is a big grass field. Some of that is relatively flat and that's where Church Stretton has its annual bonfire on November 5th. The rest of the field is steeply sloped, but you can climb up there for a good view and access to the Long Mynd. The rest of the area is wooded and criss-crossed by footpaths. Ella and I climbed to the top of the hill in the woods while John did some birding lower down. The Town Brook runs through, from Ella's favorite swimming hole in the reservoir at the top to another of her bathing places at Yew Tree Pool. This time we had to keep her away from the water as she's developed an itchy, flaky skin condition and the vet has advised against letting her swim. The woods were full of people and dogs walking, enjoying the light snow and looking around to see how the spring is progressing. The daffs here looked a bit sad, too, but there were the signs of bluebells in bud and in a couple of weeks the woods will be carpeted in blue. Rectory Field and Woods is John's new "Patch" where he goes regularly to bird watch. He makes counts of the birds he sees and keeps notes so he can compare from season to season. Today there weren't many birds about, perhaps because of the snow, perhaps because of all the people walking about, but we did see a buzzard, lots of jackdaws and crows and the usual chaffinches and robins.

Once we'd delivered Ella home, we headed back into town for the European market. This happens every few months in many places in the UK. They have a street market with vendors who have driven all night from various places in Europe. Our market had stalls from Portugal, France, Spain, Italy and somewhere in the middle east. It wasn't very big this time, but we found plenty of goodies to bring home for our lunch. While we were shopping it started to snow again, too! Lunch was a wonderful mixture of French cheese, middle eastern olives, pickled ginger, pickled RAW garlic, bread and Portuguese sardine fritters - all washed down with a glass of white wine. Delicious!

This afternoon I completed the focus article and sent it off before heading over to Steve and Marjorie's for a cuppa and a piece of cake. I often go over on a Sunday afternoon for an hour or so. We mull over the events of the week, catch up on the gossip and the sports and have a bit of a laugh. Today they were feeling very pleased with themselves as they had managed to get Marjorie's support hose on without any help. During the week they have carers who come to help Marjorie dress and wash and they get her stockings on. On the weekends, though, they like a little lie-in and so they don't have the carer and Steve has to help Marjorie who is rather weak and has balance problems. For the last couple of weeks I've come over in the morning and pulled on the stockings, but today Steve managed it by himself.

I decided to do some craft work when I came home from the neighbours. A couple of weeks ago I bought a couple of metal flamingos. Decided I was going to test out some interference paints on them and see how they worked. I watered the paint down a bit as I didn't want them to be too brightly coloured and I set to to sponge the paint onto their bodies. It worked out quite well on the dark brown metal. Interference paint only shows up on a dark background. The bodies now have a pinkish sheen, the wing and tail feathers are gold with bright yellow feather shafts and the heads are purplish pink. Sounds quite horrible doesn't it? However, it looks pretty good.

After a large lunch we waited a while for dinner, but when it came it was delicious. John excelled himself with roast duck accompanied by roast potatoes and parsnips. For dessert we had baklava from the market. Yum, yum.

April 7.

Monday - ugh! Well, actually it doesn't really matter since retired people don't really have weekends! Anyway, it looked a bit warmer than expected this morning so I decided to forgo the gym and take Ella for a walk instead. I'm trying to help Dave out right now. The doctor said he's not supposed to exert himself, sneeze or blow his nose. On top of that, he has breathing problems in the cold weather so it makes more sense for me to take Ella in the morning and for him to go out for a shorter walk with her in the afternoon. So, as John set off for the gym I went up the drive to pick up Ella.

We had a smashing walk, up to the entrance of the National Trust property in Cardingmill Valley and then off on the side path around the base of Stanyeld Hill. However, this time instead of carrying on to the golf course I turned up the hill and climbed a steep sheep path up the fence-line to the top of Stanyeld. This is the hill we can see out of our kitchen, study and living room windows and I've wanted to climb to the top of it since we got here. Somehow we've never done it. It was very steep and not a good path, but with one sit-down in the middle of it we managed to get to the top where we enjoyed a fabulous view over the town. In a way, this was a preliminary recce. I want to get some photos of the house and I wanted to find out where the best view points were. We wandered about all over the hill and over the golf course, exploring various paths and viewpoints.

Ella is very good. She rarely looses sight of you as she runs all over the place hunting rabbits, splashing into streams and generally doing doggy things. I did loose her once and that's because her other favourite friends were up on the hill at the same time and she heard them and decided to go and visit them. It's not likely to happen again, and if it does I'll know who to look for!

We made it to the top of Stanyeld in half an hour from home which I thought was pretty good, and we were back home in an hour and ten minutes. The nice thing about walking a neighbour's dog is that he has to clean her up afterwards! I just came home, made myself a hot drink and got on with some work. I sent off the food fayre brochure to the National Trust, who we hope are going to send it to the printers for us. I've done most of the design work on the brochure and I'm quite pleased with it. It's the first time I've done anything like this and it's come out quite well.

I took the flamingoes out and put them where the pheasants often feed. I'm waiting to see how long it is before John notices them!

He got back from Shrewsbury at lunch time and we had some more french cheese on bread. He brought home a "donker" loaf for me - delicious malted rye bread, bue he toasted the white bread we bought at the market and had that. After lunch we had a quick clean up in time for the arrival of another kitchen and bath person. Spent quite a while with him as he looked at the two bathrooms and we discussed various options. We've decided that the bottom bathroom has to be the one we put the bath in and he's made measurements and gone off to do an estimate. Whoever wins the contract to do this bathroom will also end up doing the upstairs one and the kitchen, so we want to make sure we get the right firm.

Well, we've had a couple of tiny showers today, but in general it has been quite nice. The sun is shining brightly and penetrating throughout the house now, which is such a blessing. The house is very dark in the winter, but today it's so bright all the lights are off. The solar fountain in the little pond is spraying well too - I like to watch it. In fact I can stand at the living room window for hours watching it!

Of course, you already know that I like to spend hours watching the wildlife. Mr. Magnificent has been walking around looking absolutely gorgeous. His golden feathers sometimes shine pure gold in the sunshine and sometimes they take on a purplish cast. The females have quite a bit of purplish colouring around the neck too and in a more subdued way are also lovely. We're a bit worried about Ginger Rogers our oldest female. She has some ruffled feathers on her neck and we're wondering if she has a growth. She seems fit and active, but she is probably 3 years old and that's about as old as they usually get "in the wild".

We now have a pair of rabbits that spend most of the day on the back lawn. I'm surprised a passing buzzard hasn't seen them and taken one off for dinner. The rabbits were making love the other day, so I expect we'll have more as time goes by. I'm not sure where their warren is, but they might be in the bank where the badger sett is. I'm not sure what they're eating, either, but while they stay on the lawn they're not doing too much harm. I don't think I'll bother to plant any vegetables or salad - they'll have it in no time. One thing has puzzled me, though. Every now and then one of them will get into a game of chase with a squirrel. It doesn't look like a serious fight or anything - the squirrel will chase the rabbit around the lawn for a while and then the rabbit will chase the squirrel. Cross-species play? Very peculiar!

We've been boiling up the duck bones with the remains of the gravy from yesterday and a few veggies. The whole house smells of duck soup and that's what we'll have for lunch tomorrow. Some of the broth will go for gravy tonight as we convert the remains of the roast duck into a cottage pie with carrots, mashed potatoes and peas .... yum .... can't wait!

Other Volunteer Activities

2008-04-07T17:13:00.009+01:00

In my last post I told you about our work for the museum and the ornithological society. I'd like to tell you about my other volunteer activities, too.

Firstly, I help with the Church Stretton Arts Festival. The summer after we arrived we went to many of the Arts Festival events and enjoyed them. While we were visiting the Art Exhibition we got talking to Sue Mabbutt (the organizer) and I volunteered to help. To start off with I helped with just the Art Exhibition. I have the database of exhibitors and am responsible for contacting them each year to invite them to participate, collecting their entry forms money and producing the lists of entries. Then I ended up helping on hanging day and collection day and did a little bit of work in between!

The picture on the left is of the flyer I designed for the Art Exhibition last year. We have lots left, so I'm going to stick a label over the date and time so we can use them this year!

This year my work has expanded to the rest of the festival. I'm now a member of the committee and work on the publicity sub-committee. I try to co-ordinate the jobs I do for the Arts Festival with the ones I do for the Food Fayre. I've been contacting web sites that have events listings and have managed to list our events on several. It's good fun. I like the people who work on this committee. They are very hard working and get a heck of a lot done for the good of this area. I think I may have offended one or two because I'm a bit out spoken, but I'm hoping they'll forgive me if I work hard enough.

Because of Sue Mabbutt and her husband Clive, John and I both work for the Church Stretton Food Fayre, also. This year, the food fayre is a two day event, on August 24th and 25th. The 25th is our late August bank holiday (a lot like labour day in the States). We will be setting up marquees in the school playing field and expect over 100 food and craft vendors to show their wares. Along with that we will have food demonstrations - including a very dishy chef called Mark Earndon courtesy of our local Co-Op Society - entertainments including birds of prey, a brass band, circus skills, arts and crafts workshops, face painting and belly dancing and an evening of "golden oldies" in the music/beer tent.

Check out this web page about Mark. There's a You Tube video of his work too.

The food fayre has a large coterie of volunteers who help on the day with everything from taking money and monitoring the carpark to washing dishes in the food demo tent and cleaning the loos! However, we work year round. John is the webmaster and I am the vice-chair. It's not exactly clear what a vice-chair does as we haven't had one before, but I'm trying to fill in wherever there are gaps. I've tried to help Clive with publicity, I've designed the tri-fold leaflet that goes into pubs, tourist centres, libraries, bed and breakfasts, etc., I've been trying to put our information into the various "What's On" web sites and I help out wherever possible. During the actual fair I will probably be helping with getting the exhibitors situated, I might collect up the takings, help out on the gate or do whatever. Sue, Helen and I took a first aid training course, too, so we can be the first people to respond to any emergencies that might arise.

While we were helping at a Volunteering Recruitment day trying to find more volunteers for the Food Fayre I ran across a display about Scrappies. I got talking the Serena there and she said that Scrappies needed a new web person. I immediately volunteered to do that and from there I've ended up doing lots more. I'm still the web master and you can see my efforts by clicking here. From there it was a small step to helping out with computer problems and working to update their membership data base. That led to my volunteering to enter all the data - renewals, new memberships and address changes - and finally to sending out renewal notices and newsletters! So you can see the job has expanded and it continues to expand. I'm now on their management committee and I try to help out in the store when and if I can.

Getting Up To Date

2008-03-31T17:10:00.010+01:00

Phew! We've just got back from the museum where we have been working today. We're actually earlier than expected as we worked hard and got the jobs done quicker than expected. So I thought I'd just explain about some of the volunteer stuff I'm doing.

The museum was my first volunteering job. To start off with, John and I were identifying, cataloging and storing the stuffed birds. We finished that in 2006 and started on the egg collection. The eggs have been stored rather badly since the 1950s when, I think, they were moved rather rapidly from their old resting place in the Shrewsbury Library. Many rolled about in their cases because they weren't properly packed, and others were sqashed when the lids of boxes that were too small were pushed down on them, so there are a lot of broken eggs to deal with. In addition many of them are very dirty so we are slowly and gently cleaning them with cotton and water. You have to be very careful because most of them are very old and fragile.

The pictures show what the eggs looked like when we first started on them. That job is still continuing, but today we were back with the birds. Most of them have been stored in capboards in the ceramics gallery of the museum, but that room is about to be used for another purpose, so all the birds had to be moved. We managed to get it all done by squeezing some temporary storage space out of the dusty old attic and by packing the birds more efficiently in the trays they're stored in.

The Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery is currently housed in a Tudor building called Rowley's House. Click on the link for pictures and lots of information about the museum. This is a lovely old house, partly done in huge black timbers and white plaster and partly done in brick. But it's totally unsuitable as a modern museum. You can see light through the cracks in the walls and the floor boards, the rain comes in at times, there is no handicapped access to the upper floors and there are inadequate toilet facilities for a public building. There's not a lot that can be done to improve things as it is a listed building and hence, protected from change by law.

Fortunately, we'll be moving in a few years into the Old Music Hall, when the entertainment functions of that building are moved into the new Entertainment Venue in Frankwell on the other side of the River Severn. Before we can move in, however, the Old Music Hall site must be redeveloped. The building is actually built around a medieval stucture called Vaughn's Mansion and that has to be exposed, examined and prepared for public view. There's a great deal of exitement about this building as it is very old and they could find all sorts of interesting stuff as the layers of newer building are peeled off from its fabric. Next week they are taking paintings off the walls. These are huge and it's going to cost hundreds of thousands of pounds to get them down, take them out of their frames, cover them with tissue and roll them up for storage. They are so big they can't be stored in their frames. Once the building has been renovated they will be re-stretched, the conservators will remove the tissue and then do any necessary conservation work on them before they are re-framed and hung back up!

In the new "Old Music Hall" building we will have a good, new purpose built museum space adjacent to Vaughn's Mansion and will share that space with the cafe and the Visitor Information Centre (VIC) which are there now. In the meantime, the VIC is moving in with us in Rowley's house along with several people who are working on the redevelopment project. To make room for all these people, the ceramics gallery is being turned into offices and that's why we had to move the birds out today.

Enough about that ... let's move on to the SOS (Shropshire Ornithological Society). I quickly became the tea-lady for the Church Stretton branch of this organization because the old tea-lady became ill. This is not an onerous task. We have 5 indoor meetings a year and I put on tea, coffee and biscuits for the members to consume when they arrive.

John, however, has become very involved in the breeding and over-wintering bird survey programs of the SOS. These are run in conjunction with the BTO (British Trust for Ornithology) and he has become a district co-ordinator for a part of Shropshire. He has also volunteered to map the results for the upcoming Atlas. At present, his work involves finding volunteers to do the various surveys in his area, helping them when they have questions or problems, collecting and entering data on the web. Later, as the data come in he will be doing more and more of the mapping and analysis.

It's dinner time .... I'll have to do another post later about the rest of my volunteer activities!

Adventures in Veggie Land ....

2008-03-30T22:26:00.009+01:00

To continue our February story ....

Towards the end of of the month we headed up to Cheshire to stay with Dolly and her partner, Chris. There was a speciual reason for this - Chris and I were booked in to Cordon Vert for a day's cookery course. For Chris this was a birthday present from Dolly, for me it was a special treat from me!

After a very nice dinner at a local pub we had a good evening at Dolly's and then an early night followed by an early start. John and Dolly headed out for a day of bird watching while Chris and I drove over to Altrincham and the headquarters of the Vegetarian Society where we checked in for our Easy Vegetarian Entertaining class. There were four students and two instructors so the student teacher ration was very favorable. Our morning started with coffee and an orientation session. We were relieved to hear that there would be no preaching as three of the four of us are actually omniverous!

