Not a lot

A great weekend of nothing - due mainly to the fact that poor old Jack has two flat tyres and we can't get him mended until Monday. Jeffers was back with the shovel and brute force - oh the disappointment of not having a powerful old boy to help with the heavy work! So Jeff had a couple of bonfires and chopped down some unwanted trees and we have just spent the weekend generally mooching about.

The great big diggers did not turn up this week due to the rain and boglike nature of the ground. The machines would not get up here for a start and even if they could the ground is so sodden that taking off the top layer would just have made for one big mud bath!

We are now waiting for enough of a break in the drizzle and rain to have a few clear days for the big wagons to come. The up side of this is that we (ok Jeff) has had extra days to really clear the land ready for the onslaught. It looks amazingly different and you can look out of the back window right the way down to the river bank - which is now a complete thick carpet of greenery about to spring into blue and white delight. It really is going to look stunning when all of the woodland flowers are out. I have discovered a new website called http://www.shootgardening.co.uk/ (recommended by a client at an awards do - you do find the strangest things in the strangest places), but it is great for looking up some of the new plants and flowers as they sprout into life. I can tell you we now have wood anenomes - not doing the latin names just yet - may this will come along with the green fingers.

The den has gone which would have made me sad were it not for the fact that the newly discovered 5th shed has now been earmarked as the new improved version. I could barely contain my excitement and have drawn a plan for my vision! Alfie has done likewise and must be learning at his father's knee as he managed to draw his version complete with dormer windows, trap door opening into the stars and an attic conversion...

You enter the den by walking across the rain drenched land, through a time portal and into the realms of the dinosaurs - but of course!

I wandered down to the river yesterday afternoon for a quick walk about with the dogs and found myself still sat there an hour later just contemplating. I am sure this is good for the soul. Alfie returned from his first game for the A team and was so caught up in the excitement of the beautiful game that he decided to take his mum on at a game of one on one. We found a bumpy track of relatively dry ground and marked out two goals. Now, I know that I do not understand all the ins and out of the rules of football, but the Alfie school of refereeing really did me in. As I now understand it - If I score a goal this may be disallowed as either I was too near, too far, or maybe I kicked whilst he was doing a special football skill...either way I lost 10 -2.

I bought the boys weather measuring kits today. A weather vane, an anemometer to measure the wind speed, a compass and a thermostat. I can tell you that at 2pm today the weather was drizzly, northerly winds of 13 km and hour, a temperature of 13.4 degrees c whilst inside it was a cozy 20.5 degrees. Good eh! I think my next adventure will be a metal detector to uncover the roman hoard probably buried somewhere in the mud.

All calm, tranquil and covered in mud