Feathered visitor

 

Our neighbour over the road has a visiting pheasant..he knocks his door to be fed!

He wasn't home, so the bird wandered over to feed from the seeds in the edge of our meadow lawn.

Then the alpacas were let out into their paddock, I can see them from my study.

walking and planning

Went for a pre-lunch walk at the nature reserve/ex-opencast coalmine by Drongan. The farm by there has alpacas, one newly brought in from New Zealand.

 
 There are benches around the paths, used for walking, cycling and riding

 This is "Kenny's View"  over the site and towards the village

 We found a gate.....

 and I foraged

I didn't pick any of these...

The shortening days mean we get out as much as possible.  The Pirate is getting a little sad, partly because of less light,partly because getting over his treatment takes a long time.He is running out of being a patient patient as he sees himself getting older.....riding his bike helps massively.

Meanwhile we do have something to look forward to...airline tickets booked, lodgings reserved (a garage sleepout!).

Hesitating while confirming lodgings cost us £200 each as the pound sterling continued to fall...and "Brexit" hasn't even happened...the Gods help us if it ever does....we are too old and too skint to emigrate.  My Irish ancestry is just too far back to get an Irish passport. We don't have family anywhere we want to go.....

So inertia must be fought, art done and sold so we can feed ourselves while we are away.   The Pirate has already sold some bike kit, now to sort,clean price and photograph the next batch.

a break in the rain

 So we went for a walk...we did the short walk around Hannahston Community Woodland....It suffers from the usual , money given for capital expenditure and none for ongoing maintenance...but it is there and used well.

 Cargolux coming in to Prestwick....The Pirate used to work on handling these,when he worked for fedex

 and some neighbours, Hannahston Alpacas..

The rain it raineth on.....

Only our toilet drain works properly...so most of the rainwater from the roof is adding to that coming from the sky.
  The garden is a quagmire, and a drainage trench the Pirate dug so that water wouldn't gather against the sleepers that go under his shed...is full of water....

Pirate has been sorting things in the kitchen that should be in the shed...if you can't work outside,better to do something indoors.  We are suffering rather,from shed stuff in the house....but slowly we are making sense of things and bringing order to the chaos.

I'm learning my limits ...when you have a 40 year old injury, compounded  by working on our smallholding in the 90s then doing a cleaning job, mopping in the "noughties"......you listen harder to your body's twinges and tweaks, and don't just carry on......