We then had demonstrations of some of the dishes followed by a brief break while we planned our cooking sessions and tried a few samples of what had been demonstrated. They wouldn't let us eat a lot as we were planning to cook a feast to eat later. After the break we donned aprons, and started to cook. We cooked in two pairs and were assigned different foods. I got to make one of the savouries and one of the desserts and Chris made one of the roulades and a salad, and we both helped each other when necessary. Since there were only 4 of us the tutors and the in-house chef made a couple of dishes too.

There was lots of hands-on help with our dishes as well, and after about four hours the four of us sat down to a huge buffet which included .......

Spinach and red pepper roulade

Aubergine roulade

Sweet potato enchiladas

Black rice cakes

Santa Fe Stacks with polenta, guacamole, grilled goats cheese and salsa

Mediterranean roasted vegetable tart

Sweet and sour chicory salad

Moroccan salad

Lavendar scented roast nectarines

and the best bit of all ..... Honey, ginger and chocolate ice cream bombe!

I've included some pictures of the food and the people. Chris was the only guy and he's the one making the roulade!

The food was absolutely delicious and we really enjoyed ourselves. Both Chris and I have used the knowledge we gained to make stuff since we went on the course - I've done the Santa Fe stacks and a rather sloppy but still very delicious aubergine roulade! I intend to go back again and take some more courses.

In the meantime, I've been doing a lot less cooking at home because John is doing a lot more. And he's becoming a very good cook. His timing is getting a lot better and his speed is really picking up. He has a good sense of what goes together and produces some very interesting and tasty surprises.

February Fun

2008-03-29T15:13:00.009Z

The late winter has flown by. We've been so busy we didn't really notice its passing. At the beginning of the month we had a visit from Dolly, Jane and Kim. Dolly and Jane were at Mac with us and Kim is Jane's daughter. We had a smashing time - lots of talk and laughter over a good dinner.

Two days after their visit, we were heading off to Devon for a few days. Karel Hughes (a friend from Swansea days) was having an art show opening and party in Axmouth and Seaton and we were going to it. It was a blast! The weather was wonderful - strong sunshine for the whole weekend - and I had a new camera to test out!

We stayed in Lyme Regis and spent the first afternoon exploring the town and the sea front. Then the next afternoon we went to the opening. Lots of old Swansea friends were there so there was lots of wine to be sipped and stories to tell and re-tell. We were delighted to find that another friend - Pam Jordan - was also exhibiting her art work and were very pleased to be able to purchase one piece from each of them. The quality of their work is really terrific - what talented friends we have!

In the evening the party was held in Axmouth parish hall. There must have been close the 100 people there from all stages of Karel's life. It was great to meet some of her relatives, colleagues from Geography at Roehampton and her children who have grown up to be really nice people. Here daughter struck all of us because she reminded us so much of Karel when she was in her early 20s. Even "Taff", Karel's ex-husband was there and it was good to see him after all these years.

In addition to a delicious buffet, there was a d.j. and we danced till midnight to lots of golden oldies. It's amazing! Most of us can still do the twist! Fortunately we joined Mary (on the left in the picture) and Brian in a taxi from Lyme Regis and so didn't have to drive home. It was nice to be dropped at the door of the hotel and just tumble into bed after all the talking, eating, drinking and dancing!

In true Swansea tradition we were up reasonably early for a walk. We met at Beer and walked around the headland to Branscombe where we visited Mike Lambert's beautiful country house and garden for coffee and more chat. We toured the garden - it's a delightful spot with a pool, lovely plantings and well-sited pieces of sculpture.

Mike is also a Swansea grad, he's a nice guy and it's good to see that he has done well in life. We took an inland route back to Beer and then retired to the house of Karel's friend where we polished off some of the leftovers from the previous night's feast. It was just as good the second time around - crisp salad, chicken casserole, couscous like I've never had before with lots of nuts and seed and spices in it, roasted mediterranean veggies and other stuff I can't remember. Yum - it really hit the spot after our walk.

The following day we were on our own as most people headed back to their homes. We decided to stay on and explore Devon a bit as it's been a long time since either of us has been there. We actually spent most of the day on Dartmor, enjoying the scenery, watching the birds, and just driving around. The picture is of an ancient "Clapper" bridge. It's just piles of stones in the river with slabs of rock to make the pavement, but it has lasted since medieval times at least!

It's time to head off - we're joining the Stretton Theatre Group, this evening, on the bus to Birmingham for a performance of the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. I'll continue with February in my next post.

Christmas and New Year

2008-03-21T20:29:00.004Z

This is not exactly a "Christmassy" picture but it's nice anyway and we saw this ram at Louise and Al's farm on New Years Eve. Our travels continued throughout December, actually. We spent Christmas at John's sisters, came home for a couple of days to welcome Pete and Shirley Robinson who were over from North Carolina, and then went up to Barry and Sheila's for New Year.

While in Lancashire we headed off to the farm which is really out in the wilds on the edge of the Pennines. Louise and Al have been slowly building up an organic farm, renovating a very rundown set of farm buildings and at the same time keeping up their regular jobs. Louise is a high flying academic and Al is a plumber. I don't know where they find the energy to do all this. None of it's easy and most of us only tackle one or two of the above! At one point the farmhouse was unihabitable and they spent at least one winter sleeping in a hayloft in a barn with no heating. I gather their bedside water was often frozen in the morning. I've seen the place and although I have slept in a barn while on a hiking holiday, there's no way I would have stayed there for more than a few nights in summer!

We had a good evening with B&S on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day saw Barry and John head off for some birding while Sheila and I stayed at home. I played at making felt with some of Sheila's fleeces while she busied herself making a fantastic vegetarian feast. B&S are co-owners of "Hank" a small motorhome (with his own blog!) and the other owners came over for the night. They are vegetarians, hence the wonderful meal. It really set me off thinking about vegetarian food. Although I have no intentions of giving up meat, I do enjoy veggies and there are some wonderful ways to prepare them. I realised I needed to learn how ..........

Things settled down for us in January, but we were on the move again in February and that's another story!

Back to Early December!

2008-03-21T19:58:00.005Z

Way back in mid December I promised to tell you about our trip to the west coast (of North America). This was part business and part pleasure. John was heading to Vancouver to a meeting and so we decided to fly to Seattle, spend some time with Carol and Dave and Craig and Ruth. We've known Craig and Carol since the early 70s and although they've now got new partners we were all able to get together for a splendid meal. We also went walking along the shore with Carol and Dave (the picture on the left is from the sculpture park where we puzzled long and hard over this Calder sculpture which was supposed to be an eagle, but looked more like an angry cat!!!) and to a lovely Christmas concert with the Seattle Symphony. They looked after us well, searching out good places to eat chowder, showing us the sights and helping us get over the 8 hour time difference. We were introduced to their new dog "Oliver" who hadn't quite figured out about bathroom etiquette, but who was a quiet and loving dog. Now that they've had him for a while, I wonder if he's still so subdued? I bet he isn't!

Craig and Ruth had us over for a delicious pancake breakfast. Here we are, finally looking around the famous house. We've been meaning to visit for 30 years! It's an amazing place with a lovely view of a lake. Craig has worked hard to put in some really interesting features, although he has been slowed down of late by hurting his back when he fell off Ruth's roof! One of the most interesting features is his old tractor which has been lovingly restored to its original glory. He must have very forgiving neighbours. He rides it around the neighbourhood and I'm sure it doesn't conform to current pollution standards!

We drove up to Vancouver and spent a lovely few days with Tim and Midge Oke. We've known these two for even longer! Tim was just finishing his PhD at McMaster when John arrived in 1966. John and Tim were involved in Urban Climate meetings part of the time, but that didn't stop us from getting out for a couple of meals, driving around Vancouver and the surrounding coastline and generally mooching around shops, markets and art galleries. I even went to a Garden Club Christmas Party and a Probus meeting with Midge. Their daughter Katy came home for some R&R while we were there and it was a delight to renew our aquaintance with this lovely, gentle, fun woman. We played lots of card games together and generally had lots of fun.

All in all it was a lovely trip. Pleasant company, relaxing surroundings, co-operative border guards and even some good bird watching!

Equinoctial Felicitations!

2008-03-21T18:21:00.005Z

Yes, it's the equinox today. In some places that's celebrated as the first day of spring, but here in Church Stretton the wind is howling, there are occaisional snow flurries and it's pretty damn cold.

We went to the gym in Shrewsbury this morning. Planned to stay on and work in the museum this afternoon, but we found our cabinet locked and the key lost so we chose to come home instead! So I have a little extra time to myself and I thought it would be a good oportunity to catch you all up on the news.

Couldn't start straight away as we went over to wish our next-door neighbour a happy birthday - she's 91 today! People in C.S. live long lives - it must be the healthy air and all the walking up and down hill that does it! We went over there and had several chocolates and a couple of glasses of ginger wine and now we feel much warmer!

I'm actually tucked up in the living room with my feet up and the laptop keeping me warm and I'm going to do a series of posts to catch you all up on the latest news. The picture on the left shows where I'm sitting right now, but this was taken at the weekend when Pam and Derek came up from Harrow to visit us. It was really good to see them - we haven't seen them since we moved here. They were so good to my parents, visiting every week, running errands, taking them out and generally keeping an eye on them.

The four of us became better friends when they came to visit us in the U.S. They even came on the Columbus Audubon eco-weekend with us.

In my next few posts I'll be going back in time to catch up on the news of the last three months. So, in this post I'll just point out the lovely daffodils which I cut in the garden last week when it was a bit warmer. We have had strong winds all month (March came in as a lion and hasn't stopped roaring yet) and some of the daffs fell over. I decided to cut them and bring them in rather than leave them to be eaten by the slugs. There are still crowds of them in the garden and lots more buds waiting to open.

Weight Loss Results

2007-12-17T11:32:00.000Z

Hello folk!

Here I am with our newest pet! We haven't actually decided on a name for him/her yet, so if you have some ideas we'd love to hear from you!

So far we haven't actually determined his/her sex either so our possible names are Prunella, Purple Pete or Scruffles (thanks to Katy Oke). He/she's from Vancouver, Canada and I'll be doing another posting on our recent trip to the West Coast shortly.

But now for something completely different ........

Today is my birthday. That means that it's exactly a year since I started the Weightloss for Wildlife campaign and it's time to report on "progress". I guess there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that I haven't made any progress since June. The good news is that I lost a good few pounds during the first half of the year and I've managed to keep it off since June. So, the final tally is:

Beginning Weight: 95.5 kg or 210.5 lb or 15 stone
Ending Weight: 87 kg or 192 lb or 13.7 stone
Weight Loss: 8.5 kg or 18.5 lb or 1.3 stone

Those of you who were kind enough to sponsor me will be getting a personal note or e-mail about this in the next couple of weeks. Once I hear from everyone I'll let you all know how much money I've made for wildlife projects.

The chart at left is of our weekly "weigh-ins". As you can see, John has been accompanying me on this adventure, but slipped up a bit towards the end. We're both determined to continue trying to lose weight next year. I don't suppose anyone is up for another challenge?

I do feel better for having lost the weight. Apart from my clothes being more comfortable, I find I have more energy and can move around a bit better. It's a good job I have more energy as there's an awful lot to do around here. In fact, I'd better get on with something right now!

Bye bye for now ...........................

A trip to Paris.

2007-12-01T17:18:00.000Z

Yuck! Britain is now experiencing 8 hour days and 16 hour nights. It gets dark SO early. Everything is damp underfoot, too, so it's really mucky. John and I have both had horrible colds. Mine is on the mend but he's in the middle of his. This hasn't put an end to our social lives, however. We had friends to dinner on Thursday and I went to the Food Fayre quiz night last night. My team won and I'm now charged with watching the Lottery draw tonight to see if we won anything as our prize was lottery tickets! This morning we braved the cold and wet and went out to help clear pathways on our local bird reserve. We think it did us good, but were glad to get back to our warm house and hot soup!

While we were lunching Mr. Magnificent came begging for peanuts and I was finally able to get a halfway decent shot of him.

My cold started on the way home from our visit to Paris. In all our travels I've never been there before! We had a ball! The metro and the busses were on strike, but we managed to get around quite well. It helped that we were the guests of my cousin Jaques. You may remember that he and his partner (Catherine) and her daughter (Flora) visited us in May. This was the return trip. We stayed in Flora's father's apartment, just a few blocks away from Catherines' home and Jaques' dental clinic.

It was fun to go on Eurostar from the new St. Pancras International Railway Station. This is an old and very grand Victorian red brick and glass station which was abandoned in the 60s and was nearly knocked down. It has now been renovated and supplied with a high-speed line and now it takes just over 2 hours to get from London to Paris! They've moved the Eurostar terminus from Waterloo to St. Pancras, which is good for us as it's only one stop on the tube from St. Pancras to Euston where we can get a fast train to Crewe followed by a slow train to Church Stretton! We made it back from Paris, Gare Du Nord to C. S. in 6.25 hours

Jaques picked us up from Gare du Nord on Friday night. It took us over 2 hours to drive to his place - a trip that should have taken 20-40 min. The traffic was really grid-locked because so many people who usually take public transport had to use their cars. Here's a picture of a familiar landmark taken as we drove through Pigalle. Catherine was late getting home, too, because of the traffic but she prepared us a lovely meal and it was good to catch up with them and see where they live.

We decided to do "car" things at the weekend, so they took us to Versailles on Saturday. It's a most impressive palace, lavishly decorated and ornamented. The picture is of the great mirrored gallery. It's beautifully light with huge windows overlooking the gardens. The mirrors facing the windows reflect the light into the room and give it a great feeling of space and grandeur. The gardens are interesting, even at this time of year. They are so formal - I'm not sure I've ever seen anything like it at and at such a huge scale.

On Saturday night Jaques took us out for dinner to a favourite restaurant where we had Tournados Rossini .... oh it was heavenly. The restaurant (called Sud Ouest)specialises in the cooking of south western France and was informal and friendly. There were lots of groups having family dinners and celebrations. We met Ivan and Audrey, Jaques grown up children. I hope all these young people will come to visit us here one day - they are all so polite, friendly and fun to talk to.

On Sunday we broke our fast in the traditional way with croissants and coffee and then went off to explore the old town of Paris. This included Place Des Voges and the Old Jewish Quarter where we strolled and window shopped while munching on cheese cake and poppy seed cake. While we were in the area we visited the Picasso Museum. It was very interesting to see a lot of the studies he did before he made a large painting. They also had a special exhibition about the making of the painting "Guernica" and this was also linked to some graphic and thought-provoking photographs of current atrocities of war.

We had a big lunch out and Catherine prepared another special dinner. This was "Raclette". There is a hot plate on the table and you melt a special kind of cheese which you pour over sausage, ham and/or potatoes. Yum, yum.

On Monday Jaques and Catherine went back to work and Flora to school so we were on our own. We decided to walk to Montmartre, which we did in about 45 minutes. It was interesting to pound the streets - you have time to look at the architecture, smell the food smells coming out of the restaurants, stop and goggle at interesting activities. We climbed up the various stepped streets to the top of Montmartre and visited the Sacre Coeur Basilica. It's very impressive inside and out and the view over Paris from the front door is spectacular. Unfortunately, it was a bit damp and misty and not very good for photography.

