A Surprise Visitor

 A Gorgeous Red Squirrel  
After having a lazy cup of tea this morning, I went up stairs to get dressed for the day. I looked out of the bedroom window to see what I thought was a ginger paw reaching for the nut feeder from out of the canopy above, I angrily banged on the window, rushed downstairs and out the back door to shoo the offender away. I returned upstairs and checked out of the window once more and to my utter surprise it was not the ginger cat that lies about under the nut feeder greedily licking it's lips, but a gorgeous red squirrel. Luckily enough I had set the camera up on the tripod the previous evening in the hope that I could catch the young woodpeckers that Mrs Gill had seen on Friday. I set the camera on video and let it run. Unfortunately when I came to save the edited clip from Movie Maker it wouldn't save so I ended up taking some stills.

Moorland Feeders
Tootlepedal asked me a few days ago if I would assist him in filling the feeders at the moorland station as Cat Barlow is away at the moment. After filling the feeders and no sign of any interesting birds we returned to Wauchope Cottage to enjoy a cup of good strong coffee and discussed among other things, how we could recruit some keen photographers and record the the Common Riding in its entirety next year.


The Gill Family Visits

 We had the Gill family visit us over the Common Riding which was wonderful but somewhat exhausting. I didn't take any photos worth putting on the blog, this mainly due to being in the same place at the same time every year. I need to move about more as Tootlepedal did as you can see in his Common Riding blog, which is worth a look at. 


A Sigh of Relaxation
The Gill's returned home on Saturday afternoon. It was lovely to have them as we see too little of them but it was also nice to slink onto the couch and breathe a sigh of relaxation.

Joe

" what's in there Sandy? "

Sandy explaining what's in there

Earlier in the week I did some work around the garden. 

The Cotoneaster was in need of a good trim.  

                                           Before                                                                                            After

The shallots needed lifted before rot set in due to the damp weather we have been having.

In the greenhouse the two Tumbler tomato plants have grown at a tremendous rate producing plenty of flowers but very little fruit.

Hopefully I can get to the root of the movie problem and post the squirrel's at a later date.