Mr PoppyM woke me up with a cup of tea and a suggestion for the morning - tree & bulb planting at our ruined-church site. The sun shone & our part of the world stayed dry as we completed the morning's duties & then set off to the church. Perhaps predictably it started to rain & sleet, so we changed our plans - to top-up the bird feeder & save the planting for a better day.
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With the feeder re-filled with peanuts & seed we sat and watch the birds. We have 2 old chairs kept stashed behind a piece of hedge & we sat on these with our backs to one of the crumbling chancel walls under an umbrella drinking flask-tea. We talked of our plans for a work-shop with a stove & comfy old chairs. It's "in production" so who knows, maybe it will there in time for Christmas - now that would be a great present.
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Now that a majority of the leaves have fallen from the tall hazel hedge the landscape behind is on view - sloping fields, a strip of oak wood, a barn conversion & sheep. It's quiet today, this first real winter Sunday, just the dripping of the rain from the ivy & trees and the chirruping of the small birds on the feeder.
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It's wet underfoot, in places the ground sinks. A reminder of decades of accumulated leaf mould laying on a more solid surface feet below, and below that, the dead of the 12th century. But there's no flooding here at the church despite it's proximity to the Frome. There is a deep ditch around part of the site & in places this is holding water. The Frome has risen several meters in a few days and is flowing fast, what will it leave when the level drops? I saw on the TV today a Cumbrian farmer standing in a recently flooded cereal field. As the flood waters had drawn back into the river it left behind a covering of cobbles, pebbles, gravel & boulders, all dropped in a few days but how long will it take to remove them? Last time the Frome rose & fell it left behind a body, we don't need anymore of those, our grave yard is closed - full, complete, at peace.
photo from www.flickr.com/photos/stefan-szczelkun/3254245930/
