'Land

Here I am vacillating like a rusty slinky that has just waterfallen down a steep staircase. This is the longest period of labour inactivity I have had in 30 years. The garden and the dogs are feeling the benefit.

I am starting a few private classes this week and I hope I will be able to flesh-out my timetable by mid-October.

In the Nature Reserve Quite Near Blackburn

I have those shoes at home now. They didn't last two minutes. In the two months since that photo was taken Jacob now takes 2 to 3 sizes of bigger shoe!! It shouldn't be surprising should it? By the time he's ten he will be bigger than me.

Silver birches

Bring back the birch? Not good enough for them, that's what I say! Why don't they bring back the oak or the Giant Redwood.

White Pine

Knotty too. We like Knotty.  I am making a cupboard for the porch at the moment, out of white pine. One of the knotts broke the drill-bit.

Which park is this?

And this?

Local symbol of Manhood

Quasi-Local symbol of Boyhood 

The local climate spitting water rather than fire

Have just read Neville Shute's A Town like Alice, for the first time. What a fabulous book! Makes me feel better about people even though it's just a story.

Today's poem:

Tease ... (Parody Joyce Kilmer Trees)

I think that I will never free
The joy that lives inside of me.
The me that hears the jeers of jest
Still takes a stand and still protests.
That hips weren’t made to swing and sway
While lips and eyes attract their prey.
And all things that those ladies wear
Are just a ploy ~ so men beware!
That bosom where your head has lain
May often bring you grief and pain.
So God made girls like me, the seed
From which can grow the friend you need.