Africa Mercy film - didn't happen

My apologies to any UK readers of this blog who tried to watch the Africa Mercy film I mentioned a few days ago. It should have been shown by Quest TV at 11pm last night but the programme schedulers decided to show something else instead. How annoying! If you recorded the substituted programme you might decide not to watch it.

Sheep

Yesterday morning I heard a strange noise in the lane right next to our house. Looking out of the window I saw a farmer walking backwards up the land rattling an animal feed bag and making a noise a bit like a Swiss yodell. Behind him were scores of sheep padding quietly up the lane, some nibbling at wayside weeds (and our garden plants!) and one of two brave ones trying to jump over walls. I rushed for my camera and managed to get a few shots, although I didn't have time to open the window. After the sheep came two sheep dogs and about four children eating (or smoking) sweet cigarettes, the another farmer in his Land Rover, then a long patient line of cars held up by the sheep. Another charming rural scene from the Dorset/Somerset border.

Laburnam wood

Last week we cut down a tatty old laburnam tree in our garden to make way for a new beech hedge. The trunk and branches varied in thickness from 2 inches to 4 inches, ideal for turning on a lathe into very attractive items, sometimes called treen (did you know that bagpipe mouthpieces are made from laburnam wood as it is impervious to moisture?). So I advertised the wood on the "Freecycle" page of our village magazine and within an hour of publication a retired carpenter phoned and asked if he could have it. He will dip the ends of the wood in wax so that it dries out slowly without cracking over the next three years then he will turn it into beautiful objects. In return for the laburnam wood he gave me a useful pen pot that he had turned from, guess what, laburnam wood. Here is a photo.

Mighty Ships - the Africa Mercy

Mighty Ships is a series of hour long TV programmes featuring a different "mighty ship" each week At 11pm (sorry about the late showing) on Friday 29 October the programme will feature the Africa Mercy - the largest charity hospital ship in the world. Our son Olly and his family live, work and go to school on the Africa Mercy and towards the end of the programme Olly has his 15 seconds of fame when he talks to camera about one of his roles on the ship, that of dive team co-ordinator. I saw the programme a few weeks ago and consider it the best I have seen about this wonderful ship and the 450 volunteers who live and work on her. The programme is on Quest TV, Freeview Channel 38, Sky 54, Virgin 179.

And again

Try again - garden photos

More garden photos

For some reason I could not put more photos on my last blog. Hopefully, here they are now:

Our garden

Despite the first frost of the Autumn last night our garden is still looking very colourful. Our summerhouse project is nearly finished (just a bit of paving to cement in place and some bare-rooted beech trees to plant in November), the lawn is recovering from the Summer drought and our garden ornaments are increasing in number. Our goldfish survived the hardest Winter for 18 years under the ice and in Spring started to breed for the first time - there are at least 20 small fish in the pond although about half of them are black and not very visible. Perhaps you can see a gold coloured one in the pond photograph?

Birthday Boy, Thomas

We spent last weekend helping our grandson Thomas celebrate his 9th birthday. After a filthy wet Friday, Saturday was a lovely sunny day and in the morning we watched Thomas (number 15) play football for his junior school team - they won the match 2 - 0. In the afternoon we joined Thomas and 8 other young guests on the Junior Adventure Course at Aerial Extreme, Milton Keynes, traversing ropes high above the ground. We enjoyed it so much we are going back some time to do the Senior Course, which takes 2 hours. Then it was time for all the guests to have tea at MacDonalds. Sorry we have not got any photos of the adventure course (we were hanging on for dear life and had no time opportunity to take any) but if you want to know more log on to http://www.aerialextreme.co.uk/

Changes in the garden

Over the last few weeks we have been making changes to the garden, including demolishing a crumbling stone staircase, removing a concrete flagged path across the lawn and returfing where the flags were. We had a few exciting moments (are you sure that's what the instructions say?) erecting a summerhouse at the south east corner of the garden where we can sit in the evening sunshine and enjoy a G & T and a good book. Well, that's the idea anyway! We've still got quite a bit of work to do including paving in front of the summerhouse with old stone roofing "slates", creating a new border and laying some more turf. Then in November we will plant a beech hedge to hide the summerhouse from the road. We are enjoying the work very much.