We weren't impressed by the shops in Montmartre as they were all touristy and selling tacky gifts. It was a pity as the small streets looked interesting and it might have been fun to wander around. However, we slowly descended from the Sacre Coeur, fending off pick pockets and street vendors and found a small bistro where we had a delicious lunch of lamb stew and polished off a bottle of Beaujolais. Then we took a walk down Boulevard Haussman looking into the windows of Galleries Lafayette and Printemps. These big department stores have their windows decked out for Christmas and have those wonderful moving displays we used to love as children. John and I are still fascinated by the animations and spent a good deal of time watching all the details and having a good laugh. By the time we'd finished window shopping it was time to wander home to get ready to Jaques et. al for dinner which was in a local creperie.

On Tuesday we set off on another walking adventure. We thought we might take a bus, but only one passed us and it was full and overflowing. We managed to walk from Clichy to the Tuilleries Gardens on the Seine in about an hour and a half. We were heading for the Musee d'Orsay where the Impressionist paintings are, but when we got there we found it was half closed because of the strikes so we decided not to go in. Instead we found another restaurant where we had another good lunch and then we strolled home again taking a very circular route which included walking along the left bank of the Seine, up a boulevard where we found an Art Deco church from 1938 which we found very beautiful inside and out, around the Arc De Triomphe and back along various streets and boulevards to Clichy.

It was good to be able to see Paris on foot as it meant for a more leisurely pace. Neither of us had a huge agenda to follow. There are lots of places we would like to see including the Louvre and Notre Dame, but they will wait for another time. In the evening we went to a Japanese restaurant. The food was fresh and delicious. We had sushi and skewered meats along with soup and salads. It was a great treat for us as there is no Japanese restaurant in Church Stretton.

Next day, Jaques went off to a congress so Catherine took us to the Gare Du Nord where we had lunch and then said "Goodbye". We were home by 8:30. We both agreed that we'd had a wonderful trip, the French were very friendly and helpful and we really enjoyed ourselves.

Catching up - Our New Car!

2007-10-27T15:51:00.000+01:00

We finally have a new car. When we first came over here, we thought we would have to get one straight away, but our nephew, Nick, was selling his Rover and we bought it.

Ronnie the Rover did well for two years, but then things started to go wrong. We finally polished it off, as I mentioned in a previous posting, so we ordered a new Toyota RAV4 and were able to pick it up when we got back from Belgium.

Since then we've been driving around and really enjoying the luxury of a new car. The picture of John and the Rav was taken on one of our test jaunts. We took a day off from our computers, data bases and projects to go to Lake Vrnwy which is in mid-Wales. It's a reservoir that's managed as a nature reserve by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). They're doing all sorts of neat things there including managing a huge organic farm. We were able to buy some lovely organic lamb there. We've already enjoyed the lamb steaks we had and this weekend we're trying out one of their legs of lamb. If it's as good as expected we'll be ordering boxed lamb halves for the freezer.

While we were there, we had a picnic lunch of pasties by the lake, visited the various hides (not much to see this time, but we'll come back later) and took a hike up one of the tributory valles to Rhiwargor Falls. As you can see it was a beautiful day with lots of lovely sunshine and we really enjoyed it.

Autumn here is a long and luscious season. It's still progressing slowly with more and more colour developing as the days continue. It's also a time of mists and frosts and a few weeks ago we were delighted to see this hot-air balloon rising up out of the mists as it drifted slowly up the Carding Mill Valley.

We have a lot of balloons over the Mynd, it's probably the best way to view the whole spectacular structure, but not everyone is as pleased to see them as we are.

Many of the local dogs get spooked by the sound of the burners as the balloons pass overhead. Lovely Ella was so badly scared once that she took off and was found several miles away on the far side of the hill. Since we often see the balloons before our neighbours do, we phone them when there's one on its way and they take Ella inside till it's gone!

Please stay in touch!

Our trip to Belgium

2007-10-25T11:24:00.000+01:00

I've just been putting our photos from the trip to Belgium on CD for the Rayners, so I thought I'd share a few.

We went over on Eurostar, in mid September, for a few days and had a wonderful time. We arrived in Brussels in the late afternoon and picked up a hired car at the station. Things rapidly (but temporarily, I'm glad to say) went wrong after that. First I managed to get us completely lost. We found out later that we were heading due south out of town when Mechelen is north! Secondly, we were in rush hour traffic, so the car was doing a lot of stopping and starting. After about half an hour there were frantic beeping sounds coming from the dashboard and we realised that we were overheating.

We pulled over and then went through a couple of hours of pure farce while we tried to phone for help. The phone menus were all in Flemish so we couldn't understand them but we found some very kind people who helped us. There was the young security guard in the supermarket and the lovely couple who had been to a photographic exhibition and who got on their phones and called the rental company and gave them a good telling off! We thank you all!

Eventually the rescue truck arrived. The mechanic spoke excellent English and was able to show us that the fan had broken and fallen off its mounting!!!!! He did a temporary fix and then led us to the motoway so we could drive to the airport and exchange the car (by this time it was too late to go back to the station!). We finally arrived at the hotel in Mechelen about 10:30 and they were kind enough to arrange an afterhours spaghetti dinner for us.

The wedding, next day, was fantastic. A civil ceremony in Mechelen city hall, was followed by a long meal of many courses at the Montreal Hotel which lasted all afternoon and well into the evening. I pondered long and hard over which wedding photo to include here and finally decided on the one to the left. In all the others there are problems - eyes shut, serious faces, etc. etc. This one sums it up. These two haven't had it easy up till now and there's a long road ahead.

We really enjoyed meeting the Vankeerbergens and their family. Many many thanks go to Chantal and Jean for working so hard and putting on such a wonderful event. Everyone was kind and welcoming and the two groups got on very famously. There was lots of chatter in "Franglais", some of us tried to practice our french and others were working on their english.

It was very good to see the whole Rayner family together and having such a good time. Here's a picture of the three "kids" cutting up as they always do! Each one has chosen a different path, and each of them has found success and happiness. Looking back through my photos I'm struck by how radiant Caroline is. As we say over here - she's really chuffed!

On the Sunday many of the visitors and quite a few of the Vankeerbergens went to Brugge for "Moules et Frites" (mussels and fries). This is a picture of Bernadette's parents, Chantal and Jean Vankeerbergen, and John and Valerie Rayner. At the "girls" table (shown below) are Bernadette on the left and Caroline on the right.

Monday saw John and Valerie driving us to Brussels for the day. We visited the little pissing boy and the little pissing girl, but couldn't find the little pissing dog. Does anyone detect a trend here? We also did some rubbernecking, taking photos of interesting buildings, eating, drinking and shopping. We really had a jolly day, so decided to return the favour by taking the Rayners in our car to the Ardennes on Tuesday.

It was a fabulous day. The sun shone, there were hints of Autumn in the air and the scenery was wonderful. Here are a couple of pictures from that day. In the first, John and Valerie are enjoying a viewpoint and in the second you can see the view we were admiring.

Next day we drove into Brussels with no problems, returned the car, had lunch in a hotel near the station and then boarded Eurostar for the return trip home. We boarded just before 3 pm and arrived at Church Stretton station at 8:04. That's a tad over 5 hours for the whole journey - Brussels to Waterloo on Eurostar, tube from Waterloo to Euston, Virgin Pendolino train from Euston to Crewe, Arriva Wales local train from Crewe to Church Stretton. I think that's marvellous and a hell of a lot better than going by plane which scares me and is definitely more uncomfortable.

Old Codgers!

2007-10-09T12:42:00.000+01:00

We've just filled out applications for our free bus passes and had to have photos taken. I thought you might enjoy these more serious photos of the two of us, hot off the press!!!!!

The reason we have to have photo passes is that we will get free travel on any local bus service in the country. It sounds like an amazing deal and I'm looking forward to using it. We might be able to gad about all over the place by hopping from bus to bus.

We already have free local bus passes for South Shropshire, but this will really extend the range for us.

We also have Senior Rail cards which enable us to get up to a third off all railway journeys. Do you get the feeling they're trying to get the wrinklies off the roads?

I'm going to use my photo as the one on my profile for this blog. It's a bit closer to how I look right now than the old pre-chemo one. Before I had cancer I had straight hair - now it's curly and I love it! It's still very fine and soft, like baby hair. I thought that would have changed by now, but it hasn't so I'm wondering if that's one of the side effects of the beastly Arimidex.

It's a dull grey day today - perfect for staying in and playing with computers. I've been updating the Scrappies web site and would welcome your comments and constructive criticisms. I've also added links to the Shrewsbury Museums, Food Fayre and Arts Festival Sites on the side bar so you can find out more about the things that occupy our time.

When you've time, drop me a note.

Summer Summary

2007-10-03T11:58:00.000+01:00

It's actually been a long time since I posted any news other than weight loss on this blog, so I thought I'd give you a pictorial summary of the summer!

We'll start with the picture of John and Margot Hewings (from Toronto), with us, at the Studio. They visited in late May and early June, then the four of us headed off to Stratford for a gathering of some of our old Swansea friends.

Following that visit, we headed off to the Lake District for a few days on our own. We stayed at the Pheasant Inn which is located by the side of Bassenthwaite Lake in a place called Peel Wyke!!!!! Wyke (or Wick) means somebody's homestead and Peel is derived from Piel. We think that there was a Piel tower (a sort of fortified tower) at this spot hundreds of years ago.

Here's a picture of some Ivy-leaved Toadflax that we found growing on a wall. I really love the name of this plant, and it's pretty too!

After our trip to the Lakes, we welcomed Joy and Glenn Johnson from Sydney, Australia to our home. The weather was appalling and we don't have any photos. They were with us during the floods that took away the bridge at Ludlow. The bridge has been replaced temporarily, but it's a shocking sight that meets your eyes as you cross it. The house beside the bridge has lost one of its walls and is leaning into the river at a crazy angle. You can see right into the bedroom, where there's a beautifully made up bed and some of the furniture, still poised and waiting to slip into the river!

Early July brought the Church Stretton Food Fayre. We worked very hard for several days, moving chairs and tables, making tea, washing up, helping people in the craft tents, directing traffic, manning the entries, counting the money and doing whatever we were asked to do. We enjoyed it very much and the Food Fayre was a great success. More about that in future posts, I'm sure as I am about to become Vice Chairperson.

Late July brought the Arts Festival. Again, I was pretty heavily involved with the Arts and Crafts Exhibition part of the festival - doing the entry forms, data base and helping with setup and breakdown.

Before it ended I made a quick trip to Heathrow to pick up my twin Aunties - Sue and Lou. They came over for a three week stay which included a 5 day trip to Scotland. We stayed in a lovely hotel in Lanark and took the train to visit Glasgow and Edinburgh. The weather was kind, the people were friendly and welcoming and I think we all enjoyed ourselves very much. Here they are on a boat trip on Loch Lomond. Highlights of the trip included visits to Edinburgh Castle and Rennie Mackintosh's masterpiece the Glasgow School of Art.

At the end of August, Bill Fenner and Lois Tilton were over from Arden Road. We "did" Wales, with a day trip to Caernarfon (Carnarvon) through Snowdonia and an overnight trip to South Wales where we visited the "Big Pit" (the Welsh National Coal Museum, which includes a coal mine) and St. Fagans (the Welsh National History Museum). Both of these were great, and FREE!!!!!

This picture shows us getting back into the car during our trip through Snowdonia. You'll notice that we have a "new" car. It's actually a hired vehicle because we managed to kill our Rover by driving up to Liverpool and back with the radiator cap off!!!!

More later ..... I'm off to pick apples!

AAAAAAARRRRRRRRGHGHGHGHGHGH!

2007-10-03T11:52:00.000+01:00

You've probably guessed why I have taken so long to send out my latest weight-loss update! I'm afraid I've been slipping backwards for the last couple of months. I'm still a stone (14lb, 7kg) lighter than I was when I started but I've just not made any progress at all.

I could blame it on all our visitors, but that wouldn't be fair. The truth is that I've been eating larger amounts of things and going for the high-fat, high-calorie foods whenever I've had the chance. So, if I want to make lots of money I'm going to have to be a lot more self-disciplined in the next 3 months. Wish me luck!!!!!

Life here has gotten a bit quieter in the last few weeks. The visitor season is mainly over now and we're getting on and catching up with all the work we didn't do during the spring and summer. Our volunteering activities take up a lot of time - mailing lists, databases, web pages, etc. The garden has been terribly neglected, too and we're starting to work on that. Today's jobs include making a new stick pile and picking apples.

The heavy rains of June and July have resulted in a bumper apple crop. I've already picked one tree. We gave some away, ate a lot and made apple sauce from the rest, now we're ready to bring in the best of the eating apples which I'll try to store "as is". Our Bramley cooking apples are ripening slowly. The outsides look a bit scabby, but the flesh is crisp, tart and white and they freeze well. In addition we had a good crop of crab apples and flowering quinces and I've cooked them to pulp. I had to freeze them because I ran out of time, but I plan to defrost them and make jelly as soon as I have a few spare hours.

It all sounds very domestic, doesn't it?

Hopefully, I'll have better news next time I write.

Send e-mail when you can!

So Far So Good!

2007-07-23T09:07:00.000+01:00

Hi y'all!

We've had several enquiries from concerned friends and relatives about the floods, so I thought I'd make a quick post to say that we're fine. There's a lot of water about in the fields and on the roads, but we haven't had any in the garden or the house (touch wood).

This summer there have been 3 major flooding events in the borderlands. Last summer we were in a big drought. We've gone from the sublime to the ridiculous. Last summer the stream went completely dry and we were assailed by the stink of rotten fish and fresh water shrimp. This summer the stream is roaring down it's bed and at times it has risen to within a few inches of the bank. The stink this year came from a dead young badger up on the bank. We think it may have been hit on the road and crawled home to die. Another one was found dead on the road at about the same time, but John and Clive buried it.

We have been flooded by volunteer work, however. Everything came at once - mailings for Scrappies, the food fayre, the opening of the summer exhibition at the museum and now we're in the throes of the arts festival. Add in numerous visitors and our trip to the Lake District and you can see that we've hardly had time to draw breath.

Weight loss has been sporadic over the last couple of months, but I'm at a new low today: 85.8 kg (189lb, 13stone 7 lb).

Yippeeeeee!

Send e-mail!!!!!

Mid-May Update

2007-05-22T15:37:00.001+01:00

Hi!

I'm stuck indoors with a cold and no voice. Since I can't talk to anyone I thought I'd settle down and do some mail, e-mail and blog catching up.

First, my weight-loss report. I'm happy to say that I'm still loosing weight. I'm not going as fast as I'd hoped, but I'm still averaging about .75lb per week and that's not too bad. I've now lost about 16lb (1 stone, 2lb or 7.4kg). This is in 5 months so I'm doing about 3lb a month instead of the 4.5 I'd hoped for. I pulled some old jeans out of the back of the wardrobe and can just get them on now. They're fine around the hips, but my waist is still non-existent! So I've come down from a size 20(UK, 18 US) to size 18(UK, 16 US).

