BITS AND PIECES 3

The last couple of days have been thick with mist up here on the moor but the bees have been busy nonetheless. Today is much clearer than yesterday and the garden is humming.

                                      

Trigger is hopping about again so the poulticing continues. One day he's fine, the next he's not. The vet thinks he keeps stubbing it and to keep going. I'm giving him some Frankincense (Boswellia Serrata) for the pain; I found it very good for my old horse's navicular disease. 

Here are a selection of photos from this week.....

Common Speedwell.....not so common up here:

Moss flowering:

Honeysuckle:

Hawthorn flowers:

This lichen was almost metallic which isn't quite coming across - beautiful though:

Heath Bedstraw at last. It's so tiny I've had to wait until the clumps have spread. A bit of Tormentil in there too:

Rowan is flowering everywhere:

Great Tit. This one had just visited the seed feeder but I wasn't quick enough!

This Chaffinch lady though............caught in the act!

Sparrow babies:

Huge colonies of tadpoles in our neighbour's very large pond. The newts were on the prowl so we wondered if they might be clumping together, like shoals of fish, applying the principal of safety in numbers.

No idea what these water plants are but they looked amazing in the late afternoon sun. Any ID offers gratefully received:

Yesterday's thick fog:

Sheep....

A Wheatear:

White Jacob's Ladder in the garden:

Lady's Mantle flowers:

Snippet today:

Foal B:

The weather has cleared now and it's a beautiful evening. Have a great weekend and until next time, here's Snippet in one of his 'master of all he surveys' poses.

AN OLYMPIC SIZED COMPLIMENT

What a week; more relentless but pleasurable socialising with origami-boy’s (Kath’s name for him) friends and families. Today, as he was helping my partner wash the car for the first time in years – it just isn’t worth it usually but we thought we should do it for our London trip next week - he said:

“Mummy, you look in your mid-thirties when you wear that dress”

Bless that boy. Normally he jokes about me being ninety six (the age my maternal grandmother died), so it was very sweet of him and made my day as a 48 year old!

Yesterday, with it’s very strange drizzle and sun combination, produced this stump of rainbow which I spotted through the bedroom window. A rainstump I suppose.

Later that afternoon, my friend spotted this fledgling blackbird striking a rather unattractive pose outside the back door by the raspberries. It sat like this for about 20 minutes all fluffed up in the chest department and occasionally opening its mouth for a few seconds. Any suggestions as to the reason for this behaviour gratefully received!

Although I haven’t been managing to get out very far, we often go out up the lane with a bike (not me), so I have a few pictures to show for it as well as anything I might see in the early morning's short, Snippet-poo related walks. 

Stonecrop in profusion on Middle Tor last week in the sun

Foal number four

Spear Thistle

Clover

raindrops on a spider's web

The foals early one morning this week The sun has generally gone by 9.00am, replaced by rain or drizzle

The herd this morning being disturbed in their snooze by this very loud sheep

A lone hawthorn

Snippet, eyes closed against the sun

Geraniums in the garden

And finally, I must show you my orchid on the kitchen window sill. It was a present just after I came out of hospital last year and, as someone who can kill a houseplant just by looking at it, I didn’t have high hopes of its survival. I pruned it as instructed and tried not to look at the ugly stumps over winter and this is the result. I’ve had to prop it up with damp newspaper in another pot because it was falling over with the weight of the blooms. This is about triple the size it was last year so goodness knows what it will be like next year. Does anyone know anything about re-potting them? I’m completely clueless when it’s not in the garden! It just seems to be a mass of roots in there and I don’t know if I should just leave well alone.

Till next time, have a great week. I don’t think I’m going to manage more than one a week until school starts again! 

