WildLife at the Zone!
Well, sort of.
This is how the rosemary stump looks now, after several weeks of working at it, peeling away the bark little by little, breaking off the smaller branches and sawing off the larger (Ken did that for me). It's been a loooong job, mainly because I can only work at it for a few minutes at a time - it's hell on the hands.
It's an extraordinary piece of wood, though. The shape and pattern of the grain - if I can call it that, it's more like... twining congruent tendrils - is beautiful, smooth and silky and the wood is amazingly hard. Working with it has been a real pleasure, despite the difficulties: it feels warm and alive to the touch. Much like a living tree.
I love trees. Ancient, enduring, a perfect contrast to the frantic speed and brevity of human life, a vast slow architecture across the world. So beautiful...
I'm hoping to have it ready by the end of the week, orchids and all. I'm also hoping to have the upstairs hall and landing redecorated by then: planning to buy the paint tomorrow.
But I promised the tales of the mole and the heron. That's tales - two of them, not, unfortunately, a joint tale à la [spit spit] Barbara Cartland. Let's start with the mole.
That
f****ng mole. The first attempt with the mole trap, as I've said, led to the damn thing filling the trap with earth and going
around it. The second attempt had the mole tunnelling
under the trap. The third one again had the trap filled with earth, while the mole went around it. [glowers at Carol - I can hear you sniggering from here. Can we borrow a gun?] We've now sunk the trap into yet another different tunnel...
Are moles smart, or just lucky?
So, the heron... I'm sure I've mentioned we have a heronry at Eastwood Farm, about a mile and half as the crow flies (or a mile as the heron flies, because it's that much bigger, but we won't go into that or we'll end up in a 'made the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs' situation and we'll have none of that sort of nonsense
here, thank you...) and we occasionally have a heron visit the garden. They used to come, we think, because of the glint of light on the tiny frog and newt pool outside the patio doors. Roeg's Pool, however, is rather bigger, and of course has fish in it...
A heron landed on the fence on Friday, but flew off again fairly quickly (actually, from what I could tell from the glimpse I caught, it kind of overbalanced and nearly fell off the fence, so maybe it flew off in embarrassment). Yesterday it came back, perched on the fence more securely and stood peering into Roeg's Pool - until it was seen off by four very aggrieved seagulls. (Maybe they're keeping an eye on the fish for themselves?) I'd rather not put a cover on the pool if I can help it, but it might be necessary. Unless I'm prepared to feed a heron and restock the pool every month or so.
And finally, we still have happy and extremely well-fed mice. Ken took out the kitchen compost binlet to empty into the big compost bin in the garden, lifted the lid - and found a cute little mouse sitting looking back at him.
Life's interesting in this house.
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Joules *Dances with Haddock* Taylor
pontificated this at 8:59 pm
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