Summer!

Sometimes you win, sometimes you loose that's how the last year has flowed.  It's all a bit of give and take and a lot of that is to do with the weather, when its hot and sunny you always feel like your winning!

The first few days in July have thrown the best and worst of summer weather at the land from baking heat, high winds, rain and thunder storms...all good growing conditions!

Everything has come to life with bees and butterflies everywhere (and unfortunately a LOT of horseflies too!!) the carpet of Trefoils literately buzzes you wonder where its safe to walk!

You would think that the amphibians would be lazing about down by the pond on hot days but most frogs and toads head for the cool of the woods where there is an abundance of insect life for food under logs and leaf-litter.  

Woody and I have been waiting for all the nesting birds to move out of the brash and log piles and now they have gone and with a bit of sun on our backs we set about clearing the remaining piles.  Collecting trailer loads and moving the logs to where Woody will process them in the winter we soon realised the log stacks were crawling with life and we took great care not to squish any of our little friends.  

We had a good system of checking, moving, stacking the wood to ensure that everyone had a chance to get away.  The ones I could catch were moved to a rock pile under the trees (Woody did most of the hard graft shifting logs by the trailer load!).

Weekend nearly over it's even more difficult to go back to work on a Monday when the sun is out.  There are still lots of jobs to do; moving brash and logs, pulling weeds, strimming thistles, picking up stones and still....clearing gorse! 

Marbled White Butterflies...cuddling!

The Little Big Oak

The next job is to clear around the Little Big Oak as we want this to stand out in the pasture (and possibly put a little tree bench underneath), this could be a job for a digger as there are lots of rocks and pilled up earth nearby.  

The horses have been moved to a corner of the meadow so that the pony paddock can be harrowed, cleared, stone picked and rested with the hope of adding some calci/lime later in the year.  It will be interesting to see what it will look like with a bit of a boost.