TRIGGER BACK IN TRAINING AND SWARMING BEES

At last, this week, I have felt able to get Trigger back to work with the physical confidence to give him reassurance. I am going right back to the basics. The first day I met Anna Bonnage, she asked me to lead Trigger away and tell her what I felt about it. I said I thought he behaved like a foal behind its mother; weaving from one side of her to the other with the nerves of one new to the world. He also would constantly get very close in to me, nudging and wanting to rub. At his vetting, before I decided to take him on, he managed to crack one of my ribs with a nudge. Anna worked with us on respecting personal space to start with and we had great results. However, after nine months without frequent reminders, this has gone by the wayside and that's what I've been working on this week. We went for a walk with Snippet and, by the time we got back, Trig was walking calmly behind me at a safe distance and to the side I asked. He remembered the principles quicker than I was expecting. Coincidentally, I received Anna's email newsletter this week and this is a passage she wrote, far more eloquently than I possibly could, on the this very subject:

Safety is important when working with a young horse, important to the survival of both the human and horse. There are a few things that really matter when handling a youngster, and one is developing personal space. Youngsters who have been bottle-fed, isolated from a herd or de-sensitised to objects, will often push on us and if they do this, then it is likely that if they become scared, they will jump onto us. It amazes me how many people will let a horse push on them on a daily basis but would never accept it if a person they’d just been introduced to stood only four inches away and occasionally pushed their shoulder into them or head butted them! I found out at first hand how important personal space is when I left a fully opened umbrella propped on the fence, as I turned with my horse and walked towards the centre of the arena. Suddenly the umbrella fell off the fence and before I could turn around, my horse had skidded up behind me, leaving a two foot skid mark in the sand. I barely had time to raise my hand, so that he knew to keep out of my space. By the time I realised what had happened, he had diverted his direction in order to keep out of my way and then stop. I was very pleased that I had made a point of prioritising personal space on a daily basis when working with my horse in the past. These situations remind me that every day we are teaching a horse things that we do and don’t want them to learn.

I do think Anna is an inspiration and I felt like I needed to unlearn everything I had been taught in the 1970's! Do have a look at her website:

http://www.annabonnage.com/

Trigger out on the road behaving well

The nuthatches fledged this week on the same day that our neighbour's bees swarmed. Sadly, despite a fantastic photo opportunity of a fearless fledgling VERY close to me, I was too busy holding back Snippet, who saw them as potential snacks. The perils of terrier ownership. If it's small and it moves, it's under threat. My neighbours managed to tap the huge cone of bees into a basket and are hoping they will establish in a new hive. From watching 'Springwatch' this week, I understand we're very lucky to have nuthatches in a nest box as opposed to a hole in a tree. We'll be checking for the mudding up of the cracks in the box once we're sure they've all gone. It was fascinating watching the female bringing in mud rather than food sometimes - the instinct to do so is so strong.

A cone of bees

Last Saturday, we were at some friends who live by a mill stream and there were damsel flies and demoiselles everywhere. The little girl was in the stream up to her knees, delicately picking them off the plants and letting them rest in her hands. Every time the rest of us went near them they flew away. She seemed to have a magic touch.

Demoiselle

On Wednesday, I was thinking how barren and bare the moors can look if you don't look down. I sat on a rock and stared at the ground for five minutes. The amount of life was incredible, and given a better macro lens, I will try and photograph it all one day. At the moment, the grass is full of Tormentil and heath milkwort in different hues. They are TINY. The odd minute violet appears too. There are spiders everywhere and, given Snippet's obsessive interest in every other grassy tussock, many rodents and reptiles hidden from view. The butterflies are increasing in numbers now. I've been looking very strange creeping about trying to photograph them this week, to no avail. Better luck next week!

Violet

Tormetil

Four different Heath Milkwort colours

Yesterday was the last day of building work in the kitchen. To save money, we're going to lay the new floor ourselves and put the sink and some of the units back too.....this could be disastrous! Today is cloudy, hot and muggy. The midges are everywhere and I look like I've got nits, scratching my head and ears, which are covered in bites. Here are a selection of pictures from our walks this week.

Hawthorn blossom, like snow

I love the four distinct stripes here

About 9.00pm (taken by Mark Thompson)

Snippet sheltering from the sun 

Shin bashing ensued thanks to this stick

Related surely!

Cotton grass in the marsh

Betty and Lizzy today

Foals one, three and four (I think), who are very pally these days

And finally, I wanted to put in my friend's daughter's watercolour because I think it's so lovely. It has a freedom that so many of us lose as adults and I think the composition is fantastic. The background in the original is a brighter green but it still looks good. Have a lovely bank holiday weekend!

By Lily, aged 7