Rain and Mud at Animal Bedtime and Sunny Days

Well, yesterday evening, after a day of almost solid rain, I practically had to swim across my hen/duck field to get the buxxers in for the night. I can't remember it ever looking so wet. One end was just puddle after puddle with nowhere to walk inbetween them. I was drenched - feet and head, absolutely drenched.  I have a friend, not so far away, in Sens de Bretagne who is wanting rain to fill her lake or her fish will die. 

The field was so muddy today that this evening I skidded and landed on my marginally slimmer bum.  Apart from being covered in it, I have great trouble getting up when there's nothing to hold onto - it would have made a good film clip to send to those television programmes which rely on other people's idiotic behaviour. 

I was seriously covered in mud and had to sit myself on a supermarket carrier bag to drive back to the house.  I have a pile of old rubble at the entrance to the field and have asked my worker to come over tomorrow and spread it on the quagmire that is the hen area.  We'll have to allow them into another grassy field too because it can't be much fun for the birds either and we're hardly into winter yet.

My postbox needs a good clean off - with the spider's web across the door it makes it look as if no-one loves me enough to send me a letter.  The moss is in the wall next to the postbox.

As I walk out of my drive, there's an oak tree which looks beautiful against the lovely sunny sky of this afternoon. 

I turned into the abandoned garden when I keep my Land Rover and took a photograph of these seed pods against the bluest sky.  They look like sycamore seeds, but I'm not sure that they are. 

This is one of the marigold flowers along the driveway, all splashed with dirt from the torrential rain yesterday.

I was fiddling around with my camera when I came back inside and found that I could take black and white photos - I must read the manual! 

When I was at Stroud Art College, I did a complete black and white module one year and loved it, especially manipulating the prints in the darkroom. This was before digital cameras were around and everything cost so much, you really had to try to get a decent photograph without wasting too much film.  I can believe how few photographs I used to take  then compared with now.  Sometimes, outside the course itself, I'd have a film in the camera for eighteen months before developing it - the printed photographs were a real surprise!

Three things I like:

1.  Finally getting a Christmas present for someone special.

2.  Speaking to an archivist on the 'phone who bent over backwards to help me.

3.  Finding out that I'm still using last year's logs and haven't started my new delivery yet.