Take Off

Got the shopping out of the way this morning, collected my daughter from work and then sat in the garden to eat lunch. I always sit with the camera next to me and take lazy shots from the chair - most of which I delete when I check them! Today, however, one of the nesting goldfinches came to the feeder for its lunch and I managed to get this shot just as it launched itself off one of the budleia branches to go onto the feeder. It kept a wary eye on me while it ate, but stayed for about five minutes before flying off back to its nest.

Today, I extended my bike ride - I took in both rivers, which pushed the distance from six up to eight miles, but included the dreaded 'Vinegar Hill' which is seven tenths of a mile long, and rises in series of ever steepening slopes, with about twenty yards of less steep slope between the increases. By the time you reach the last fifty yards, you're trying to get up a 1 in 5 cliff. I only managed to ride up about a third of it, but next time I'll get a bit further and keep increasing the distance until I can ride up the whole thing.

We also met our new neighbours today. The house to one side of our garden (and down a fifteen foot drop) was gutted ready for rebuilding about three years ago and then abandoned and has been sitting there ever since. It has now been bought and we were invited to look around it. They certainly have their work cut out! It is just bare walls (from the eighteenth century) held up by scaffolding and RSJs.

We have a huge bush on the right hand side of the garden which we assumed was growing from their side as we haven't got any trunk on our side, but when we looked at it from the other side, there was no trunk there either! On closer inspection, it looks like there is a huge trunk which has actually grown inside the wall. We have agreed to both cut it back from our respective sides, but if the wall collapses, a fair amount of our garden could end up in theirs! It should be interesting.