Armageddon, Climate, Communication, Wales, weather

Storm Darragh — if you missed it!

We had a blowy night and next morning Cwm Cudyn was blocked in 2 places, first with an Oak Tree which put our new electric chainsaw in it’s place — even with Roger helping! It lies right across the carriageway — no carriages will pass this way for quite a while.

Further up where the banks are steep and the soil thin, 5 tall pine trees lost their grip and had a go at skiing, skidding elegantly down the sloping bedrock leaving it glistening in the rain. Continuing the metaphor they all fell over in a tangled heap in the bottom of the cwm.

See how tenuous was their hold.

Still they managed to block the road.

At the bottom, where the lane is high above the river, you can see the lanky oak that normally stands on the edge of the stream with its roots in the water. It had a rough night, resisting the 90 mph gusts, and is now having a lie down. I bet that made the neighbors house shake.

Next day the levels have fallen here.

We worried about the impact of all this water further down stream but there was a news black-out — no power, no internet, no mobile coverage and the land-line was knocked out by the fallen larch on the hill.

We kept warm by cutting and moving the smaller fallen trees that were in the way and by unbunging the culvert by the house to release the Olympic swimming-pool of muddy water that had gathered on the road to stop the cars — not that there were many!

Once power was restored, Assad had fallen in Syria so there was nothing much to hear about trees or floods!

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floods, Wales, weather

Storm Bert

The storm has washed away the last of the snow but doesn’t know when to stop –42mm, 1.65 inches, rainfall over night and still raining.

Remember our little stream?

Here it is today!

Fortunately 30 feet below the house.

And the road’s not a lot better.

Fed by new waterfalls where they shouldn’t be.

Remember our pretty young Barn Owls:

Not so fluffy today in fact so disenchanted that it couldn’t be bothered to fly off!

“Don’t they know I’m famously not waterproof!

I suspect he’s on the balcony because the others are sheltering inside!

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Birds, Climate, Wales, weather

Snow Birds!

Its chilly here and the ground is covered and crunchy.

Food is thin on the ground and creatures need more calories to keep warm.

This is bringing birds that are usually wary of humans closer to the house.

This fine jay has been spotted foraging under the bird feeder and is battling for custody of the windfall apples with the local carrion crow, who sits in the tree posturing aggressively.

By and large jay defers to crow but sneaks back later.

Both hear the Raven up above, getting closer but still never coming to ground.

One regular is undeterred.

The Buzzards sit on the telegraph poles having removed the dead mouse from the patio, which I caught for him in my kitchen! Times are especially hard for him, and the fox as all the little mammals have gone to ground. We see the foxes prints prowling the edges of the fields but no rabbit tracks.

The one lonely fieldfare is not scared of the jay — there are plenty of fallen apples still.

But the little birds must beware!

The sparrowhawk visits daily and sits on the bird feeder — we know he’s there by the sudden eerie absence of everything else.

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Rememberance

We Will Remember Them!

Time has passed, but judging from Kettering and Trefeglwys War Memorials both young and old are still aware of the sacrifices made by the wartime generations — the wreaths laid by school children are re-assuring that we remember.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old,

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning,

We will remember them.

R.L.Binyon from “For the Fallen”

The sun came out this morning over the War Memorial in Kettering.

The mayor read the evocative words of John Maxwell Edmonds:

When You Go Home, Tell them of Us and Say,

For Your Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today.

And still it goes on — another generation sacrificed today — how could the sun come out.

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Natural Beauty, Nature Photography, trees

Relax in the Woods — it may never happen!

The hill above the house.
Anyone for angina?

An escape from the stresses of the week, here and in the States — I wish I could send you all the crispness of the air and the scent of the woods.

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Humour, Wales, Writing

Brace Yourselves!

My new book is now in the publisher’s catalogue with a release date in December 2024!

My dog can’t read, but if I sent him a postcard, he’d sniff it and know I was fine and thinking of him. If I needed to tell him more, I suppose I’d send him one of my socks. 

In an insecure world, be cheered by the landscape and friendliness of this quiet, green valley, with its unexploded bombs, stampeding cattle and life-or-death decisions. Diana’s off-beat take on life, honed by her years as a family doctor, is one of the things that made her first book, Iolo’s Revenge: Sheep farming by Happy Accident in Mid Wales, so popular. People who read it ask what has happened since?

Quite a lot actually …

Pre-order at https://logastonpress.co.uk/product/my-dog-cant-read-more-tales-from-an-accidental-farmer/

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Ecology, nature, Nature Photography

Would you believe it? Blue Fin Tuna!

Here’s what we saw from the cliffs at Land’s End, the most southerly point of mainland Britain on our recent stay in Cornwall.

A disturbance — turbulence in the water and excitement amongst the sea birds, swooping above the swirling and splashing.

Whatever they are they are large as you can see, we are looking from a long way off.

Is it a shark? It looks like a tuna but surely they don’t swim off Cornwall — all the photos of big game fishing show men in Edwardian dress.

