Fun-packed July!

Well, July has been and gone, and it’s time for another blog! I cannot believe how fast this year is whizzing by!

The Wedding Gazebo

Assembling on the terrace

At the beginning of July, our local choir was asked to sing at one of our member’s daughter’s wedding. We usually sing at a couple of local weddings during the year and have quite a selection of suitable songs in our repertoire, but this was a coach outing to Portland on the south coast near Weymouth! The venue was a stunning, castellated house overlooking the sea, set in beautiful grounds. The weather was perfect for the outdoor wedding, with blue sky, blue sea and a gentle breeze that kept the temperature at an acceptable level. Our job was to sing a medley of songs for half an hour whilst all the guests assembled and then move to another part of the terrace, overlooking the wedding gazebo, to sing for the bride’s entrance (The Rose), the signing of the register (Songbird) and the walk back up the ‘aisle’. The couple had requested Elbow’s ‘One Day Like This’ as the final piece and we had been practising it for a couple of months. The altos (including me) were very excited as we, finally, got to sing the tune, instead of being the support underneath the sopranos! As the bride and groom processed up the aisle, followed by their guests, we burst into song and, when we got to the final chorus, everyone joined in, so we just kept on going, repeating the final phrases over and over, as the wedding party came up onto the terrace and walked past us singing their hearts out. What a wonderful experience!

The following week my daughter and her partner went on holiday to Crete and asked me to cat sit for their two feline friends. As they only live in Shepton, it was easier for me to move into their house, rather than drive a couple of miles twice a day to feed them. It was a real pleasure to be able to leave the car parked on the driveway and walk into town to do a few bits of shopping or meet up with a friend for coffee, without having to worry whether I had overstayed my time in the car park! If I had a large enough garden, I think I could be happy living in a small town. The weather was lovely, for the most part, during my 10-day stay, so I did a few weeding jobs in the garden, repaired the water butt tap and mended the bird bath. I had an epic fail when I tried to repair the outside tap but, armed with the correct tools and with the benefit of a YouTube video about the correct way to install plastic push-fit connectors, I will return!

The rest of the month has been the usual round of gardening jobs and market days, but I had two particularly good days at Castle Cary market (It was actually a bit profitable!) and I found that my stocks of jams and marmalade were perilously low so, on some of the hottest days this year, I was to be found, in the afternoons, stirring pans of raspberry jam, summer fruits jam, rhubarb & ginger jam, and marmalade! In the mornings of those really hot days, I went to my gardening clients at 7.00 am and worked for 4 hours to avoid the worst (best?) of the heat. Then it was drive home, lunch, fall asleep (it’s an age thing, I think) then wake up and do the preserves.

Tug-o-War in the kitchen

I was only home for a week before I drove to South Somerset, to a new client, where I have been looking after 2 dogs for the last week. One of the dogs, Bella, is a stone-deaf, 12-year old chocolate Labrador and the other is a 20-week old Cava-Cocka-Poo (Cavalier King Charles Spaniel – Cocker Spaniel -Poodle)! As you can imagine, the pup is a real live wire and continually wants Bella to play. Sometimes Bella will indulge her with a game of tug-o-war but, more often than not, she just wants some peace and quiet, so keeping Pebble entertained and distracted has been my major job.

I am always surprised at how different the topography of South Somerset is, compared with the more northern area that I live in. Here, the hills are more rolling with lots of beautiful and majestic, mature oak trees and big, open vistas of sky. The air seems to be particularly clear so that each tree on each hillside stands out in crisp relief. Our nearest walk is just across the lane, in a large field (8-10 acres, I would guess) that has recently been cut for silage. It is very popular with dog owners in the village, but we usually have it to ourselves. Here I can safely let the dogs off the lead and, while Bella and I stroll round the perimeter at Old Lady Speed, Pebble aka The Black Streak, whizzes around and covers at least six times the distance that we do! This suits us all very well, and also gives me the chance to really observe my surroundings. 

The majority of the hedges around the field seem quite old with hawthorn, blackthorn, hazel, elm, oak and crab apple in the mix. There seem to be a lot of sloes this year, and the hazel nuts will ripen soon. There also seem to be a lot of haws forming and many apples on the crab apple, so a lot of food for the animals and birds come autumn. Although the field is mainly meadow grass, around the edges, where the mower couldn’t reach, there are clumps of campion, mayweed, meadowsweet and yarrow as well as the ubiquitous thistle, so there is an abundance of insect life. There are Large White butterflies and Meadow Brown butterflies and, this morning, I spotted a beautiful Brimstone butterfly and, as I walk, I send up clouds of small, pale diurnal moths that flutter away and land again amongst the grass stalks.

In the mornings, when it is still relatively cool, the Swallows and House Martins are hunting insects high up above us but, come the evening and they are skimming over the grasses as the insects fly closer to the ground. Pebble thinks they are there just for her entertainment and rushes around the field trying to catch the darting shapes, but they easily fly out of her reach!

And now it is the beginning of August - I wonder what adventures the month will bring? 

Pebble (aka The Black Streak)!