Heading for the hills - taking my three children away from all they know...

Is it that they emerge from a green spiny shell? Catch the sun all polished and burnished? Or hold playground memories and popping them out of their prickly home might just reveal a prize winning whopper… Well I have my very own horse chestnut trees now. Discovering conkers glistening on the drive as autumn gathers was such a thrill.  Laurie on the other hand, thought on arriving at his new school that the fact they all played conkers at break time summed up the desperate backward nature of our new life! You win some you loose some…

I thought I was going to fall at the first hurdle… and not manage to get my meadow cut for hay this year. Brand new land owner with stewardship responsibilities dropped, plonk. Apparently the official definition of meadow is ‘area of grass that is cut in summer’. The meadow began to look overblown, scraggy and unloved. According to the book on unimproved meadow management you are meant to cut after 15th July, not before and soonish afterwards. Once most flowers have set seed. But I felt a small dose of what farmers live with…being at the mercy of the weather and this unprecedented wonky climate.    Rain, rain then more rain and then a break in the clouds and raging sun then rain again. One opportunity missed in late July and then wall to wall dreariness until suddenly a freak hot spell early September.   Our wonderful neighbour fired up his topper and turner (in fact it’s called a tedder) and carefully turned or ‘wuffled’ the cut grass in the early evenings, 4 times....