Tuesday 3 March 2009

Have a Laugh


This made me laugh! It's from the excellent blog of illustrator/artist/writer Keri Smith. Go visit the site & be entertained & inspired - apparently there are 10,000 people who do!

March has ARRIVED. Following the wind & rain yesterday, all the plants & flowers look washed & refreshed. I have a long tub (actually an old horse storage box) filled with approx 100 small crocuses in 2 colours & a gnome buried in the middle. A majority of the simple white crocuses are open &, looking down on them, they look like tiny lilies.

Walking up the hill I stopped to watch as a flock of rooks & jackdaws rose together up out of a stubble field. As I watched I saw why- a very large bird of prey was flying through the flock. There are several resident large birds here, buzzards & I am 95% sure 1 or more goshawk. The rookery is in occupation now, and I see numerous birds with twigs in their bills. I guess there are eggs in the nests & eggs will soon mean chicks & chicks mean food for raptors.

The bird table is being well visited, there was a surprise visitor yesterday, a jackdaw.

Still on a bird theme, we have finally collected the Light Sussex cockerel. What a magnificent specimen he is & very nice natured. We have named him Alfred - Alfie. It's taken a few days for him to settle but he now has the measure of the place & yesterday managed to "bags" for hi self a big piece of boiled potato - those hens are no respecter of status!


I've finished reading "The Little White Horse", a book of such simplicity & innocence - a world that I don't think ever really existed & certainly does not exist now. In total contrast I read straight afterward the last in the Malorie Blackman Noughts & Crosses series "Double Cross". What a fabulous book & sadly a much truer depiction of life today for children & young adults. There are common themes i both books - the redemptive power of love & kindness, choice of good & bad, the young being a match for the older. I love children's books, they are frequently full of a vigour, creativity & clarity that sometimes gets lost in the "cleverness" that adult authors sometimes strive for.