Here you have it — It’s official. The Blue Fin Tuna has returned to British waters. Either because of global warming, or the demise of the inshore fishing industry or because of excellent fishery management — they are back.

Blue fin tuna chasing shoals of smaller fishes around the rocks where the bait fish try to escape by jumping, and the opportunist gulls swoop to pick them off, mid-air.

Will they be fished to extinction again — hopefully not, there are now strict quotas, and fishery vessels patrolling — we saw Fishery Protection vessels as well as Border Force vessels from our viewpoint. A Border Force high speed rib was very actively chasing a fishing boat — by evening, the local News revealed that they had caught 6 tons of cocaine but no tuna!

Undercover surveillance?

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Moths, Natural Beauty, nature, Reptiles

Enchantment! What gets you out of bed?

We are possessed — we tumble out of bed at the first ray of sunlight, Bill to rush out and be electrocuted in the morning dew, forgetting to switch off the mains before moving the sodden leads so that he can see what he has caught in his moth trap!

I follow, not to resuscitate but because the one thing I hate more than early mornings is being left out! And it’s like Christmas — you just don’t know what you will get!

Antler moth artistically posing on my rhubarb.
Buff arches
Black Arches Moth
Brown china mark
Canary shouldered thorn
Feathered gothic
Large emerald
Garden tiger moth
Gypsy moth male — slightly battered — not surprising, possibly blown from Europe.

Just a few of the 100 plus species of moth we have photographed since July — you can’t say they are dull!

But these are what gets me tip-toeing down the dewy track as the sun peeps over the hill!

Baby lizards

There seems to be a family of 7 or 8 babies and at least one adult that bask in the morning sun on the corrugated iron that we have put by the bench where we bask. They are charming and very brave — are they going to become accustomed to us and remain so as adults — I do hope so. We have made them an air-raid shelter but at the moment they seem to prefer to hide in the grass.

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Architecture, History

Visiting the Boston Stump!

Last week we exhausted ourselves in the heat, tramping around Frampton Marsh on the Wash looking for yellow wagtails. In the distance we could see the only landmark in this flat landscape — Boston stump — the tall tower of Boston’s St Botolph’s medieval parish church . After lunch we went to have a closer look.

I had always thought that this was a cathedral but no, it is a humble parish church!

As you step into the nave, the vastness of it knocks you back and you wonder how this little town in Lincolnshire could possible have mustered the resources back in the 1309 to start such a mammoth project. It took the best part of a century and the tower was added later, by the late 1500s.

The view from the river gives a hint. The River Witham has a short course to the sea and is tidal — Boston, in its day was a major port, serving a rich agricultural area and the merchants were wealthy.

Boston in Lincolnshire, on the Wash — that great bite from the map of Eastern England, was the port from which many Puritans left Britain, notably those in 1630 in the reign of James I, bound for the Massachusetts Bay colony, frustrated by the lack of change in the Church of England — parted from Rome by Henry VIII, but not purged of much that was still Catholic. They took the town’s name with them and were soon followed by their own vicar, John Cotton who became known as the Puritan Patriarch of New England. 166 of his Boston, Lincolnshire parishioners made it to New England.

1660 was the year that marked the end of the Puritan rule of Oliver Cromwell that followed the Civil War and the restoration of the monarchy. Charles II ruled for 30 uneasy years but in 1685 when he died his younger brother James II, personally a committed Catholic, was again a threat to stability and within 3 years the powers-that-be, facing the prospect of another Civil War, invited William (protestant king of the Netherlands) and his queen, Mary ( James II’s daughter) to assume the crown. James’s army deserted him and he fled to France. In 1690 he tried to regain his throne but was beaten at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland and the rest, as they say, is history — which goes on and on!

These were turbulent years in England. And not much fun for this schoolboy I spotted being beaten — seen on a misericord in the choir.

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Ecology

Rural sprawl — Natures fightback!

When I walk the pavements of the terraced streets of Kettering, where the mature lime trees seem to have pushed themselves up through the Tarmacadam, the thing that amazes me is all the life that emanates from the cracks. As if the countryside, on which our ancestors built this industrial shoe town, is still there underneath, escaping whenever and wherever it can– sometimes with evil intent. Above is green alkanet growing today in a crack with hemlock! I must remember not to buy flat-leafed parsley from the corner shop!

These houses are dated and most built about 125 years ago — the last time there were barley fields. In fact the predominant species are invasive like this rock fumewort (yellow corydalis) — it likes the well drained mortar of the old walls and has settled here from its home in the foothills of the Italian alps.

I love these hardy hangers on — maiden hair spleenwort, a fern that thrives in rocky crevices

Despite the best endeavors of householders Nature fights hard to assert herself forcing her way through plastic membranes and squeezing between paving slabs. Here with the buddleia and the feral snap dragons is red valerian, in the vanguard of the battle, it quite likes the lime mortar in old stone walls and knocks them down in no time!

While exploring the biodiversity at the foot of a street tree a man rushed over the road to me, anxiously demanding to know why I was photographing his car — I was more discrete after that — recording biodiversity is not without its risks.

Watch out for predators!

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