A Walk in the Woods

It won't come as any surprise to those that know me that I do enjoy a nice trip to the woods, so with the weather really rather fine on Sunday (and finding ourselves with a rare window in the diary) we trotted off to reconnect with some trees.

Now, this particular piece of woodland is high on a hill with fantastic views for miles and miles. It's open and airy with mostly deciduous trees like beech, hazel and ash, but sadly not an oak tree to be found (my personal favourite........maybe). The ground slopes VERY steeply down to the one side of the path - glad no one slipped!

It's amazing what you spot in the woods - I wonder who might live in a house like this.......

I love to find little gateways like this one......

I was really taken by the textures of the ivy on this tree......

and the roots on the path......

And finally, if anyone knows what sort of fungi this is then I'd be very grateful not to have to look it up (pretty please).............

Thanks for reading - now that Little Miss is back at school and Small Boy has started in reception (sob) I'm enjoying getting back to the work shop - pics of this week's creations to follow very soon!

Mutant fruit!

Some of you might remember my garden from my old blog. It's still there and I've been busy planting all spring - now I'm watching it all grow.

I'm most proud of my strawberries so far. I've only got the strawberry bed by accident really! Two years ago I bought loads and loads of old growbags from a local fruit farm for something silly like 10p a bag. All my new beds needed filling up and compost/soil is expensive. Some of the bags didn't get used straight away and sat all winter on my drive, but in the spring all the strawberry plants grew again so last year I planted up a whole bed.

They didn't grow too well and I thought they'd all die over winter but they've grown so well this year that it's taken me completely by surprise. In the last 2 days I've picked 2.5kg of fruit! I can't believe it.

We've eaten more strawberries than Wimbledon, given lots to friends and tomorrow we're making jam!

But back to the mutant fruit - tonight I picked this! Now I've never seen a strawberry that shape before!