Dog Days of Summer

The last few days really have felt like the Dog Days of Summer.  The weather is muggy, or raining, so the combine has been sitting around doing nothing.  The weather forecast has been really unreliable, so there's no planning anything in advance.  The grain is too wet to harvest, but then the sun comes out so it may be dry enough later in the day...but then it isn't.  On and on.

George was pleased because the pause in work meant we could go and get his Jimny - his first truck!

I have been mainly fascinated by the activity of the birds.  On Wednesday night I had noticed the swallows tidying up their nests in the porch, which I thought was odd.  Now I think they were tidying up before flying south.  Then on Thursday it was like being in an Alfred Hitchcock film - there were birds everywhere. All the starlings were lined up on our roof

and then flying around the house

and the swallows were everywhere.  Lined up on fences

and I could get within 3 feet of them.  These were two young ones - their parents kept swooping down with food for them

 

on the greenhouse roof

 

 

on our roof

 

and ducking and diving all around

too fast for me to take any decent pictures.

Anyway, when I wasn't running around taking pictures, I was making the Autumn primitive stitchery ready for our workshops next term