A bird in the lense - is easier to photograph when they are right there in front of you...

A black-tailed godwit that spent some time feeding right in front of the new RSPB reception building at Burton Mere Wetlands last week.

Photographed with a lash up of Nikon field scope and HTC Desire phone hand held on the eyepiece.

The Wood Glut - part 2

Our recent good fortune continued this week with the arrival of a shed and yet more pallets and off-cuts.

Construction continues with a third raised bed - this one filled with top soil that appeared to fall out of the sky - though it waqs actually from a rather nifty JCB that delivered it over the hedge. Dwarf broad beans and pea seeds are in already.











Clearing up for the raised bed revealed a hitherto unknown red brick path! This was instantly cleared and now features a line of pots filled with lavender and Florence fennel, with a couple of Marguerites for colour. It's all looking rather splendid












It's not all rosy in the garden though - some plant - beans particularly - seem to have just stopped growing - the young tomatoes are getting eaten and the cosmos are tiny, However the apples are swelling nicely and so long as they don't blow off in the gales...

The Wood Glut - part 1

One of the good things about living next door to a building site has been a well timed windfall of wood in the form of pallets and offcuts that builder Steve was all too pleased to let us take away. So we now have a garage full of good wood, a log store we built from 4 pallets and a few off cuts, roofed with some wiggly tin and a bit of roofing felt - which we had to buy. Oh and it's filling up fast with off cuts and stuff we can't build with.


Today we finished a good strong back gate to replace the rotten one that has been jammed shut for over a year now. In part 2 we'll show you what we did next.











The bell for back door callers.










The guardian of the gate....