All things bright and beautiful

Coco and I were up at 6.00am this morning and as always we did our chores, letting the chooks out, feeding the cats and letting the dogs out before we had our breakfast.  And, as I tell Coco each and every morning, we can get our own food but the animals can't so we have to look after them first.

Monty

Blossom

It's not all one sided though in return we get fresh eggs every day, the cats keep the mice and rats from our veggies and foodstuff and the dogs guard us and make us laugh.

Seeing to them first is a very small inconvenience in comparison to what we receive in return and all in all I think its pretty fair.

Mmmmmmmmm!

 Anyway, onto more things bright and beautiful.  We have a very old cherry tree in our garden.  I believe it was planted around the time that Broadlands was built about 60 years ago.  We missed the cherries last year as they were ready just before we moved in.

This year though we have a bumper crop of delicious bright red cherries.  We are busy picking, pitting and preserving them and I think a batch of cherry wine may be in order too.

Nanny Southwellski took a stunning picture of the cherries (not this one, Uncle Robin took this one) and this can be found on her Flickr page under 'Southwellski'.

Our veggies are doing very nicely thank you, and we may even have enough carrots for a meal.  Coco is very partial to a freshly pulled carrot first thing in the morning, rinsed under the hose with the top still on. She is also very partial to freshly picked cherries, gooseberries, peas and some of the herbs we are growing as well.

 Our flowers are doing brilliantly, this is a short stemmed lily (right) we grew this year. How vivid is that orange, it makes me smile every time I see it.

Our sunflowers are doing very well despite being uprooted twice by the mole, attacked by the chooks and getting hit by the frost.

Having done all thing bright and beautiful it seems only right to move onto all creature great and small and here is a bit of both.

The butterfly on the sunflower (left) is, I think the first one Coco has seen that she actually took notice of and it warranted a point with a chubby finger and an 'Oooooh!'



Coco seems to have a real interest in things that fly be they planes, birds, butterflies or bugs. She can pick a plane out of the sky long before I can.

Female Ghost Moth

We also had a visit from a Female Ghost Moth which I initially thought was a leaf.

It gets its name because it used to be associated with the grassy areas in churchyards and the male moths have a funny courtship flight where they flutter above the grass - looking like little white ghosts.

Impressed with my Moth knowledge?  I cannot take credit for this.  Tony Pritchard from the Suffolk Moth Group  identified this for me in a matter of seconds!

You can contact him at: Countyrecorder@suffolkmothgroup.org.uk

Another visitor was this little hairy legged chappie/chappette who appeared in the bathroom last night.  If he/she gets rid of the mossie that was buzzing round our bedroom last night them they are most welcome.

Finally I will leave you with the sunset we were blessed with two nights ago - enjoy

Sunset over Feltwell