Country Walk

This morning the weather was mild but we had heavy driving rain and I thought the afternoon's planned walk with Judy and her dog Martha would have to be postponed. However just as I was about to phone Judy and call it off a patch of blue appeared and the rain stopped so I decided to chance it, making sure to put my proper hiking boots and a light waterproof jacket in the car. Martha is Bilbo Baggins' lady friend and is pictured above with him. Judy lives in the country and she and her husband are currently restoring a 1750s cottage while living in a caravan in the attached paddock. There are lots of nice walks around where she lives and above are Martha and Bilbo Baggins enjoying themselves along the way.
The skies were filled with heavy threatening looking clouds all the way round but we were out for a couple of hours and the sun was out the whole time. We set off down the lane then up through the woods eventually coming out on a path leading across a recently harvested field. The field had also recently been liberally spread with muck and there was what my mum always called ' a good,healthy country smell' very much in evidence! The dogs obviously agreed with my mum and thought it was truly wonderful. After crosssing a lane we came to the fields which supplied the wide open view and lovely cloud formations above. Across another lane and then the path went through a large field of still unharvested barley - it seems very late for it still to be uncut, it was certainly more than ripe but rather stunted due to the lack of rain during the summer. Maybe it isn't high enough for the machinery to harvest properly or maybe I just don't know that much about farming!

I was going to upload a couple more photos but Blogger won't let me so I'll try again tomorrow. All the hawthorn trees are heavily laden with berries and I took a picture of one really lovely one along with another one of bunches of the wonderful transluscent red berries of the woody nightshade, a deceptively innocent sounding name - the berries are not only beautiful but also poisonous. We finally got back home to be greeted by Blondie, Gloria and Road Runner who are Judy's three very tame and no longer very productive hens , she's planning to get more in the spring I think along with a couple of sheep - apparently I am to take spinning lessons so she can give me the fleeces when they are sheared!!! Hmmm, yes, well......