Design

The air in the garden is filled with the fluffy white seeds of the willow trees and there are plenty in the house as well. A much calmer day today, helped by the fact that on Wednesday afternoons I'm on ppa time. In the morning the children had their first practice SATs test under test conditions, ie in silence and sitting widely spaced around the room. It was a spelling test which I marked in the afternoon and they didn't do too badly. Unlike our weekly spelling test when they are given a list of words to write, one side of the test paper has pictures of the things I ask them to spell and the other side has a story with gaps. The story is read through first and then a second time when they are asked to write the missing words. There are simply not enough hours in the day to do all the things that need doing. I didn't get home until 6.30 so didn't have that much time in the garden. Still every bit helps and I have started work on the path from the drive up to the chi...

We came across not 1 but 2 full grown adders on our walk this afternoon. I didn't see the first one which rushed across the path in front of Peter as we walked down the coombe but the second one was on the path on the north side of the Point. Peter stopped suddenly so that I nearly bumped into him, then I shrieked and reached for my camera at the same time but it was slithering away too quickly into the grass for a photo. I was grateful for the fact that I was wearing walking boots but I did have bare legs so I was glad that Peter usually walks in front of me (that way he can set a pace that is comfortable for his joints and he doesn't have to keep stopping for my photo moments). Maybe that's the reason that the man always walks in front in so many cultures, to be the first to encounter danger! We did get our first sighting of a single grey seal a few paces later. It was a beautiful day and once again there were many people out enjoying the beautiful scenery. (The spring ...

The glorious weather continues and as I sat in the garden enjoying an al fresco breakfast I had not one jot of envy for those 'on holiday' in some exotic location. The sun was shining and the only sounds were those of bird song with the occasional undertone of buzzing bees. Not until my neighbour came down the hill with Jack on one of the ponies was there any human sound to break the symphony of natural sounds. So once more we set off to Morte Point for a walk. The good weather and the start of the school holidays meant that there were an awful lot of people and their dogs out too but we do have to share our beautiful countryside with those not fortunate enough to live in such lovely surroundings and only able to visit as holiday makers. Walking back up this stretch we saw one family looking at something in the grass and being ever nosey we wandered over to see what had caught their attention. It was a small (8") adder, our only poisonous snake, sunning itself on the ...

Should this blog suddenly fail to appear it's not that I'm lying slumped over my PC clutching files of children's assessments (though that is a real possibility ), but that my PC has given up the ghost. Yesterday, as I came to the end of many hours spent on those blasted reports, my poor PC began to go slow on even the simplest of Word tasks making me wait for what seemed like ages before anything at all happened. I'm nearing the end of the reports (first draft at least) so I hope I can get through them this morning before going off to the dental hygienist . The weather yesterday matched my cheery mood being rainy for most of the day. The oil man came with a delivery (so that's £860 of oil used up since 13 th Dec) and he wasn't very happy with the stand the oil tank is on telling me dire tales of £30,000 fines for a small oil leak into a waterway. We'll have to wait until the tank is nearly empty before we can do that job. I was looking at the bird feeder...

While I try to fight against the rampant commercialism of all our traditions I would have been very disappointed not to have any tokens of appreciation this morning. And bless his socks (I've trained him well), card, chocolate (bar not box) and roses brightened up my morning. In the UK the exchange of Valentine's cards is very much a romantic declaration. However I did cut out little hearts from pink post-its, added smiley stickers and stuck them on each child's tray this morning (from the tooth fairy?) We then encouraged the children to write compliments on pink paper to give to their friends as a sign of friendship. In general it has been a good day in school. The sun shone and it was so warm in the afternoon that we even had the classroom windows open to let some fresh air in. This week the children are making books about castles, something they are all interested in so I am expecting a good standard of work and motivation. Back to last Saturday. The frogs have been v...

My journey into school this morning was punctuated by suicidal birds. First there were the magpies playing 'chicken' with the the car, then a fat and stupid pheasant which waited until I'd screeched to a halt before deciding that it might be a good idea to fly off from the road and finally several small birds which flew across the road at such a low level I can only hope I missed them. Not such an exciting day at school, maths for the first half of the morning followed by some art, making cardboard and newspaper elephants to be covered with modroc (plaster cloth) and decorated. My afternoon was spent in the staffroom assessing my class' writing levels. They have all made progress so I'm satisfied. I stopped on the way home to take some pictures of the sunset , and the evening light on the trees. It's getting quite cold now so we have been putting the heating on in the evenings.

Today has gone by in the usual blur. I thought I was all organised but not quite. First I hadn't noticed that I was supposed to be doing PE at 9.30 so I had a quick mental reschedule, got my class down to the hall only to find it being occupied by some visitors so that was back to plan A. Then there was the visit of students from the local secondary school to talk to my class about what kind of stories they liked. That was another thing I had forgotten about so my maths lesson got compressed and then after school I enlisted the help of some of the other teachers to help me locate some computer programs that should have been on my desk top or at least on my pc . I had thought I was being especially dense in not being able to find them but actually they had disappeared into the ether. It's a complex computer system at school, you can log in as an administrator, yourself or any of the 6 different classes. We had a partial system rebuild last year so lots of things are in the wron...