Secondly, we are now enfranchised for the first time in about 35 years. We voted in the local elections a couple of weeks ago. One of our candidates won, the other didn't! We were never able to vote in the U.S. although we were able to cast a vote in a local election in Hamilton back in about 1970.

Finally, the rest of the news:

We've just had a visit from my cousin Jaques, his partner Catherine and her daughter Flora. They flew over from Paris for a few days. It was lovely to see them. The last time I spent quality time with Jaques was when I was 19 and took the Orient Express to Istanbul to spend 6 weeks in Turkey with my family. Jaques was 15 then! I have only seen him briefly since then. He was kind enough to come to London for the funerals of my Mum and Dad.

Jaques and Catherine (shown resting in the garden after a busy day of trying to talk in French and English at the same time) are serious runners. On Saturday they did a 15km circular run through Little Stretton, up to the top of the Long Mynd (a climb of 1000ft or about 300m) and back through All Stretton. It only took them a couple of hours! Jaques is now in training for the Mont St. Michel marathon and Catherine is getting ready for some runs later in the summer.

While they were out, Flora and I went for a horse ride. We rode through fields full of sheep and lambs and woods full of bluebells. At one point the skies opened and we got soaked but it was still lovely. The birds were singing away, there was even a cuckoo calling in the woods, and the flowers were gorgeous.

In the picture on the left you can see Flora on her horse, Blueboy. Blueboy has some cow parseley hanging out of his mouth. Both our horses were chomping away at grass, trees, shrubs and roadside weeds as we walked along.

We spent Friday at Ironbridge visiting a couple of musuems in the World Heritage Site there. In addition to the Musuem of Iron, which we have visited before, we went to Enguinuity. This is a hands-on science museum. We all had a lot of fun playing with all the science "toys".

One in particular was really good. It was basically a flume with dams. You could regulate the water, make it rain, use various mechanisms to pump the water back to the top of the flume and generate electricity. We were running about from one end to the other, making waterfalls, controlling water wheels, getting it to rain, etc. etc. Here, you can see Flora using a wheel to pump water into the big red bucket.

Another energetic occupation was spinning a wheel to move a locomotive with the aid of pulleys and gears. John and I had a race with a couple of wall climbing robots - mine beat his to the top of the wall, but only just!

We had such a good time with Jaques, Catherine and Flora that we're planning a visit to Paris later this year. This will be my first proper visit to France and I'm really looking forward to it. After that we'll be visiting other friends in other parts of France and I hope this will be the beginning of our long-awaited travels in Europe. There are so many places I want to see and so many things I want to do.

Meanwhile, back at home the wildlife in the garden continues to delight us. Two weeks ago we had our first visit from a female pheasant with 3 chicks. The weather was dreadful, so she would gather them in every now and then and brood them to keep them warm. It was really delightful, when she stood up, to see the chicks dropping to the ground from under her wings and around her legs. We haven't seen the chicks for a week or so, so we're not sure if they've wandered off or if the fox has got them - could be a bummer.

Pinhead is still skulking about the garden, but Mr. M. chases him off whenever he sees him. It will be interesting to see what happens when the competition dies down at the end of the season. I expect the two of them will feed and walk around together during the late summer, fall and early winter. Then there will be another battle for dominance of the harem.

Last night we had our fist visit from a baby badger. He/she came with Mum and stayed very close the whole time. It looks like an adult only smaller (about half the size) and a bit fluffier. When they finished eating they ran off shoulder to shoulder touching all the time.

John has been working very hard in the garden. We decided to renovate the bed that's behind the house. It's a small sort-of-rectangular bed enclosed by the main house, the garage and the living room. In late summer it has a beautiful fuschia, but the rest of the year it looked rather scruffy. There is a "before" picture to the left. The "after" picture is below, although they are not taken from the same place.

John has dug a small pool for a wildlife "puddle" where the birds and animals can get a drink, he's also moved some plants, added some ornamental grasses and covered the whole lot with a mulch of pebbles. At first we were worried that the pebbles would stop some of the birds from finding goodies in the ground, but they have come back well and I don't think it's a problem. This is also a bed where we see bank-voles and wood-mice collecting seeds that have fallen from the bird feeders. They seem to have come back too, so we're happy that we haven't disturbed them too much.

I think that rushing to finish that bit of gardening and also working on Scrappies membership data-base and several mailings both for Scrappies and the Arts Festival made me a bit over-tired - that's why I have this cold. Hopefully, this last couple of days of rest will have me back up and about in double quick time. At times like this I realise that I am not the energetic woman I once was. The anti-cancer drugs are taking their toll in terms of fatigue and pain. I'm not complaining. I've been to sites on the web where others have far worse symptoms than me, so I'm happy to be doing very well most of the time. However, I can't wait till the summer of 2010 when I'll be able to stop taking the Arimidex and I hope that a lot of these silly aggravations will go away.

So that's all for now, folks! Please stay in touch!

Rhubarb Margaritas!

2007-04-22T23:40:00.000+01:00

Well, here we are - slap bang in the middle of England's lovely, long drawn out spring. It starts in February with snowdrops and hellebores, then there are crocusses in March f0llowed by crowds of daffodils in every garden and along the sides of every road.

Now, though, the daffodils are fading and other delights are taking their place. The bluebells are coming out in woods and hedgerows and there's a haze of blue over everything as the forget-me-nots come into full bloom.

Another spring delight is the rhubarb. I started picking ours this week, so we're experimenting a bit. I really like it cooked with sugar and ginger and served with ice-cream, but this afternoon we just had a few stalks left over so we quickly stewed them in the microwave and then John used them instead of limejuice in a couple of delicious margaritas. It may sound awful, but they were really good! That's a picture of it on the right, along with some more rhubarb leaves that are just coming up.

Even the indoor plants are getting in on the act. Here's a picture of one of John's venerable cacti. It is smothered in little yellow blooms.

Needless to say, the bird-life is getting quite exiting too! John has been busy for the last few months making nest boxes. We think we have at least three blue tit families, one great tit and one robin in the boxes and there are numerous other nests in the hedges and shrubs around the garden. Somewhere two pairs of bullfinches must be working on a family. These are lovely colorful birds and they really add a touch of class to the garden even though I know they're eating all my apple buds! I think there are a couple of jays nesting near by too as they've become regular visitors to the garden. These are larger than American blue jays and very beautifully marked birds so we're very pleased to see them here.

We saw our first babies this last week. One was a little dunnock (or hedge sparrow) and the other was a blackbird. There is great competition for all the food we put out. The robins have been following us around the garden as we worked, coming in to within a couple of feet of us to pick up exposed insects, worms and grubs. Sometimes there are pitched battles at the feeder between robins or blackbirds from different territories in the garden and they all seem to have a feeding heirarchy which depends more on agressiveness than size.

In this third picture you can see our blue azalea. This is the first of the azaleas to come out. In fact it put out a few blossoms in November and December, too! Stalking across the drive in this picture is Mr. Magnificent, our dominant cock pheasant. See how short his tail is? That's because he has a very active sex life and he's broken all his tail feathers off!!!! This pheasant is the one we called "Darkie" last year because of his dark coloration. This year he seemed to get bigger and more pompous as he built his harem of 7 females and so we re-named him to Mr. M.

Lately he has had some competition. A new cock has appeared on the scene. This one is called "Pinhead" on account of his rather small head and neck! Pinhead is a skulker - he doesn't stalk around majestically like Mr. M. - he creeps around and hides behind the plants in the hopes of catching one of the females when the boss is looking the other way. We were mightily amused to watch him the other day. He was hiding in the Phormiums waiting for some females to come over and eat. When they did he took off after them like a bat out of hell. They, of course, rushed back into the "woods" where Mr. M. was lurking, and Pinhead followed them right into his rival's patch. The next thing we saw was Pinhead tearing out of the woods, closely followed by Mr. M. They chased around the garden for a while till Mr. M. took to the air and almost landed on top of Pinhead. This was too much - Pinhead took off and flew away with Mr. M. in hot pursuit. The last I saw was the two of them lumbering past me and over the hedge, flapping away and squawking madly.

The weather has been glorious so we've been spending a lot of time out of doors. There's a lot to do and we've probably done less than a quarter of the spring clean-up so far. We should have started earlier, but ....... oh well.

Volunteer activities have kept us busy when we've come in out of the sunshine. I've been doing mailings for the Arts Festival and data bases for Scrappies, there's Breeding Bird Survey activities for John and of course, we're both still working on the Birds Egg identification project at the museum.

We're also playing host to Her Majesty Little Miss Frankenpussy again. In fact she's fast asleep on the floor right next to me as I write. She's snoring gently and every now and then she makes a little chirping noise. She's such a delight to have around the house, we'll miss her when she goes back home.

So that's about it. If you add domestic duties and visits to neighbours to the above you have the sum total of our lives at present. I don't think I could ask for anything better!

Stay in touch please!

Happy Fertility Day!

2007-04-08T10:07:00.000+01:00

It's Easter (Oestra?) Sunday and I'm happy to report that we're in shorts for the first time this year! It's a beautiful day and we're just getting ready to go out and do some gardening. Work around and in the house has been on hold for a couple of months as we gallivanted about with a steady stream of visitors. They're the main reason why I haven't been updating my blog and why this weightloss update is so late.

I'm pleased to say that I continue to loose weight. My average weight loss is .7lb per week. This is a bit less than I'd hoped, but not bad considering how many big meals and dinners out we've had. This week I dropped down below 200lb for the first time in many years and I've been able to wear a few things that I'd hidden in the back of the closet. In one of the local shops there are a couple of pairs of light coloured trousers which I promised myself if I dropped below 200. They should see me through the summer in good style.

The picture above is of one of many mute swans we encountered last month on a narrow boat trip with Joy and John. I'll be doing another post with more information about that and our other doings as soon as I have a bit of time to myself. In addition to our house and garden chores the volunteering has just kicked up another notch and we're deep into web pages, data bases, mass mailings and other time consuming activities. And it wasn't long ago that I was lolling around the house saying I needed a job because I was bored! AAAAARRRRRRRRGHGH!

Stay in touch, please.

Monthly Weight Report

2007-02-22T13:57:00.000Z

I can report much better progress this month, thank goodness! On the 17th of December I was 95.5 kg. On the 18th of February I weighed-in at 92.4 kg, so I have now lost 3.1 kg or 6.8 lb. Now I have to keep that rate of weight loss up for the rest of the year!

I'm also happy to report that I've picked up some more sponsors and have 36 all together. I mustn't let any of you down - I plan to take you for all I can get!

Many of you wrote in answer to my last report. Because of this I tried various forms of hot drinks and finally settled on weak, black, tea. I brew a small pot in the morning and then dole it out during the day, topping it up with hot water to make it weaker and warm enough to drink. I've also managed to cut out those evening snacks of bread and butter, replacing them with dried fruit and nuts. Fortunately I can eat lots of dried fruit without ill effect! Thanks for all the advice and encouragement. Feel free to continue writing - some filling, low calorie recipes would be useful if you have them.

You might think that some of the weight loss would be due to increased exercise, but in fact that isn't the case. The weather has not been all that good - we were even snowed in for a few days - and we haven't really been doing much extra. Now, though, we're hitting the garden more vigorously and we're trying to get some walks in so we'll have to see if that helps or if it makes us so hungry we'll start to eat more!

Any comments? Please feel free to e-mail me about this message.

Crow Ploughs!!!!!

2007-02-10T16:48:00.000Z

On Thursday morning we and our visitors were treated to a really interesting and funny display from a couple of crows. Here's how John described it to the Shropshire Birds List:

"I saw what was, for me, a new example of crow behaviour this morning. Two Carrion Crows were foraging in several centimetres of snow on my back lawn in Church Stretton, picking up mixed seed intended for finches, blackbirds etc. They started off using a familiar back-and-forth bill "swiping"technique to uncover the seeds from the newly-fallen snow. After a few minutes, one of the crows pushed its head *completely* under the snow and started running forward, with its head entirely beneath the snow surface. This went on for 2-3 metres. It did this in an area where there was no bird food. After a few seconds, its companion started doing the same. It was great fun watching these energetic corvid snow-ploughs create long furrows through the snow cover of my back garden, although what they were doing is a mystery to me. Maybe they were trying to find food items beneath the snow or maybe they were collecting snow to drink or maybe they were just playing (it looked like fun) - I have no idea! The complexity of crow behaviour never ceases to amaze me."

Gotcha! We're snowed in!

2007-02-10T15:41:00.000Z

Well, we got blasted, didn't we?

I shouldn't have suggested that it might be spring already.

The picture on the left is of my lovely clump of bamboo, now flattened by snow. After I took that, yesterday, I went out and shook off all the stems (getting totally covered in snow in the process). They sprang back somewhat, but after another hour of heavy snow they were right back to the positions shows in the photo. And this morning they were almost completely buried in the heavy, wet, white stuff!

We had a visit from Trevor (John's old school friend) and Chris last weekend and were able to go out for walks and admire all the pretty flowers that were out. The village green has been covered in a carpet of mauve crocusses and the banks of snowdrops are really magnificent. We also had a smashing Sunday lunch at the carvery in the Railway Inn in Marshbrook. We realised we were in for a treat when we met not only the owners of the local restaurant, but also the owners of the local deli! It has to be good if they patronize it!!!!

On Wednesday it was the turn of some old McMaster friends to visit. Dolly came down from Chester and Jane (with daughter, Kim) came over from Canada. It was a cold but sunny day and we enjoyed a good walk over Rectory Field and along the Allen Coppice Sculpture trail. There are some more animal sculptures now - more owls, a woodpecker and various other lovely things.

We knew the forecast was for snow, so seeing Mary at the top of the hill we asked if our friends could keep their cars in her drive overnight. She said yes, so we moved them up there.

In the evening we kept switching over to the 24 hour news channel to keep an eye on the weather. They were calling for "heavy" snow to roll in over night. I was so exited by having friends there and the thought of snow that I couldn't sleep very well and got up to watch the first of the snow. I was able to watch a mouse collecting peanuts on the patio for about an hour before I finally felt sleepy enough to go back to bed.

In the morning it became clear that no-one was going anywhere. I really didn't expect to get much snow, and actually we only had a couple of inches on the ground, but that's enough to paralyse things in this country and we watched story after story of traffic and travel chaos. Jane called her mum and told her she was waiting it out and we sat around talking and trying to decide what to do.

Early in the afternoon, Dolly decided to go for it and after we'd walked up to Mary's with her, saw her off and looked at the state of the roads, Jane decided to leave too. Both sets called later to say that they'd had easy journeys with very little traffic and clear roads. That's because all the media had asked people to stay home and stop contributing to the chaos!!!!!

So we thought the worst was over. We were wrong. Yesterday it started snowing again. It snowed all day, sometimes heavily, and we ended up with more than 8 inches on the ground. The pictures of the driveway above and John feeding the birds (to the left) were taken yesterday and there was more snow on top of that.

