"The Children's"

I had to go into Bristol today and walked passed Bristol Royal Hospital or the Children's as we always called it. It brought back memories of my last 5 years of nursing. After a nursing career of 30 years mainly nursing children it seems odd to be no longer part of it.

Colour in the Hedgerow

There are a lot of berries in the hedgerows at the moment that gives a lot of colour. Red is the predominant colour.

There are berries on the holly but whether there will be any left by Christmas.

The rose hips also give a red colour. A friend has often told me how she used to go collecting them as a child and was paid for them to be used in Rosehip Syrup. I might add she is not much older than me. One of the ladies with a horse here was collecting them to give to her horse. Not sure how many you would need for a horse even if they are rich in Vitamin C and have anti inflammatory qualities!

My memory of them was to split them and use them as itching powder!

There are other edible berries still around. Don't forget if you eat a blackberry from the hedge that it is after the end of September and we all,know what the devil has done on those. (May vary depending on how polite you are!)

And then there are sloes which are very bitter. Their main use is to make sloe gin. Not one of my favourite tipples!

A Change of Grass

This afternoon we moved the ewes to another field.

 They are generally pretty good about being moved and will follow a bag of food.

In no time at all they were following down the lane.

The University Search Begins

On the advice of several people we have started to look at Universities with our younger daughter. We decided to start close to home to give us a bit of a benchmark.  My daughter's main comment was "Yes very nice but not far enough away"!
The campus for the nursing and allied proffesions part of the University of West of England (UWE) is on the site of Glenside Hospital which was a large psychiatric hospital. The buildings have been totally refurbished but the signs of a time gone by when many mentally unwell people spent long periods in such institutions are still evident.
The canteen is in a spendid hall with stained glass windows and a balcony. I was curious as to what this may have been used for.

 

 The buiding has a series of wings with turrets on each corner and then the clock tower in the centre seen below.

I was tempted to take more pictures but was prevented by daughter's concern that I was the only mad mother taking photos!

.....and Scatter

The fields are now ploughed and they finished harrowing them with the power harrow.

They have been busy drilling the seed for the crops next year.

The seed is delivered in large bags.

Which is then tipped into the drill.

Ready to be planted.

A great deal of accuracy is needed to correctly titrate the drill and in planting to ensure an even crop.

The ground will then be rolled.

Rose

We have a rose growing in the yard given to Brian by mum to replace one that never flowered. This one has flowered all summer and also has a beautiful scent. These photos do not do it justice!

Secret hen ZIZO

My older daughter called me out to see something in the garden around the front yard. I thought this was an ideal subject for joining in with Helena's ZIZO. We have a considerable number of ( 32 thousand) free range hens so it is inevitable that the odd one ends up "off piste". This hen was quietly nesting in the flower border outside their fenced area.

She had obviously made herself a bit of a nest and was not too pleased to see us!

She had 3 eggs in front of her.

We carefully lifted the grumpy lady off and.......

Plenty of brown eggs!

She was even more grumpy when we put her back. 

I wonder why.....

We can't sell these so guess what we had for tea?