The weather has been fantastic today and we finally found time to go out for a walk to Morte Point. The summer has been so hectic and the weather so rotten that this is the first time we've gone for a walk since returning from our holiday on Lundy 8 weeks ago! Yesterday we were watching ' Countryfile ' on tv and they had an item about rambling on the North Devon coast which featured Morte Point. So often I've seen film of beautiful coastline and thought how wonderful it would be to visit those areas and here was our very own walking spot. There were 5 seals down in the water at their usual place. (Zoom in to see one between the outermost 2 rock outcrops.) A little less exciting after my Lundy seal encounter. There were a number of these large parasol mushrooms about. It wasn't until I checked them out in my wildlife book at home that I discovered they are 'edible and tasty'. If we don't wait another 8 weeks before going for another walk perhaps w...

I have been back in work mode and took advantage of the dry weather to make a start on cutting back the leylandii hedge and arch. I had hoped to persuade the boys to do that last week but the wet weather wasn't conducive to outdoor work. Peter did send Romas out to give me a hand which was helpful even if I did have to give a further trim to the section of the hedge he did. I also did most of the mowing as the forecast is for yet more heavy rain coming in from the Atlantic. I had to leave the bottom lawn as it was still very wet. Astilbes in the bog garden. The strong autumnal winds will soon be blowing the apples off the trees before they get a chance to ripen. This is what usually happens but the apple trees are growing in the chickens' run so they get the windfalls. As I walked through the garden I was surprised to see a group of dragon flies that had taken up station on a plank bridge over a rill. It is the first time I've seen a group together like that, they kept ci...

Very cold this morning but not a cloud in the sky. It got hazy later then cleared again with a strong breeze. I simply had to start the day with some garden work in the sun, there is always weeding to be done. Then it was back indoors for a final sort through of the conservatory. One of the disadvantages of getting rid of all those cobwebs is that there is no natural fly control. I left the outside door open for less than half an hour and then had to chase 30 assorted flies/bugs around the ceiling with the hoover nozzle. Then I got worried that all the flies would be buzzing around inside the hoover emerging when I wasn't looking so I emptied the hoover bag (it's a vax for which I have a cloth reusable bag.) Plenty of butterflies again, here a couple of small tortoiseshell butterflies are sharing some buddleia with a rather tatty peacock butterfly. While I was out in the garden early this morning I had a chat with my neighbours' boy. He has a new 'toy', a full s...

Blowing hot and cold is just how it has been today. No rain but blazing hot one moment and then back to cold when the sun goes behind the clouds. Sorted out another cupboard before going through more photos to pick out some for my photo book. I was looking at last summer's pictures and it was sad to see how many wet or grey days there were. At least it has been a bit better this year. I did quite a bit of weeding and cutting back in the garden. Might as well enjoy the sunny spells. The butterflies were out in force again, some of them were catching the sun on the wall of the outbuildings just like those garden ornaments people buy. I noticed the swallow fledgelings making a few tentative flights in the outbuildings. They then decided that the only way out of the place was through a closed window. They were panicking so much I quickly opened the window so that they could tumble out. They've spent the rest of the day flying above the garden with their parents. As I sat enjoy...

Woke up this morning and the sun was actually shinning, Hooray! It stayed dry all day though later on the blue skies were interspersed with ominous grey clouds and I kept wondering if I should bring in the washing. Not wishing to waste the good weather, after a leisurely start I got on with some weeding and later in the afternoon I made a point of taking time to sit and read in the sun. I've done so much rushing around recently that I'm in danger of not enjoying the things we do have here, peace and quiet and beautiful surroundings. The butterflies were out in force, so many of them that I moved on to looking for interesting shots of several butterflies in each picture. I think the subtle marbling and the bright colours on the underside of the wings of the red admiral are even prettier than the top colours. A new butterfly, a small copper. I did take some pictures of a pair of them in a courtship dance but this was my favourite. It is only a small butterfly and was feeding...

The weather has been very similar to yesterday, overcast in the morning but sunnier in the afternoon. Peter's foot is playing up so he decided not to go to the gym & pool today but I had things to do so I had a leisurely few hours shopping in town once I'd been to the bank, post office and library. I bought some more pjs /slopping around clothes (all in sale of course), I think one more pair of pjs are going to get the chop and be turned into shorts. I do like those sort of clothes and though I should only be in hospital for 1 or 2 days when I do eventually have my op it will be nice to have new clothes to wear. Still on the hunt for new bras (due to changing down a few sizes), I ended up in Banbury's (a posh- ish dept store) and eventually found a plain white bra that fitted, went to pay and found out it was £37!!! 'No Thanks' I said and went to BHS where I bought 2 for less than half that price. Also bought another long t-shirt, on sale and 20% extra off. ...

It's been a day of some sun mixed with very heavy showers. During one of the sunny spells I had a good go at the hanging baskets, all the recent heavy rain had prevented me from daily dead heading of the surfinias and the flowers had also had a good battering as well. When I finished my hands were sticky so I turned the tap on to wash my hands. I looked down to see something fluttering in the plug hole. My first thought was that it was a leaf that had dropped from my arm, then it was ' Euch ' as I thought a small brown frog was in the sink. Only then did I realise that it was a tiny bat which had somehow fallen into the sink and down the plug hole. I carefully scooped it onto a tea towel and took it outside to see what the situation was. At this point I was pretty sure that it was dead, I mean it doesn't look good does it? The sun went in at this point and it started to get cold again so I put the bat in a container in the spare room. After an hour there were some si...