Overnight last night the thaw started. Now there are avalanches of heavy, wet snow falling out of the laurels and onto my shrubs. Many of them are bent to the ground and some have snapped or have root damage. It looks as though there's going to be even more pruning this spring than I'd planned! We've shaken off some of the most vulnerable plants, but there's still a lot that will just have to fend for themselves.

The forecast shows a drier, warmer trend for the next week so you can guess where I'm going to be and what I'm going to be doing before our next visitors arrive next weekend!

Keep those e-mails coming, please!

It isn't spring, is it?

2007-02-02T15:59:00.000Z

No, it can't be spring yet, but the signs are all there. Masses of snowdrops are appearing in the garden and along the hedgerows, the pheasants are chasing about all over the garden, the blackbird and the tits have joined the robin in singing for mates and territories and the village green is covered in crocuses! Now, where have the badgers gone? We've hardly seen them this winter as I think they go into a more sleepy mode (they don't hibernate, however).

The peanuts are still disappearing so we set up a time-lapse camera to see who was taking them as we'd seen a mouse earlier in the winter. Well, the badger did show up, but he only ate a few nuts (very different from the summer when he scarfed the whole lot!) and the rest were cleaned up by the pheasants at first light.

We did see a badger the other night for a brief spell, but he didn't stay long and he didn't eat much. However, soon after he left, a fox came onto the patio for a few nuts. The cheeky thing walked right up to the living room doors, he must have seen us, but he didn't seem very nervous at all. That's the first fox we've seen for about a year, so maybe we have a new one to replace the one that disappeared.

Today the sun has been shining all day and it's been quite mild, but it's going to freeze up tonight under the clear skies. It should all look lovely in the moonlight. We're planning to take advantage of the good weather and cook out on the barbeque this weekend. I've got pork for kebabs and I'm marinating a butterflied leg of lamb - yum, yum. Have to try hard not to eat too much as I've done well over the past couple of weeks and have begun to really loose weight.

We have the first of a stream of visitors arriving today. They're staying for the weekend and then another lot are arriving mid-week! So we've been scurrying around to do shopping and cleaning so we can enjoy our friends and not do too much when they're here. To add to our housework, we had a couple of very successful trips to Ikea this week and then spent a lot of time putting together some furniture for the bedroom and a new oak filing cabinet for John's library.

Here's a picture of the bedroom furniture. We bought the bed at the end of 2005 and we've been very pleased with it. Not only does it look nice, it's wonderfully comfortable to sleep in and it's one of those adjustable beds, so we can sit up and read in comfort. This week we bought the bedside tables and chests of drawers to match.

It's lovely to get rid of the horrible plastic stacking baskets that we'd been using since we moved into the flat in Columbus. Everytime I looked at them I remembered lying in bed in the flat after my lumpectomy and during the bad parts of chemo. So it's good to have all that behind me.

Amd there's more good news - I had my yearly checkup with the surgeon this week and have been given the all-clear again. Hurray!

So on that pleasant note, I'll leave you ...... keep those e-mails coming, please!

Monthly Summary

2007-01-17T13:50:00.000Z

It's time for the dreaded disclosure ... and it's not good news. I've only managed to loose a pound this month. If I continue at that rate, you won't owe me much at the end of the year!

I realise that this is going to be the worst month for eating because of the continuous round of holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, etc. and it's also the worst for exercise because of the bad weather, but those are just excuses and I'm going to try harder next month.

I've now cut out sugar from tea and coffee. I did this at Christmas, at the urging of John's family who all said I'd get used to it. I haven't gotten used to it yet - they still taste pretty awful - so I have a choice of going without tea and coffee or putting up with it. I won't put sugar into drinks for the next year and I refuse to use sweeteners. If only I could think of a hot drink with a very slightly sweet taste that wasn't loaded with sugar. I'll experiment with herbal teas over the next few weeks, but I don't really like them very much.

We're also cutting down on our fats. I've stopped spreading large amounts of butter or marge on my breakfast and lunch bread and we've gone back to cutting the fat off our chops. When we moved back to the UK we got rather lax at doing those things as we were enjoying the comfort foods of our youth. My aim for the next month is to increase the amounts of fruit and veg that we eat and cut down even more on the fats.

Exercise is still a problem. In the past we've joined a gym, but the nearest one is in Shrewsbury and that's a long way to go and will take a lot of time. Everyone around here says we should just go walking, but we're finding it difficult to get motivated - the weather has been lousy. We have been out a few times - braving the howling wind and stinging rain - but not enough to make a difference. This month we must make much more of an effort to get out and walk and stop making excuses to stay indoors in the warm and dry.

Does this all sound a bit negative? I AM a bit disapointed with my performance last month, but it's made me all the more determined to work harder at it in the remaining 11 months.

So stay tuned for a better update next month, and don't forget - it isn't too late to send me a pledge of support!

Peace and Goodwill to All Men

2006-12-24T12:05:00.000Z

As the sun starts its northward journey bringing warmth and light back to our hemisphere we wish all of our friends, wherever they may be, Peace, Health and Joy.

Embarassing but Necessary!

2006-12-18T10:42:00.000Z

Yesterday was my 61st birthday and this is what I look like! It's pretty bad, isn't it?

I had my grand weigh-in:

210.5 pounds

15.04 stone

95 kilograms.

It could be worse - I could have posed naked!!!!

Weight Loss for Wildlife!

2006-12-09T13:41:00.000Z

I’m hoping you can help me. I’ve been trying to lose weight this year, and have failed miserably! The trouble is that I can’t find a good incentive. I’m well aware of the health benefits of losing weight, but that doesn’t seem enough to motivate me. So this year I’m going to try something different.

I’m asking you to sponsor my slimming effort by pledging money to help a wildlife cause. In the U.S. the money will be given to the Columbus Audubon Center, and in the U.K. it will be donated to the Shropshire Wildlife Trust Lapwing Appeal. If you live elsewhere, I will ask you to donate to an environmental charity in your country.

Here’s the plan: On December 17th, 2006 I will have my first weigh-in. I will then attempt to lose 1lb a week until December 17th, 2007. I would be ecstatic if I could lose 50lb (22.5 kg or 3.5 stone), but even 20lb (9 kg or 1.5 stone) would make me very happy. Progress reports and updates will be posted on this blog. If you decide to pledge and support me, I will let you know at the end of the year how I did, and I will be asking you for your contributions in January of 2008.

Please consider joining me in this effort. Even a penny a pound will make a difference and a dollar or a pound for a pound would be absolutely wonderful. If this is something you’d like to do, please send me an e-mail to let me know the good news.

Thank-you for your support and best wishes for 2007 ….. Joan

.... Turn, turn, turn .....

2006-12-05T13:10:00.000Z

Well, the seasons are turning again. After a long, colorful autumn winter is coming in with high winds and lots of rain. Our stream was higher than we'd ever seen it before and water just poured off the already sodden hills and down our valley in gushing torrents.

As soon as it cleared up a bit we took a hike up the Cardingmill Valley to see what it looked like upstream. The three photos on this post are from that hike. The Cardingmill Valley is the one we live in, and John has decided that it's going to be his birdwatching "patch".

However, it's the centre of the Long Mynd National Trust region and is the place where most tourists come when they want to explore the hills around Church Stretton. In the summer and at weekends it's quite crowded, so we don't often walk up there, then (unless we fancy a cuppa and a scone at the National Trust tea-room!). We usually choose walks that take us up other valleys where there aren't so many people.

This time we walked up the Cardingmill valley and then turned left to visit a side valley that has a nice waterfall at the top. The waterfall is called "Light Spout" - I don't know why. The Cardingmill valley is so called because there were woolen mills in it once. Most of them are gone now, but there is a block of holiday rental flats in one old mill building and there are lots of dams and impoundments which they used to power the mill equipment.

The bracken ferns are now dead on the hillsides and make huge brown patches, but in sheltered places and beside streams they are still green and beautiful. There's still lots of green vegetation about and the gorse is still blooming with its bright yellow pea-flowers.

Up on top of the Mynd (where we've been for a couple of walks with Ella) the heather looks pretty dry and dead and the whinberries are just stalks with no leaves. The wind up there is vicious and we were caught in an icy rain-shower when we went up there on Saturday.

But down here in the valley it's pretty sheltered. We can hear the wind up at the top of the drive and we can see the trees whipping and bending, but down here we don't get hit by it any where near as much as our neighbours do.

People round here are now turning to indoor pursuits for the long winter evenings. Quiz evenings are very popular. People form teams and get together to do quizzes, coordinated by an official quiz-master and marked by the quiz-master's partner. Usually there are refreshments (and/or you bring your own) and the entry fee is donated to a charity. Last week we went to one put on for the Food Fayre Volunteers. The quiz had a food theme and although one of the local deli owners was at my table our team came in last! It probably didn't help that people had brought along several bottles of wine!

At home we've been pottering about in the house. The weather has discouraged us from the badly needed clean-up chores in the garden. I've done some work on a size and colour look-up table for the Bird's Egg data base that should speed up our identification work in the museum. John is getting ready for a quick business trip to Montreal and we're both gearing up to send out our Christmas cards.

I can't believe it's less than 3 weeks till Christmas! They're starting to play Christmas music on the radio, the shops are full of lights and glitter, the Christmas tree in the town square has been lit and the main streets of town have coloured lights strung along and across them. It's time for me to haul out the old baubles and do something creative around the house, I suppose.

Winter is bringing changes in the local wildlife, too. The most noticable change is in the habits of the badgers. They have become far less predictable in their habits. They do come out and get the peanuts. but they've stopped digging up the lawn and we don't often see them before we go to bed. At first we were worried, but we looked it up and this is normal for the time of year. Apparently they go a bit torpid in the winter and only go out if they have to - ie. to defecate, get a dring of water and eat a little bit. They store up lots of fat in the autumn to enable them to do this.

The pheasants have begun to gather in groups. We've had a couple of stray males wandering about (there were three one day) but Mr. Dark has driven them away, we think. The females are gathering too. We get about 7 most days although the three who were here all summer tend to hang about together and don't always behave very nicely to the others! Yesterday we were amused to see one of our more tame females taking a dust bath in some dry soil under our huge Lawson cypress. She dug away all the needles, vines and roots and then scooped out a hole in the dry soil. Then she sat in the hole and kicked dust all over the place. Several times she rolled over onto her back, kicking and fluffing up her feathers. Twice another hen came over to investigate and she ran off a little ways till the other hen had moved away, then she came back. She kept this up for about half an hour. Each time she left the hole she shook herself and clouds of dust rose up around her! I think she must have been pretty itchy to do this for such a long time.

It's time to go over to visit my neighbours and cadge a cup of tea from them. I'm going to take my Jungle Band to show Marjorie. I hope she thinks it's funny and not a big wast of time!

Stay in touch, please!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2006-11-23T18:47:00.000Z

It's Thanksgiving day and John and I have just finished a wonderful dinner cooked by John. His pumpkin pie was to die for!

Here we are, sitting in our easy chairs in the living room, "protruding our stomachs" (as my Mum used to say) and sipping our home-made gooseberry liqueur. Life has been good to us this year and we have much to be thankful for.

We're happy, healthy and comfortable. We have a lovely warm home and a beautiful garden. We live in one of the most beautiful spots in the country and we are surrounded by kind people. In addition, we have many good friends scattered all over the globe who write, phone and e-mail and thus bring us great joy. Our pleasure is compounded when they come to visit. Several have come this year and we're looking forward to welcoming others to our home next year.

So, as the rosy glow of our dinner takes us into this rather rainy evening in the borderlands we want to wish all our friends, wherever they may be, a very Happy Thanksgiving!

And ..... don't forget to write!

Animated Cat!

2006-11-21T17:47:00.000Z

This is a test to see if I can put an animation on my blog. I think I can, although when I uploaded it loads of copies were uploaded too and there were dozens of cats rowing away on this page.

The animation was made with a sequence of still photos of an automaton that I made a few years ago. The cat is smuggling cans of tuna fish! There is a handle at the bottom which you turn to get the cat to row the boat. The whole thing is made of thin card which is preprinted with the design. You cut it out and glue it together.

The reason I wanted to test this is that I have just made another one and I want to post a similar animation of it. I didn't want to go to all the trouble of photographing it if I couldn't put it up.

Stay tuned..................

Catching up with the news

2006-11-12T13:00:00.000Z

The weekend after we got back from York we had yet another set of visitors! These people didn't come from as far, though. They were John's sister Joy, her husband John, her son Nick and Nick's girlfriend Sam. On the left is a picture of Sam and Nick with one of the carved bears on the Allen Coppice trail. Nick is a real ham and a good mimic, so he's always doing and saying very funny things. We had a lot of good laughs over the weekend.

I've put pictures of the carvings on previous posts, but we still love to take that trail and search for new things. The artist is David Bytheway. Some of his things are nature inspired, like the otters running down a log and others are mythological, like the green man hidden in a crack in a tree.

We had a good walk along the trail after lunch at the Long Mynd Hotel and then we wandered around the shops for the rest of the afternoon before coming home to a smashing roast pork dinner and an evening of badger watching. The next day we all went off to Rhyadder to see the feeding of the red kites.

The next day the painting of the outside of the house started. This necessitated some work by us to remove the vines and branches that were growing all over the house and the upper garage. Here's a before picture of a mass of jasmine and clematis that was clambering up a trellis between the living room and dining room french windows. There's actually a light under there, but we'd never seen it and just a dappled glow would come out of it at night!

I had a helluva time getting this stuff down as it had grown up under the roof tiles and into the soffits and vents under the eves. I've cut it right back to the trellis now and will have to try to keep it under control. I hope I haven't killed it completely! I shouldn't think so, everything seems to grow like the clappers in this climate.

Here's an after picture of the same part of the house. That's Adrian Dann the painter man up the ladder. He's quite a character and we've enjoyed having him around the house for the last couple of weeks.

On the picture you can see the newly exposed light. It's VERY powerful and now we have a floodlit patio! It's also rather old and ugly and we're now starting to think about how we want to change the outside lighting around the house. We have a couple of security lights that are on and off all night because of the badgers and foxes - so they are a bit of a nuisance - and they're also very bright. They're too bright really and tend to blind you as you approach them. In addition the lights around the house don't cast a nice glow, they tend to give you bright spots and leave the rest in shadow which is not good. Then, also, the lights up the driveway end too early and leave the top of the drive and the garage up there in darkness! So I think we're going to have to get the electricians in fairly soon to get this all sorted out. And I suppose, while they're at it, we'll have them run electricity to the other end of the garden so we can have power in the shed and a possible water feature in the pond that we're planning.

The painting is now pretty well done except for a couple of patches on the fascia boards where there was some rot. We're waiting for the builder to come and replace the wood and then Adrian will finish off the painting.

We decided to leave the trim white as we have the white patio doors, but we changed the color of the garage doors a bit from green to bluey green - kind of a teal colour. Terry Olive would love it!

