Some pretty clouds.

It is possible to hire boats which you work yourself - they show you how to drive the thing then let you loose on the canal! National speed limit = 4mph.

As for this area being beautiful, well it is - but in a very gentle way. It's crossed by major roads, including the M1 motorway, the towns aren't up to much, and most people just zoom through it on the way to somewhere else. The locals call it "England's best kept secret" and they like to keep it that way.

I'll send you a note, szabs, once I've submitted this.

Flopsy, your photographs are spectacular!

Another of my local gardens

This is our neighbour's puppy at the lake today. A Red heeler called Ruby and she's looking quite alert but it all caught up with her later .

Oh and very nice work with the beanies, Auntie! They look great and for a great cause too.

Thanks, demurechicky!

And as for that puppy, Copago, I want her. I don't know a thing about having a dog but that one I want.

Finding that narrowboat on the river was pure chance - I'd actually gone to the river to take a photo of this:



It's called Hardwater Mill. The buildings there now are quite recent (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) and in the latter part of the twentieth century they were converted to a large house and a small one. But there was a mill on that site since... since no one is quite sure when but an active mill on that spot was recorded in the Great Domesday Book of 1086. They produced flour there continuously until 1946, so it's probable that the mill was working for at least a thousand years. That's some loaf!

Flopsy - Thanks for the pm

This guy was happily munching away at my flower, needless to say I wasn't so happy, but I just let him get on with it.

A stream in the woods in Claygate

One of the many trestles I had the pleasure to ride on when I was on the Creeper Trail.

This is my beautiful and beloved Star who has just been diagnosed with Lymphoma. She has started treatment and we are just hoping for a miracle, even a minor one would do.

oh poor Star. Good luck with her treatments - will be thinking of her. She is certianly a very majestic girl.

here is the puppy tuckered out a little while later.

Oh gorgeous. I think all puppies are the same, they just suddenly run out of steam and flop.

Jill, your Star Wars lego picture reminded me of my son, in high school, having an assignment to retell the story of "Macbeth" in another form. They acted it out with their legos; it was a huge hit.

Sweet doggies, gorgeous kitty, great snail photo! Love the trestle too.

Last week during the Art Walk, everybody was encouraged to pick up a paint brush and add something to this "community mural". The paints and brushes were provided on the day, this was taken a few days later.

This is from last Sunday's Vegie Swap - I had better photos, but they included recognisable faces.

Goods brought and exchanged included lemons and limes, masses of herbs, jams, eggs, healthy young vegie seedlings in pots, chook poo and worm wee! There was even a large tub of pot-pourri complete with a scoop and paper bags for self-service. Also a bucket of coffee grounds for composting or building a snail barricade.
Lots of pleasant conversation and swapping of gardening and cooking ideas.
I formed the opinion that people are generous with the amount they bring, but modest with the amount they take away. My daughter collected all the unclaimed bunches of culinary herbs and will dehydrate and package them for a later Swap.
I have a new tub of rhubarb, and I am well content!

This is just a slightly different view of the fields below Great Doddington, where I took the picture of the narrowboat on the river. I took it for Ren... just to prove that during September there wasn't a black sheep to be seen in the whole of the county! Must have shipped them all to Wales.

My favorite flower is the sunflower, and there was a fabulous garden grown right along the trail. We caught this busy little bee taking care of business...

Very interesting mural Liz. Makes a change from the random acts of vandalism that blight most places I've ever been to. I'm not sure what the horizontal bush was meant to say though. (Apart from 'Will somebody PLEASE stand me up straight'.)

I took this photograph of a ladies jacket at the Museum of the American Indian in Manhattan.
It's clear that many hours went into making and decorating it.

It was a very windy day and the bush had just been blown over! Standing it up again likely would not have helped.

Ah, that would explain it then. I thought it was some of that 'Modern Art' which I just don't get at all.

Aw Flopsy, thanks! That is so lovely.Homesick again now!

Kew palace, restored and reopened in 2006 by the Queen



Martin, I thought for a moment that jacket was wearing a tallis. Someone will know what I mean at least!

I love the sunflower photo and the colours in yours Flopsy!


Here is Ruby's sister Belle who is normally just as fluffy but she'd taken a bit of an unplanned swim and wasn't overly happy about it!

More white sheep! Oh and some trees and some fluffy clouds and grass.



I guess our sheep graze on rather different pastures to yours, Copago. I love those puppies, sooooo cute!