Join me on my trips

Heading for 10 day heatwave of over 30. It gets boring. Lying down a lot, reading a bit, have sore leg still. I say reading but after about 4 pages I drop off.  So lose the thread. The view from my desk. The green bag is covering the mechanism of the bowling machine in case of rain!. England playing Argentina in semifinal of World Cup. The halves are broken by hydration breaks. This one straw bale gets caught by the early morning sun which I see from my bedroom window about 5am. Today, 19th we have yet another Prime Minister. Andy Burnham.

This year poppies are almost entirely shades of mauve. And one little yellow one. Farmers have sown or otherwise allowed to grow these headlands full of daisies. Best show I have ever seen. I was out picking elder flowers for the final batch of cordial. And my roses are now surrounded by bee-covered astrantia. The lavenders were not happy here but these astrantia love it. You just have to let plants thrive where they want to. Took Heidi to play cricket at Cricklade. Fielding, run up and bowling. Cricklade won. Now is also the time for those Barberton Daisies (gerberas). They don't over winter here so breeders have developed  a strain that does and called them garvinea. The colours are brilliant. However, some of mine did not over winter so giving them another shot. With super el nino if that means a hard winter they might succumb. I did subscribe to Space X and got 11 shares ...

Darcey finishes school today and Tom finishes his current job. While waiting for the chimney sweep noticed this odd cloud formation. On my way here I was dive bombed by a red kite. Seeing it diving from the sky in front of me was quite alarming. It looked huge. 

Hottest day so far. 28  degrees at 6.45pm and heard first cuckoo. Up to 32 next day, now 33.5 and hopefully a thunderstorm. Can the yellow roses get any better than this? And the peonies.

We are only 7, so lots of space and we started with charcoal dust. The subject is mountainous terrain. Jenny and Sabine came for supper in my flat.  Day 2 and more experimenting. Then a trip to Lympstone. Another of those villages on the water with tiny lanes. No parking and the car constantly beeping because the hedges are too close. Old fishermen"s cottages all done up but it all felt like a prison and I needed to escape. So found another lane and took a quick snap of the estuary. It looked rather like our paintings today. Then this imposing front entrance. Day 3 Using bright paper was a revelation. The Otter . Yesterday the verges were full of rape today all gone. ...