One of the benefits of the new bright light on the patio is that we can see the badgers much more clearly. They don't seem to be bothered by the lights, in fact we've seen them ambling by quite casually as we've been sitting at the dinner table or watching the telly after dinner. We don't even bother to turn off our indoor lights any more.

So the other night I attached my quick cam to my laptop, put the quick cam outside on the step, closed the curtains and waited for them to come for their peanuts. I was amply rewarded! I got lots of pictures and a few videos. I wish I could post the video because it has sounds and you can hear the badger sucking up and crunching down on the peanuts!

So that's all the major news. We're settling into a quieter winter routine now. We try to get out for walks between showers, and of course we're starting the winter clean-up in the garden. Work also continues at the Museum, John has become the web master for the Food Fayre and on the actual day I will be working with the Crafts People at the fayre, although at present I'm just a volunteer doing anything they ask me to.

John has gone back to cataloging his slides and I'm making Christmas cards. This is a coloured pencil drawing I did of some holly and a computer modified version of it will appear on our cards this year.

So that's all for now! It's a great relief to have caught up with all this - jobs like this become daunting when you leave them for a while and then realise how much you have to write! Now I feel guilt free and very relieved! My next task is to try, yet again, to catch up on all my e-mails!

Stay tuned and write when you can!

Our Trip to Yorkshire

2006-11-08T15:03:00.000Z

As promised in my previous post, here's the sequel to our October adventures:

On Wednesday October 18th we headed off before dawn. Our first stop was Manchester airport where we dropped Julie off for her trip back to Columbus. Then we carried on across the country and further north to the City of York. Our main purpose for that trip was to complete another part of my 60th birthday present, but we decided to combine it with a few days at a B&B and some exploration of this lovely old town.

On our way to York, completely by chance, we stopped in a very interesting country park - The Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Outside, the grounds were full of sculpture, including a good few Henry Moores and inside there were several exhibitions and installations. We really enjoyed our afternoon walking around and exploring the various exhibits.

Our B & B was very good. Clean, comfortable and welcoming with a smashing breakfast. We'd recommend it to anyone. It's called the Bloomsbury. We were able to walk into town and back each day with no trouble at all.

On our first full day we walked along the river to the National Railway Museum. Then we spent the whole day there! It was absolutely fascinating. There were trains from every era of the railways and from all over the world. In addition there were special trains, like the carriages used by the Royal Family and other equipment used by the railway industry.

This first picture shows the complete time span. In the foreground is a full sized model of Stephenson's Rocket. The first steam train ever. The original is in the Science Museum in London.

Behind that is the lovely, streamlined Mallard. This is also a steam train although it looks like a diesel because of its streamlining. It holds the world steam speed record set in the 1930s.

In the back ground you can just see part of Eurostar. This is the train that runs through the Channel Tunnel. In fact there's even a piece of tunnel so you can see how it's made and what goes into it.

Another fascinating thing about this museum is the storeroom and workrooms. A lot of these normally "behind-the-scenes" places are open to the public, so you can wander around a vast hall full of railway memorabilia which still have to be put on show or are just waiting for their turn in a display. If you click on the picture to the left, you'll get an idea of the scope of the store room. It's actually a panorama from three images.

In the workshops we were able to see the famous "Flying Scotsman" engine. But you wouldn't have recognised it - it's been stripped right down to its chassis. The wheels are in one corner, the carriage is somewhere else and the whole thing is being renovated.

Next day, we headed off for our big adventure. This was the trip to the skidpan. It was great fun and a terrific thrill to drive a breakneck speed and learn how to control skids and use ABS brakes. I don't know if I'll remember everything we learned, but it was really exhillarating to do it.

In the picture to the left, I am in the car with my instructor, Andy. As you can see, I have a crash helmet on, but they told us it was almost impossible to roll a car doing any of the manoevers we did.

We did the course on an airfield and the track was laid out with cones, so even if we did go out of control we couldn't actually do any damage. Well. of course we went out of control. That was the point of the thing! It was such a blast! I could do that every week and not get tired of it.

In this last shot I'm doing a "controlled" (sort of) skid around the track - spray is shooting out from the back wheels and if you could hear it the tires would be screaming!!!!!

The rest of our trip was quite tame by comparison, but we did enjoy it. On the Saturday we spent the whole day browsing around the shops and on Sunday we made our way back home via Mytholmroyd where we met up with Pam Jordan (my college flat mate), went for a walk in the Pennines and had a very nice Sunday dinner in a country pub.

So that's it for the Yorkshire trip. I tried to load a few more photos to show you what we've been up to since then, but the blog site won't let me, so I'll save them for the next post.

Take care of yourselves, and don't forget to write.

Waiting for the results

2006-11-07T23:28:00.000Z

Tonight we're up late, we're going to turn the tv on at midnight so we can see how the US election is going. I thought I could pass the time by catching up on my blog a bit. I'm afraid I've rather let it go over the last few weeks.

I guess I'm going to take you back to mid-October and the end of Julie's visit. After loafing about in south Shropshire for a few days we took Julie off to stay with Joy and John in Nuneaton and then on up to Lancaster to visit Barry and Sheila. These were the people who made up the crew of the Narrow Boat "Serenade" when we did our momentous tour in 1993 with Ken and Julie and they were anxious to see Julie and reminisce about the great time we all had.

The first picture is of Joy, Julie and the two Johns in front of the moated manor house at Baddesley Clinton. We visited it and then went on to Packwood House. Unfortunately, we were too late to tour Packwood, but were able to wander around the lovely gardens. This is just one snapshot taken there.

Up in Lancaster we took a long walk along the canal (of course!) with a nice drink at the far end!

The next day we drove around a bit of the Lake District, visiting Grasmere and Windermere. The weather wasn't wonderful, but it didn't rain and so we were able to get out on Grasmere for a voyage on beautifully restored Victorian steam gondola. Here's a picture of that.

We drove home after that, and spent the next day lolling about and packing ready for ........

That's the next story ..... stay tuned!

And please stay in touch!

Gottit!

2006-10-27T10:28:00.000+01:00

The plant I showed you in my previous posting is Nandina domestica - heavenly bamboo. However, it's not a bamboo, it's a member of the berberis family. Thanks to Mark Duffell, who is a horticulturalist living in Shrewsbury for a very quick identification.

George Black - please write again with your e-mail address. I tried to reply to your note and my e-mail bounced.

Sorry to post a personal note like that, but I have no other way of doing it.

Gotta rush - have to clean house for some more visitors. After they leave I'll post a more lengthy account of our doings over the last few weeks. There's lots to tell you!

Stay in touch, please!

My problem child!

2006-10-26T16:50:00.000+01:00

Hello all you plant experts out there! I need some help with a plant which is growing right outside my patio door. I have no idea what it is, and no-one who has visited and looked at it has any idea either!

To see more detail, you should be able to click on the pictures and expand them.

My first picture is of the whole plant. It has a woody stem and grows slowly during the summer putting out compound leaves. These leaves stay green through the winter and the bottom ones fall off after a couple of seasons (I think, I haven't been there long enough to know for sure). By the end of the winter the leaflets have reddened edges. The petioles are red where they join the main stem, too.

The plant is about 3 ft or 1 m tall at present, but I don't know how old it is. The pheasants have been digging around in the roots, so that's why we've put the stake in and surrounded the plant with stones.

My next picture shows the branched inflorescence and leaves more closely. I've been waiting for it to flower as the leaves seemed to look like pea-family leaves and I was expecting a pea-like flower. I was wrong!

The leaves are multiply compound and alternate or possibly spiral up the stem (they're definitely not opposite).

Now for the flowers! They are just blooming now in early/mid autumn. The "petals" (they could be sepals - I'm not a great expert) are white and very short lived. Once the flower opens up they fall off very quickly.

During the dry weather the "petals" seemed to recurve before falling off, but now in this very wet period they seem to lift up from the base and fall off the top of the pistil! The lowest flower in the picture is doing just that. I think there were six "petals" when I was able to count them before they fell off.

The petals open to reveal six very long, fat anthers which are yellow with brown backs and a fat green pistil.

I haven't seen any fruit yet. I don't think it flowered last year, so when we moved in (September 2005) there were just the dry shriveled remains of what appeared to be the previous year's berries. I suppose it could have flowered earlier last year, the drought has really messed up the timing for a lot of plants this year.

If you have any ideas, questions or comments please e-mail and let me know. I've spent hours going through books and can't see anything that is just right.

Thanks ..... Joan

Boo hoo!

2006-10-12T19:37:00.000+01:00

Yesterday we said a sad farewell to Frankie (I think John actually shed a tear as she drove off up the drive with Dolly!).

But, there's still lots of good things going on around here! On Tuesday, Julie and I went on a hack together. Doesn't Julie look small over there? I think it's a trick of the perspective, but Barney really is a VERY BIG horse!

See that wet concrete? Well, I couldn't get my leg over the saddle when we got back and I fell off Barney and landed on my butt - I'm still a bit sore, but we all had a good laugh and there were no bones broken.

The ride was lovely, across pastures and through the woods. It was very "atmospheric" (translation, foggy) which was a pity as we couldn't see the views, but the rain kept off and we enjoyed it.

We had a day in Ironbridge, too. Here are Julie and John on the actual iron bridge. This is the first iron bridge to be built anywhere in the world and this valley is the cradle of the Industrial Revolution. Now it's a pleasant, sleepy valley full of the ruins of blast furnaces and pottery kilns.

Stay in touch!

A restful weekend

2006-10-01T15:53:00.000+01:00

Well, we're having a lovely restful weekend. We've had lots of heavy showers so it's not been good for outside work and I've taken advantage of that. Here I am relaxing in the living room with a glass of wine and Frankie. I've been reading quite a lot, lately, too - a sure sign that the depression is lifting. The new drugs seem to be working, thank goodness.

It rained a lot last night and this morning the stream was running strongly. I don't know if it will keep going this time, it hasn't been flowing continuously for more than hour at a time since mid-July!

The rain is helping the badgers to find the worms, I think. The worms come up to the surface when it rains and so they don't have to dig up our lawn to find them. This explains why we rarely find worms on the paths in the morning like we used to in town.

This morning it was raining so hard that the squirrel couldn't climb up the bird feeder to steal the sunflower seeds. He'd get up half-way and then slide back down. In the end, the skies opened with a downpour and he took off in a hurry, making for the shelter of a nearby tree!

The rain doesn't seem to bother the pheasants very much. Sometimes the male comes out in the rain and just sits in the middle of the lawn looking miserable! One of our females has developed a new feeding technique which I have captured in the photo on the left. She is perched on a dish feeder about 3 feet off the ground and is taking seeds out of the tube feeder. These birds are more intelligent than I realised at first.

Unfortunately, this feeder became the breakfast buffet for a sparrow hawk. The greenfinches actually sit at the tube feeder and eat the seeds, they don't fly off with them as the tits do. This made it easy for the hawk to pick them off and we watched it do this several times. It lands on the ground with its prey and just holds the little bird down till it passes out. Then it flies off to consume it at leisure up in the trees. A few weeks ago we had crowds of greenfinches on the feeders, now we just have one or two.

Frankie and Johnny!

2006-09-14T16:25:00.000+01:00

Those of you who have heard John's rude comments about cats will be amused by this picture of him snoozing the afternoon away with Frankie by his side. Frankie is visiting right now and she's really taken to him. She's a sweet cat - no biting or scratching from her! She loves to while away the afternoon on a lap, watching the birds outside and occasionally rubbing her head against your hands. During the day she finds the pheasants particularly interesting and in the evening she's been watching the badgers with amazement.

We're not terribly thrilled with our badgers right now. They've been digging the lawns up. Every morning John goes out, puts the grass back in the holes and does a bit of seeding. Maybe it will help to improve the lawn in the long-run, but in the short-run it's really frustrating to wake up and find all those black holes in the lawn.

It's now edging over from summer to autumn. Actually, it started back in August. It was so dry that a lot of our flowers were over before their time. Then it started to rain and got a lot cooler and windier and we thought that was the end of the good weather. But the last few days have been very nice, with sunny skies, light breezes and highs around 21 or 22 (70F).

On Sunday we decided we needed a day by the sea and went off to Aberystwyth, which is the nearest sea-side town to us. We spent the morning wandering about the town and along the front, then went on to a really nice RSPB reserve on the Dovey estuary called Ynis hir. We're planning to go back again in the fall when all the migrants will be there. Later in the day we went to Aberdovey and after walking around the town had a supper of fish and chips before heading home. It only takes about 1.5 hours to drive over there so I think we may be going back more often for a fix of sea air and different scenery.

Today we woke to pouring rain and after a while the stream started flowing again. Unfortunately, it still can't keep it up and now that the rain has stopped we have a dry bed once more. The water table must be very low and we have to wait for the aquifer to get full before the flow will become continuous again.

There must be enough water in the soil for the plants as they are thriving again. The trees and shrubs are full of hips, haws and berries, and some of our cooking apples are rotting on the branches. And the lawn - it's growing like the dickens! In some places the blackberries are small, dry and shrivelled, but in other districts there are big, black juicy berries just waiting to be picked and made into jam or blackberry and apple pie.

As you can see from my coloured pencil drawing on the left, I have fruit on the mind right now. I've been really impressed by the quality of the fruit we get here, even in the supermarkets. The pear you see was a conference pear. These are very hard and tasty. The nectarine was ripe, juicy and delicious - neither of them lasted very long after I had drawn them!

The other thing that impressed me was the length of the strawberry season. We started off with strawberries from the southern islands in May and ended up with berries from the northern Scottish islands in August - and they were ALL ripe and delicious.

Well, it's time to go down to the living room and read a bit. Since I started on the anti-depressants I've been less nervous and guilty about taking time to relax and I've been sitting down with a good book or two or three!

Stay in touch, please!

One year on!

2006-08-26T11:04:00.000+01:00

Well, it's now one year since we moved over here. I still have no regrets, although every now and then I find I'm missing something - like a good Turkish restaurant, NPR, the book club, the dinner club, the polymer clay guild and all our other good friends.

However, we do have lots of good friends over here, and one of them visited us this week. This is Dolly with her cat Frankie. Dolly and I are exactly the same age (born on the same day, in fact) and we were flat mates in Hamilton when we did our Master's degrees at McMaster. She worked in Canada for a while and then came home to the UK. We went to the US, but we've stayed in touch ever since (it's nearly 40 years since we met!).

Dolly is a brilliant artist and is also keen on natural history in all its forms, so we have a lot in common. We talked almost non-stop for two days! This was helped on Wednesday by rainy weather, so we stayed in a lot of the day

On Thursday the weather was lovely and we had a day out. We started off by driving up the Burway, parking at the top and having a bit of a walk on the Mynd. In the picture below we're looking eastwards across the Stretton Valley to Caer Caradoc. The colours up in the hills are lovely right now. The whinberry bushes are turning reddish brown, the bracken is bright green and the heather is purple as it comes into full bloom.

