The Shepherd's Calendar - September

Neath the old oaks mossed and grey
Whose shadows seem as old as they
Where time hath many seasons won
Since aught beneath them saw the sun



Within these bramble solitudes
The ragged noisy boy intrudes
To gather nuts that ripe and brown
As soon as shook will patter down



Thus harvest ends its busy reign
And leaves the fields their peace again



Where autumns shadows idly muse
And tinge the trees with many hues
Amid whose scenes I'm feign to dwell
And sing of what I love so well



But hollow winds and tumbling floods
And humming showers and moaning woods
All startle into sudden strife
And wake a mighty lay to life
Making amid their strains divine
All songs in vain as mean as mine.

A quick post to get September's excerpt from The Shepherd's Calendar in before it's too late. For those of you who are keen naturalists I do realise that the venerable tree at the start of the poem is a beech and not an oak but it's such a wonderful old tree that I decided to use a little poetic licence:)

All Together Again

A slight hiatus in a hectic weekend gives me chance for a quick post with pretty poor photos. They do explain why I'm not around much at the moment though. My eldest son and his family are home from South Africa for 5 weeks and my younger son and his family are up from Suffolk to see them and my daughter also came over in the afternoon. This is the first time the whole family has been together in a long time.
There was constant motion so I just snapped a few photos when I could. This is the only one showing everyone who was at the park in the morning. Steve's wife wasn't here at this point as she is doing a two week residential course at the start of a Masters Degree. She joined us after lunch. The photo shows Cesca holding George, Neil, Steve with Lucy and Gabriel and Kaitlyn who got on like a house on fire.


Brothers - talking about football as they always have since they were about 8 and 6 years old!


Kaitlyn and Lucy having fun in the water.



Together we can do it! Gabriel and Kaitlyn discovering that one alone can't make it happen but two working together can:)



In the afternoon we played in the garden and Juliette and Hannah had both joined the party.



Lucy exploring, she is my youngest grandchild at 18 months. Their ages are easy to remember - Kaitlyn is 4 years old, Gabriel is 3, George is 2 and Lucy is 1.


Neil, Juliette and Stephen as always in photographs of the three of them you'd think they'd hardly met before. We had to tell them to put their arms round each other!



On Sunday we took a picnic up to Longshaw and met up with Rob and Rosie and their two children. Rob, Rosie,Stephen and Neil were all at primary school together so they go back a long way. No Juliette this time as she was taking part in the Great Yorkshire run.



Four on a log and finally an appearance by George who always seemed to be out of the shot or behind someone in most of the photos.Lucy is there hidden behind Hannah.



This is the view we usually got of George, he's always off to investigate something or other. Life is going to be pretty hectic for the next couple of weeks but hopefuly normal service will be resumed after that and the next London post will finally arrive.