Visitors.

We have visitors in the house ( Roger and Judith ) 

and visitors in the garden

 plus a young squirrel eating the cherries and gooseberries. But he was too far away to photograph. 

Working indoors.

While the rain waters the grass I have been busy touching up paintwork and fixing the shower. 

Rain stopped play......

Luckily all the grass cutting had been finished and the trimming of the willows too. The grass was desperate for rain so it is good - it should all be nice and green for roger and Judith's visit next week. 

The next few days will be spent indoors touching up the paintwork and fixing a leaking shower. 

Today's tasks....

Clean RosieMay, continue with the grass cutting, standby and watch Neville and Liz rounding up the three sheep for shearing and weave the willow into the roof of the tree house. All done. 

The good new today was that there are lots of goldfish in the pond. I had seen three when we cleaned it out but now that you can see the water again we can now see lots of fish. 

When your remember that these are related to the original goldfish from the Rodborough pond it is quite amazing - I am not sure how many generations we are talking but quite a few. 

The fight back continues...

We are continuing to remove a month's worth of growth of grass, flowers and mainly weeds. Kate has done wonders in the borders and I have struggled with the grass. It is now all mown down and after some more sunshine I will collect it all up. 

Here are some flowers which are more interesting than grass......

And what is even more interesting than flowers? Alcohol. Last year I made some apple wine using a recipe off the Internet. It was very basic and didn't do fancy stuff like Camden tablets and sterilisation. I was not hopeful but I bottled it up and put it in the garage for the required six months. I have just opened the first bottle. It is a very nice sparkling white wine! I didn't expect fizz and I did expect the aroma of pea pod. But even Kate is drinking it, albeit diluted as she is not sure how alcoholic it is. Nor am I. 

It's been a while....

We have been away ( Italy, see http://www.rosiemaytravels.co.uk for details ) so now it is time to recover the garden. Cath comes in while we are away to mow the top lawns and keep the flowerbeds by the lawn tidy but the rest of it just grows wild. 

I have been trying to mow the grass - I have been strimming it with the push along strimmer, leaving it for a day to dry then picking it up with the ride-on mower - it can't cope with the grass when it is so high. 

The polytunnel and the greenhouse have been weeded and sweet peas, beans and tomatoes have been tied up. 

Today the main task was the pond which was overwhelmed with pondweed - Kate and I tackled it and it is now much improved; you can actually see water now.