Summer is finally over.

That's it.  Summer is finally over.  The grue - or cranes - are flying south for the winter.

Sorry about the watery blobs on the lens, but it was just beginning to rain - the cranes were so low due to the clouds.  We see them every year, twice a year - we seem to be on their flight path to the sun, and in fact, there is apparently an app you can get which charts their progress up and down France.

But that's too much for me, I always feel a little down when I see them: it's a long time before they come back.

Pink sky in the morning...

I noticed the pinkiness in the sitting room, which is on the west side of the house but the light was being reflected by our neighbour's house and our barn.  So, I grabbed the camera and dashed to the side door and caught the sky over the church in the distance, to the south.  I then ran round to the east side and snapped the sun rising behind our cherry tree and the chicken house.  Two minutes later, it had all disappeared...

Visiting stick insect

I forgot to post this earlier this year, but I found the photos today so here we are:

My daughter was strimming a neighbour's garden, to get it ready to put the house on the market, and this is what she found:

It's a little green stick insect

He was about 6 inches or 15 cms long

Poor thing had already lost a leg, but Kath spotted it before she started up the machine

Amazing camouflage: he looked like a  little piece of grass

I carefully took him into the undergrowth next door, and let him free.  Kath was a little nervous in case there were others, but no more to be found.

And, incidentally, the house was sold.

Pumpkins are in

I managed to get the pumpkins in today in between showers - I chickened out in not leaving them outside until the first frost was threatened.  A very warm south-westerly wind, but I lit the Bosky to make green tomato chutney, plus a hot chili version.  I also peeled a load of windfall apples, cooked off for the freezer, plus another load

of apple mixed with blackcurrants, blackberries and a few cherries.

The THIRD lot of figs are ready to go - we normally get two harvests but this year has been quite remarkable for figs.  I usually make fig confiture, and give to my French neighbours who eat it with foie gras.  The figs are green, but very sweet.  I love them but OH wouldn't eat a fig if he was starving...

I also made another apple and red peach flan I made last week for some friends - the peaches are a gorgeous red colour inside and quite sweet, so I didn't have to add any sugar at all even though the apples are very tart - OH having type 2 diabetes of course.

So that's my Monday done.  Have a good week y'all!  

My beautiful Bleat RIP

My lovely sheep Bleat has died today.  Daft to weep over a sheep I know but she was the first lamb born in our field - and I pulled her out after her mother got into difficulties.  She earned the name 'Bleat' because - apart from having lambs - it was what she did best - bleat!  Here she is with her last lamb.

She was a good mother and grandmother to her lambs, and although she only ever gave us one lamb at a time, it was always a big strong healthy lamb, and she fed and cared for each and kept the other two or three sheep, and their lambs, in line.  She was a stickler for routine, and knew when it was food and watering time.

I loved her because she loved me.  She adored having her face and ears rubbed, and watched me carefully as I gardened in case there was the odd titbit coming her way.

We worked out she was 11 years old.   She had enjoyed a retirement for the last two years - her only duty was to keep the grass down, but she had been getting a little thin recently and I had been supplementing her feed with pellets.

I knew her time would be coming soon, maybe not this autumn but soon.   True to her neat and careful personality, she just quietly lay down in the long grass and didn't wake up.

Dear old Bleat.