We didn't have much of a whinberry crop this year. Whinberries are the local, wild, blueberries. They are very small, but quite delicious. Unfortunately, the drought came at the wrong time for them and there are very few fruit.

Many of the wild blackberries are looking dry and hard, too. In some places there are tons of them and in others there's nothing. It all depends on just how much water there was in that area. However, we've promised ourselves that we'll take a plastic container with us wherever we go so we can harvest berries when we find them. There are lots of cobnuts (hazelnuts) about too and I'd like to get a few of them before the squirrels have them all!

After a smashing lunch in a pub in Wentnor, we carried on into Wales to Rhyadr. This was to visit the Red Kite feeding station at Gigrin Farm. It was definitely the highlight of the day, with a spectacular show of these lovely birds. The photo to the left shows John and Dolly at the farm and all the birds you can see in the sky are Red Kites. I took lots of pictures, but none of them are very good, so I think you'll get a better sense of what happens here if you visit their web site.

Yesterday was REPATRIATION DAY!!!! The first anniversary of our arrival in the UK. Next week will be the anniversary of moving into Peel Wyke. We celebrated by having dinner at a Thai restaurant in Shrewsbury after we'd worked in the museum for a few hours.

Yesterday was also the day I started on some new drugs to cancel out the side effects of the Arimidex. This is something I hoped I'd never have to do, but they got bad enough that I'm now on an anti-depressant and something for my digestive upsets. I really don't want to move away from the Arimidex although an alternative drug was suggested, so we're trying to cope with the side effects rather than risk a whole different set of them! Oh well ... only another 4 years to go! In the meantime, while I get used to these new drugs I'm wandering around like I was stoned for most of the morning! In fact, I think I've got the munchies - maybe I'll go get some lunch and have a nap!

Stay in touch, please!

Our on-again, off-again stream!

2006-08-20T22:28:00.000+01:00

Hello everyone!

This is just a quick post to let you know that we've had a fair bit of rain over the last few days and the stream has come back temporarily a couple of times. Unfortunately, it has disappeared again now, but we continue to hope!

By sheer fluke we were actually looking at the stream bed when the water started to flow down it. It was lovely to be able to hear it burbling away again. I really miss it when it's dry.

Last weekend, Barry and Sheila visited us. We had a very nice day at Ludlow, visiting the market, lunching at the Unicorn and walking around the town and then in the evening they took us to the Studio for a wonderful dinner. On the way home we heard Irish music coming from the King's Head so we went in for a nightcap. What a smashing day!

On Sunday it rained a bit as we managed to get lost on the Mynd, but still had a good walk up Townbrook Hollow and back down Ashes Hollow for lunch at the Green Dragon in Little Stretton. We all had faggots! As usual, they were delicious. For those of you who don't know what they are, they are a VERY LARGE meatball made of liver, onions and other stuff. They were served with lovely brown gravy, root mash (mashed potatoes, carrots and other root vegetables) and peas - YUMMY! The walk home from Little Stretton to Church Stretton was a bit fraught as we'd all managed to get stiff and sore from our walk, but we made it and spent the evening "vegging out" in front of the telly and watching the badgers.

On Monday, B & S left and we had major hedge work done along the stream bank. It looks a bit bare right now, but it'll soon grow and it's inspired me to do a bit of work outside. Margaret arrived the same evening for an overnight stay. We had a lovely visit, catching up on the news and doing a nice short walk on Tuesday morning. We took Margaret up to the Long Mynd Hotel where she and John and all the other first year geologists had their field trip back in the mid-60s. The place rings no bells with either of them. Either it has changed beyond recognition or they were having such a good time that they failed to notice any architectural details!

Wednesday Dave and Pam had us up to their house for dinner. It was steak and kidney pie and absolutely fabulous. Ella was very pleased to see us, offering up some of her favorite toys for inspection - yuck.

Thursday we had a real sustained rain for a while and it's brought us some much needed moisture. Hopefully some of the plants that were wilting will now perk up a bit. I spent the afternoon drawing the Blist's Hill waggons. I posted a photo of them earlier on. Here's a copy of my drawing:

On Friday John went off to the Bird Watching Fair at Rutland Water. I think he had a good time looking at all the displays, buying books and a birding vest and other goodies and attending lectures. He got back at about 1 am on Saturday morning. I'm glad I didn't go with him, I would have cramped his style! Instead, I had a neighbour lady over for what turned out to be a very boozy lunch. Really enjoyed it and the left-overs have been splendid all weekend, too!

Got out into the garden today and started some tidying and clean-up. John is beginning to look at books about ponds - I can't decide if a pond will make more or less work in the garden. I don't know if this will end up being a major engineering work or just a wildlife "puddle". Of course, we do have a great resource in Nick, our nephew, who now has his own landscaping business. We may well hire him to do all the work and help with some of the planning.

John has been working on our taxes this evening. He consulted with Sheila about it last weekend, but had pretty much worked it out for himself anyway. So far, he's pleased that the forms are very well set up and quite easy to follow and I think he's pretty well done with it for last tax year (2005-2006). We have now renounced our American resident status and will only have to file UK taxes next year, so there will be one more mixed filing and then it should all be a lot easier. We have to set up some sort of savings account so we can save our tax money as we transfer our income over from the States. Otherwise we'll be stuck with nothing to pay the bill with at the end of the year.

By the end of next week we'll have been living in the UK for a whole year! I think John is planning some sort of celebration. I'm planning to do a budget and expenses calculation and make sure we can still affort to continue in this life of luxury! I think we've been spending rather more than we expected to, but some expenses were due to moving and so I'm not quite sure how we're doing at this point. I'll feel a bit better once I've sorted it out and categorized it so we can see if we have to cut down on drinking or whether we can continue to live like profligates!

On the subject of greedy buggers, the badgers have continued their nightly visits, but have been coming earlier. They're also back digging in the lawn and tearing up my plants for bedding. GRRRRRRR!

We've got loads of baby birds about - especially large flocks of blue tits, chaffinches and green finches. There are at least 10 species that we know nested around here and have brought their babies to feed: blackbird, songthrush, robin, greenfinch, chaffinch, bullfinch, blue tit, great tit, coal tit, dunnock. Some of the youngsters looked very confused when it started to rain. If they were from a second brood, they wouldn't have seen any since they were born! In addition, there have been crows, magpies, house sparrows, wagtails and an immature female pheasant around. The local buzzards wheel about over head and scream a lot and we've heard tawny owls at night on several occasions.

Well, that's all for now. Take care of yourselves and please stay in touch!

Early August in my Mind and in the Garden

2006-08-07T21:50:00.000+01:00

I was sad to see our Aussie visitors leave on August 1st. When we returned from Sweden and as we worked to get ready for our first set of visitors during June I found my depression had lifted and I was able to work and enjoy myself in a way that I hadn't done for months.

July was so busy I didn't have time to get worried or anxious or depressed, but the last week has been a different story and I found Winston Churchill's "Black Dog" descending on me again. It's not helped by worry over the war in the Middle East, but a lot of my anxiety is irrational and unnecessary. I know it, but I can't control it. And the drug I'm taking to keep the cancer at bay is making it worse. I had a meeting with my oncologist a couple of weeks ago and she suggested a change of drugs. I'm waiting for a couple of weeks so that her letter gets to my G.P. and then I'm going to go in and see if we can get this sorted out.

In the meantime I can get out into the garden or go to work at the museum and that helps me to control my black feelings.

Let me share some of my garden therapy! As you can see from this picture of one of our apple trees the fruit are ripening in spite of the drought! It's still very dry and warm here. In the past few weeks we've had a few showers with a quarter or an eigth of an inch each time, but it has barely wetted the soil, really. We're only watering things that are truly desperate or which have been recently seeded or transplanted and I've been surprised at how well most trees and shrubs are holding up.

This apple tree is the only one that has any fruit on it. The others had very little blossom and even fewer apples. I'm not sure why. I'll have to watch the buds more carefully next year. We DO have at least one pair of bullfinches and they love to eat apple buds so that may be the problem.

We've already had bumper crops of blackcurrents and gooseberries and today I picked a good handfull of loganberries (sort of thornless blackberries) which I plan to cook up with apples to make a crumble. I've frozen some of our rhubarb and blackcurrents so we'll be able to enjoy them later on in the year.

This picture is of the hydrangea under John's study window. It's quite small, but the color is lovely. We have two others, one a white climber and another which is a blue lacecap. Their leaves are browning off a bit, but otherwise they are hanging in there!

This little hydrangea has had another role for the past couple of months, being the soft landing place for several baby birds which flew into the window. None of them have been killed, and only a couple were dazed enough to hang around for very long. The window strikes have stopped now, so we think they were due to the inexperience of the youngsters! Fortunately they weren't very good flyers either and therefore didn't hit the window very hard!

Boy have we had youngsters! It seems to have been a very successful nesting year. Last week we had up to six immature blue tits on the fat feeder at the same time. The babies are flying around in mixed flocks now, so we get droves of young blue, coal and great tits attacking the fat, peanuts and sunflower seeds. And down below them are several young robins, dunnocks and chaffinches waiting for the droppings. If you add to that our 3 pheasants, a pair of crows, several pairs of wood pigeons, two pairs of greenfinches, at least one pair of bullfinches, and a couple of magpies you can see that our feeders and bird baths are very busy indeed.

We haven't seen any baby mammals, but we have a couple of bank voles, assorted mice, a few pesky squirrels and the badgers, so we're doing ok on those guys too!

We took advantage of the dry weather to get down in the streambed and tidy up. We've trimmed shrubs and trees that were overhanging, pulled up some weeds (can't pull up too many as we don't want to weaken the banks) and taken out a bit of trash. I got really stung by nettles, too! One lot swung round and swiped my face and scalp when I was pulling them up and another lot got me on the arms. It's given me a bit of lymphedema in my left arm, but I expect it to subside once my remaining lymph nodes pump the poison out of my arm!

But, of course it's the big drought resistant plants that are loving this hot and dry weather. Here's a picture of our Acanthus plants. They are tall, strong and vigorous and look absolutely wonderful. The bumble bees love them, climbing up into the flowers and getting completely lost in them.

This picture shows John's old cacti out having a summer holiday on our gravel "beach" in the back garden. These cacti are about 50 years old. John planted the seed when he was a little boy. His Dad looked after them while we were in North America until Joy took them over on his death. She was very pleased to pass them back to us when we came home to England for good!

To give you an idea of their size, the tall one at the back is about 18" tall.

My last picture is a more general view of that beach area. Click on it to get an enlarged view.

It's really a sunny little gravel patio. Behind the table and chairs you can see pink Phlox, orange Crocosmia and the tall umbels of hog weed. This latter has a smell that reminds me of an animal barn - I wonder if that's why they called it hog-weed?

But, take a look at the poor grass in the front of the picture. You can see that there are several very dry patches. Some parts of our lawns are now quite dead - especially where they were made up of moss or some weeds (oh- lawns are supposed to be made of grass, you say?). We're not too worried about it. I'm sure the grass will grow back as soon as we get some rain. It would be nice for that to happen soon, however.

Well, that's about all the news there is, for the moment.

Please stay in touch - e-mails from friends really brighten our days!

July Continued!

2006-08-06T22:23:00.000+01:00

To continue with out trip to Welshpool with Chuck and Hazel. ..... We also visited Powys Castle. The view on the left is of the castle as it stands on a high south facing bank. The bank is landscaped in terraces which are loaded with wonderful flowers. On our long summer days these flowers get the full force of the sunshine from early in the morning till late in the evening and they really thrive.

If you click on the photo you can see more detail and you'll be able to see the buildings set into the terraces. One of these is an orangery where citrus fruits wintered over (they would spend the summer outside in pots. Above it is a cool brick lined fernery. We revisited this castle later in the month when Ric and Jan came to stay with us. John and I snoozed and sketched amongst the ferns while Ric and Jan explored the castle.

Inside the castle was renovated in Victorian and Edwardian times. It is quite "modern" with comfortable rooms and plenty of luxurious furnishings. I particularly liked the bathroom with a lovely soaking bath - something I could use right now after a day of gardening!

Another feature of Chuck and Hazel's visit was the food fayre and ale trail in Church Stretton. These took place over a weekend and included other non-food entertainments like Morris dancing in the market square and a dog agility demo. in Russell's Meadow.

In the photo to the left you can see some lady folk dancers who are being introduced by the Shrewsbury Town Crier. This man must be at least 7 feet tall and he's well built to boot! He has a voice to match, too! He came to open a market here a few months ago and I could hear him from our road almost a quarter of a mile away!

The ale trail was fun. There were 12 pubs around the Strettons and surrounding villages and you had to get your "Passport" stamped in each of them to get your certificate of participation and your specially decorated pint glass. Busses were laid on to take revellers from pub to pub so there was no danger from drunk driving. The event lasted for two days. Some chose to do it quicker, but we did 6 pubs each day and tried lots of different beers on the way round. Chuck made careful notes on all the beers he tried. We also found some we liked, but were even more interested in trying out the various pubs. We now have a few more that we can take visitors to when they come here! In fact, we did just that for Ric and Jan later in the month.

And here we are with Rick and Jan! I'm sorry that Ric's face is shaded, but it was a hot and sunny day so everyone except me was wearing a hat. I'm so glad to have hair these days that I don't usually bother, although I do wear sun-block.

We're standing at Pole Bank at the highest point on the Long Mynd. From there you can see a long, long way in every direction. Mid-Wales is behind us and to the south you can see all the way to the Malverns and the Brecon Beacons. To the north and east there are good views over the Severn Valley and you can usually pick out the steam rising from the cooling towers at Buildwas power station in the IronBridge Gorge.

We went to IronBridge with both sets of visitors last month. This photo is of some wagons in the Blists Hill Victorian Village. It's good to have the village and the museums there because the gorge is now a beautiful bucolic valley, with wooded trails and the clear rushing waters of the Severn River. It's hard to imagine that 200 years ago the place was a hellish inferno of iron smelters, clay and china works, mines, etc. Boats plied the river with loads of coal, limestone, tiles, crockery, etc. and the air was full of smoke and fumes. It was here in the mid-1700s that Abraham Darby discovered how to use coke to smelt iron and the Industrial Revolution was born. The symbol of it is the Iron Bridge itself. The first one ever built and a thing of great beauty. The area is now a World Heritage Site and home to several museums and places of interest.

We did quite a bit of walking with Jan and Ric. Apart from climbing to the top of the Mynd (and then returning via Sunday Lunch at the Green Dragon in Little Stretton), we also walked a small part (about 5 miles) of the Offa's Dyke path which runs along the English/Welsh border from Chepstow on the Bristol Channel to Prestatyn on the North Welsh coast, climbed Caer Caradoc on the east side of the Stretton Valley (about 5 or 6 miles) and did a walk in Snowdonia National Park.

While the Aussies were here it continued to be hot and dry. The lawns dried up and died in places, plants began to wilt and most of the flowers faded off. However the summer roses were beautiful and there look to be good crops of grain in the fields.

