Bits and pieces

It was a wet start to the day on Wednesday and so I took Juno for a run with me in the rain rather than a more sedate walk. We managed our three miles and got soaked but it was better than a slow walk which left us just the same. I was down at the village hall not long afterwards and had a go at a second coat of wood floor restorer polish which has brought the surface up nicely. The photo shows the before in fact and I will have to get one of the after. It wasn't too hard to get done with a mop and ought to last a good while but it will be easy enough to put more on should the need arise.

From there onwards we spent some time with Glen and Harry, it being Glen's 29th birthday and Alison had done a lasagne for us which was lovely, especially for lunch. Once they had gone off for a rather more drunken set of activities, Alison and I made a start with the garden and it is looking in pretty tip top condition. 

We have carried on today and the hedges are done around the whole place, the lwans have been cut, including the one outside, the apple trees pruned and just a general, within reason. We are very conscious that being overly fussy will not benefit the insects and birds and animals which visit us. A bit of mess is a great start to helping the local wildlife and so we have left seed heads and piles of wood and twigs and grass and so on. We found a newt under some logs in the front garden and we have at least one toad in the back, along with many, many frogs. 

I've been making bread regularly given how much cheaper it is to make at home than to buy, as well as making differing types of soup and making use of our abundance of squash and tomatoes. 

With it being a better day today, I did also manage an hour on the bike and took off towards Wimborne St Giles and back, 11.5 miles, and stopped to watch the river and birds, as well as a heron at the watercress farm. Interesting spots included a drifting red kite which took the same path as the road I was on for a bit, a green woodpecker and a flock of swallows enjoying a feed before migration which must be close at hand.