At Apple Day (at the orchard) I got the opportunity to use to traditional drawknife to shape a blank for the making of a wooden cutlery knife.
Usually I keep and eye on the local river level since i like to go driving through it when it floods. The “check for flooding” website hadn’t updated the river levels since 5am, and I felt like we’d had enough rain for it to be at road level. So I took a ride to see and was sorely disappointed. I was told today by a friend, that the depth marker is nothing of the sort. It just tells you meters above sea level. Useless. This the rive level down at Maiden Newton, I use it for an idea of what’s going on at the bridge on St. Helen’s Lane. https://check-for-flooding.service.gov.uk/station/3278
I ppopped up to the orchard to have a look to see if I might be able to fix a faulty amplifier. I took my tool in the Land Rover and got this picture:
I made three more swift boxes from my remaining decent pallet wood I had reclaimed. These are for the village and have been given to the Swift Action group for distribution to those that would like them.
There was a little flooding of the river again over the road. I went to play in the flood water.. Once I found the tree I nipped home (back through the flooding) for my axe and hand saw and set about clearing it. I had great fun for a couple of hours.
Got the Swift box up, I situtated it on the north side of the house up under the sofit/eave as was suggested by www.swift-conservation.org, graphic was stolen taken from the swift conservation advice leaflet: https://www.swift-conservation.org/Leaflet_1_Swifts_Nest-boxes_at_Your_Home-small.pdf All this came about because of a community group in the village: https://www.cattistockvillage.co.uk/cattistock-community-website/the-great-outdoors/swift-action/
Today I checked in on our strawberries which are apparently still producing fruit. Looks like we’re doing a fair job of feeding the slugs, which in turn I hope are feeding the hedgehogs and toads etc and so on and so forth. That strawberry is propping up an entire ecosystem..
This morning there was a stunning sun rise, as there might be many mornings, but if I don’t see them then they don’t happen for me. This one happened for me.
I pocked up a loganberry plant from a village stall. I am planning on getting some chicken wire that I will attach to the fence so that it can climb or be fixed to. Hard to tell it apart from the wild strawberrys in this photo.
I have borrowed a trail camera from a kind neighbour, we’ve got a goodnumber of rubbish clips of hedgehogs, it’s a joint failure of both myself and the hedgehog, ether it walks too close to the camera or I put the camera in the wrong place, who knows, I did leave a note out for it.. Na, I didn’t really, I know they can’t read good (Ever seen Zoolander?). The Hedgehog: And the fox:
Archives