I guess that's all for July. I still have some early August garden pictures to show you all, so I'll continue with another posting tomorrow. Now it's time for bed so we can get an early start on Museum work tomorrow.

July Summary

2006-08-06T19:47:00.000+01:00

Well, July is over and August is well on its way. I can't believe that we've been here for over 11 months already!

I've been a bit remiss with my postings in July as we had two sets of visitors with only 10 days in between to clean the house, catch up on work at the museum and work in the garden. In my last posting I gave you a brief summary of our visit from Chuck and Hazel. I promised to add more about their visit later and this is definitely later!

It turns out that I don't have many good photos from their visit. So I have shamelessly ripped off a couple from Chuck and Hazel's backup which they left with us! These are they:

These pictures were taken at Hay-On-Wye where we spent a happy day exploring the many second-hand bookshops. I think you can see larger versions of these pictures if you click on them.

One of the things we all enjoyed was our day in Welshpool. Down below are some pictures from that day. Riding the Llanfair Railway was a real treat, especially for the guys who love steam railways. I enjoyed the ride too, but am not quite so enamoured of getting bits of grit in your eyes and breathing sooty smoke all along the line! Still the scenery was lovely and the Bara Brith (a Welsh fruitloaf made with tea, spread with butter and eaten along with strong cups of tea) at Llanfair was to die for!

I wanted to load more pictures here, but it seems the blogger is getting cranky and won't allow me to do so. I'm going to stop for now and publish this and try to add more in the next posting which I will probably do later tonight!

Don't forget to keep those e-mails coming!

Our Stream Has Run Dry

2006-07-19T20:24:00.000+01:00

8:15 pm and I'm sitting out in the garden. It's way too hot in my study for me to work up there. Thank goodness we bought this laptop and have a wireless network!

I have lots to write about, but only a limited amount of energy - so some of it will have to wait for another posting. Here's a summary of the news for the last month!

The warm spell we experienced in Sweden continued in England for a while. We were able to catch up on some gardening and get the house ready for our visitors - Chuck and Hazel from the U.S.

I also took my first horse-riding lesson. One of two booked as part of my 60th birthday present from John. I really loved it, as you can see in the photo, and I have now had my second lesson and have booked 4 more. I just wish I'd learned when I was a teenager.

We had a great time with Chuck and Hazel and did a lot of fun stuff. As soon as I stop sweating I'll do a special posting on that visit. The highlights included a July 4th trip to Hay-on-Wye, with an outdoor perfermance of MidSummer Night's Dream at Ludlow castle to end the day, a day in Wales with a ride on the Llanfair Narrow Gauge Railway and a visit to Powys Castle, the Church Stretton food fayre and ale trail, and a visit to Ironbridge Gorge.

We're now preparing for our next set of visitors. Ric and Jan from Australia are arriving on Friday for about 10 days. We're hoping to do a lot of walking with them, so I'm praying for cooler weather.

Today temperatures got into the mid 30s (well over 90). This is supposed to be the warmest day, a cooler air-mass is on it's way. Unfortunately, it's only predicted to bring hit or miss showers overnight. This is too bad as everything is really dry and parched. A lot of the flowers are rushing to seed as quickly as possible so they can propagate before they die and the whole place is looking green and brown without much colour.

The stream that runs through our garden dried up completely a few days ago. I'd only just discovered life in the stream, too - in the form of fresh-water shrimps hiding under rocks. From the fishy smell coming out of the stream bed I reckon they're mostly demised at this point.

One brilliant point of life and color is the Buddleia bush. I'm sitting beside it right now and it still has a few butterflies and bees sipping nectar. The smell is very pleasant and it's loaded with big purple spikes of flowers. When the sun was on it during the day it was loaded with butterflies and bees, including dozens of peacock butterflies and red admirals. It was a glorious sight. I missed this bush when I was pruning in spring and it's this one that has produced the flowers in abundance. I'm a bit puzzled about that as the accepted wisdom is to prune buddleias back hard each year.

The wind has just picked up a bit. It's still warm (about 27 C or 84F), but the wind helps quite a lot. I can now see some vertical development in the clouds to the east, but since the weather is supposed to come up from the south-west, this isn't very helpful...... John just came out to say that a new batch of storms is developing over Birmingham way. They will be the ones I can see. Come on, guys ..... head this way, please!

We're lucky here as there is no hose-pipe ban. We're being pretty careful, but we have been doing a bit of watering of the things that seem to be the most stressed. Our general philosophy is to let the garden plants sort themselves out. Since these conditions are likely to become more frequent in the future there's no point trying to keep plants that can't tolerate dry conditions. We're letting the lawns go brown, for instance. In this country they'll soon recover when we do get some rain.

In the southeast they have very strict rules about water usage because there is a severe shortage. The problem is not the rainfall of the last few months, which has been adequate, but the loss of water from the chalk aquifers which supply most of the southeast. People here are really annoyed, however, because the water companies are wasting so much water through leakages from the aging pipes. What really irks everyone is that the water companies are making vast profits in spite of the shortages.

Time to go in and watch a telly program.

Talk to you soon ...... bye for now .......

Oh, my aching feet!

2006-06-19T11:01:00.000+01:00

Hello, y'all!

We've just returned from a week in Gothenburg (sorry I know that's the English form of the city's name, but I don't have the wherewithal to put in the correct spelling).

We had a smashing time. We went for the 6th International Conference on Urban Climate. We met lots of friends - I won't name them all, but I know that many of you will be interested to know that we met up with Gerald Mills who is hale and hearty and in fine form!

John presented a couple of papers and was in meetings most of the time, so I got to do a lot of wandering about and exploring. During the first couple of days, however, he had some free time and we were able to go about together. The atmospheric picture above was taken just before sun-set and shows one of the main streets of the town with a fountain/statue of Poseidon in the foreground and the towers of the central city in the background. As you can see there's a distinct haze over the city - IT WAS HOT!!!!! We waited for some time to see the sunset, but being that far north it took a lot longer than expected and eventually we left in search of more exiting things.

We found there were a lot of people out on the streets till very late at night. It didn't really get dark till after 11 pm and people stayed on in the outdoor cafes till long after that. This turned out to be especially true on World Cup nights. The night Sweden beat Paraguay the entire town seemed to be out celebrating - chanting, singing, yelling, driving around with horns honking. It was all very friendly and one didn't feel threatened at all - it was just noisy and fun.

John and I walked just about everywhere. And the only problem with that was the cobbled and uneven surface of the pavements (sorry, sidewalks). They really made your feet hurt! I did a little sketch of some of the cobbles one day when I was sitting down by the harbour.

The only time I took the tram was on my second visit to the Botanic Gardens when I was in the company of Janice Ching (I hope that's her last name - she's definitely married to Jason Ching and I never thought to ask if she had a different last name!). Taking the tram gave us more energy to walk around the gardens!

A brief aside here to mention that we had a late night coffee with the Chings early on in the conference and found out that they knew my cousins Peter and Brenda Saunders from the days when they were all at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. What a small world it is!

I really enjoyed the Botanic Gardens. The picture to the left is of the nature reserve part of the gardens. This was wooded with little streams and masses of little white flowers. The more formal part of the gardens was lovely as well. The beds are immaculate and the range of plants very good. We hit the gardens at a particularly beautiful time, I think. I was most impressed by the "Paper Handkerchief Tree" and was able to find the names of several of the plants in my own garden.

Other highlights of the trip included dinners and receptions, with one reception at the very beautifully decorated city hall. However, I think the most interesting was a dinner at Universeum. This is a science museum and we took an after hours tour which included a piece of the South American rain-forest complete with birds, fish and insects, dinner in a hall with sharks swimming alongside us and best of all for me a petting tank where we were able to stroke various rays. These fish actually seemed to like being stroked and scratched. They would swim around the sides of the tanks and wiggle their "wings"! If you put your fingers in the water they would swim up to you and rub against them and they allowed you to touch their backs and underparts. I didn't know that rays had rough skin till I touched it. What a thrill!

On the last afternoon and evening there was a paper session and dinner party to celebrate Tim Oke's retirement. John presented a paper summarizing Tim's contributions to Urban Climate - wow! The dinner was in an indoor market - the food was smashing and the company fun.

And so, it was time to come back. And what did we find? ............. a completely different garden. The late spring stuff had died off - rhododendrons all gone, forget-me-nots turning to seed, poached-egg plant over and done with - and the early summer stuff coming on like a riot!

I was delighted to see the first day-lilly blossom. I associate day-lillies with our time in Columbus. We seem to have lots of them ready to burst into blossom, but I don't know what colors they'll be yet.

Foxgloves are everywhere, especially on the bank of the stream. Along there they are accompanied by daisies, grasses and hypericums and they look like they're in a summer meadow.

And of couse, we can't forget the roses - white ones, pink ones, orange and red - full of scent and varying from the simplest of wild forms to heavy multi-petalled beauties. They're all lovely - scrambling over trellises and trees, cascading down from the bank and just growing in bushy mounds. They should be at their peak in a week or two when Chuck and Hazel come to visit.

Well, that's all for now - gotta go and unpack!

Stay in touch, please!

Summer is here at last!

2006-06-09T11:43:00.000+01:00

I wish I could say that I could see this view right now, but I can't. However, summer has really arrived and it's hot for the U.K. There's a haze over the valley this morning and the sun is hot on your skin when you go out .

Out in the garden there is a stillness which we haven't seen before. There's very little wind and although the birds are singing and the bees are buzzing around, things seem very quiet. The stream has quieted down too - we haven't had any rain for a couple of weeks.

Our blue tit family are coming on in their house on our patio. They moved in almost as soon as we put it up. It's a bird house that my Dad put up originally at Ladycroft Walk, and it's really old. But it must be comfortable for blue tits because it's been used by many, many families over the years. It's now covered in Virginia creeper and totally invisible, but we can hear little squeaks from the house and the two adults are busy bringing food. This is good as there are a lot of insects and caterpillars that I need removed from my flowers!

We have a splendid show of rhododendrons right now - one of them must be 20 feet high and almost as wide. It looks like a huge waterfall of mauve blossom.

The lawn is a mass of buttercups (yes, I know that means that the grass is suffering and we'll pay for it later, but it's so pretty!). And there are yellow punctuation marks throughout the garden from buttercups and Welsh poppies. The overall color scheme uses the bronze, purple and pink pallette, so the yellow of these "weeds" really makes it pop!

In another couple of weeks we'll have a crop of gooseberries (if the birds don't get to them first). They're big and plump, but they are still hard so we have to wait a bit longer. We may also get a few strawberries to mix with the last of our rhubarb if we're lucky.

Last week we paid a visit to my old school chum Georgie and her husband Peter. They live in an updated row of quarrymen's cottages about 2 hours north of here. Their house is lovely, with a smashing garden and a view of almost the whole Cheshire plain. We had a lovely visit with some reminiscence, lots of walking, eating and drinking. We're hoping they can join us for a bit of walking and visiting in the fall, but they have busy lives and so do we, so it is sometimes quite hard to get our calendars to match up!

Joy came over this weekend. John was working on a paper so we two "girls" took advantage of the hot and sunny weather and rode off in her open topped car to visit one of our local stately homes - Attingham. It was good fun. We took the tours and learned about riches, corruption and bankruptcy in the Regency era!

To return to the picture of the palm trees. This is something I painted last night at art class. We're really just practicing with watercolor washes, but once I had the orange and yellow "sky" I couldn't resist putting in the palm trees!

The art class has been fun. We're learning techniques at present. First it was using pencils. It's amazing! We've all used pencils since we were little, but you actually have to learn how to use them to draw and shade things.

Now we're learning how to use watercolors. I'm actually quite exited about this and hope to be able to produce a competant piece of work at the end of it. I've never thought of myself as much of an artist, but I do think I'm a craftsman and I should be able to master the craft of drawing and painting.

The hard part is getting the creative ideas and putting them into a drawing, painting or sculpture. I've been hard pressed to have any creative ideas, let alone realise them in the last couple of years.

I did sit down with a pepper mill a few weeks ago and spent several hours working on this drawing. I'm quite pleased with the shading even though the shape is a little off. >

Newsy Bits!

2006-05-29T23:06:00.000+01:00

I've just added two posts with pictures of stuff in the garden. I hope that satisfies those of you who are interested in how the spring is progressing over here.

In fact, it's still beastly cold. After a lovely few days of warm sunshine, the rain came back along with a bitterly cold wind. The stream is rollicking along in the way it did last winter - it's lovely to hear the water, but it's a constant reminder of all the rain we've had.

My thumb is a lot better now. I didn't understand that trigger finger is yet another variation on the inflamed tendon theme. Now I know that, I realise that the only way to make it better is to rest it. So all the exercise I gave my thumb was just making it worse. Keeping it splinted for a couple of days allowed the swelling to go down and it's far less sore now. It still "triggers" in the morning and the evening, but I can put up with that. Since the alternative is stopping Arimidex and raising the risk of a recurrence of the breast cancer I don't really have much choice anyway.
We've visited some interesting places lately. Last weekend, with Nancy, we took a walking tour around Shrewsbury. I didn't realise how many old half-timbered buildings there were, nor did I know that Shrewsbury has it's own style of such buildings characterised by rope carvings and recessed quatrfoils. Anyone who's interested and wants to know more can write or visit!

We also took Nancy to Wroxeter, to the site of the Roman town there. All that you can see are the foundations and some of the walls of the bath house, which was a huge basilica about the size of a football pitch. The town itself was huge, but most of it remains unexcavated. It was the 4th largest Roman town in Britain.

This weekend we went to a craft show at Dudmaston Hall near Bridgenorth. It was sunny during our ride there over Wenlock Edge and we enjoyed the countryside and the lovely views. The Hawthorne is in full bloom now so the hedgerows are draped in lovely white blossom. Along the sides of the roads the bluebells and primroses are mostly gone, but there is lots of cow parsley (very similar to Queen Anne's Lace) with its delicate ferny green leaves and large umbels of white flowers.

It was a small show, but we enjoyed it - met and talked to some very nice crafts people and bought a few items for the house. The quality was very good, especially in the tents put up by the Ludlow and Shropshire Crafts organizations. We had lunch outside the hall but didn't visit the house or gardens, although they looked quite interesting. We'll do that on a weekday when it's less crowded.

Well, that'll do for today. Keep those e-mails coming to: joanarnfield@gmail.com.

More Garden Pictures

2006-05-29T22:50:00.000+01:00

After I deleted the first set of pictures, I decided to load them up in two attempts. This way, if one fails I haven't lost all my work!

To continue, this stunning Broom is up against the southeast corner of the house. We can't walk down the pathway, but who cares?

Another magnificent specimen is this tree heather. We actually have two of them. The foliage is acid green and the flowers are white.

And now for something completely different - the Poached Egg Plant. This is supposedly an annual which has just come out on our rock garden. If it really is an annual it must be self seeding. I hope so, I really love those blossoms and would hate to loose it.

We have rhododendrons and azaleas in various shades of red, blue, violet, purple and pink. This is a close-up of a particularly pretty one.