First pomegranite of the season!

I had my first pomegranite this year while we were on holiday last week. The village where we stayed (Bamburgh in Northumberland) has an excellent greengrocers and they had my favourite small variety. The ones that are later in the year that the supermarkets do are bigger and not nearly so nice.

We had mixed weather. It was really nice the day the first time we went to reaquaint ourselves with the white stag on White Rock.

Beautiful reflection.

Watching the waves, so peaceful

In the best company (of course!) 

We both got new boots before we went away.

MTM discovered that the security tag was still on his and he'd been walking around all day with it attached to him. Anyone seeing it must've thought we were shoplifters!

Sun was going down when we left the beach.

The moon was even out!

Missy always has a short walk before bedtime. The castle was all lit up! 

It looks quite spooky! 

Ghostly figure on the castle wall

I got a new camera for Christmas, I'm still getting to grips with it ... what does this button do?!!

Another lovely day, walk that started at the Ship Inn. Newton by the Sea

En route to Dustanburgh Castle. 

Stopped and ate our picnic lunch in this nice little suntrap. Missy is hunting crumbs from Mr Carter's steak pies

MTM is just chillin' in the sun.

It's a lovely spot overlooking Dustanburgh Castle ruins.

Clouding over a bit at this stage of the day ...

But by the time we got back to the car, we had well and truly been rained on! Missy was drenched, bless her! 

She didn't seem to mind too much, as long as there was a doggy treat for her in my pocket.

Another nice day, this time starting at Newton by the Sea but going towards Football Hole and Beadnell. 

On Wednesday, we went to Warkworth. It was dry when we set off ...

When the rain started pelting down, we took refuge in the boatman's shelter by the jetty. Can you see the tiny birds' nest in this pic?

We'll sit it out .... I spy with my little eye, something beginning with R ....

Aha! It's stopped :-)

Um no, it hasn't! Time to retreat into the Fenwick Gallery for a look-see.

This is some rendering at the bottom of Bamburgh Castle, they appear to have just gone over the rock probably to stabilise it and stop it deteriorating any further.

The shapes are so organic, we imagined they were faces of all the people thrown in the dungeons of the castle, their souls are trying to get free ...(very creepy thought!)  more spooky stuff at the Castle!

Another rainy day on Thursday so went to Alnwick to do a spot of shopping. Can't pass a yarn shop when you're a crochet and knitting nut can you?! I'd taken my Sue Pinner Carousel Crochet-A-Long project on holiday to do but somehow I left Raspberry behind at home. I was so pleased to find they stocked Stylecraft Batik because I got two more balls from the Wool Shop.

This was the main reason for our visit to Alnwick. We can spend hours in Barter Books, one of the largest second hand bookshops in Europe. Missy is so well behaved, despite it being quite a boring place for her. Here she is thinking "Is dad going to pick up every single book in the place with an aeroplane in it?!"

And here she is, having resigned herself to the fact that the answer to that question is "Yes!"

Seahouses harbour. Looking for the seafood shop to buy some shellfish for dinner.

A new piece of driftwood has appeared on Bamburgh beach since we were last here. A huge piece of tree root

Up to Stag Rock again.

Bamburgh Castle looking very atmostpheric.

Watching the waves again. There were also five cormorants fishing for their dinner. Could've watched them for hours (in fact we did!) They're just little black dots on the pics, really should've taken some long lenses to get some close ups.

This picture is to remind us that when we buy our touring VW camper van, this is the maximum height we can go to stop in the car parks at Bamburgh! 

So that's it for another year, we had a lovely holiday. See you in 2017, Bamburgh!

When does summer end?

For school children I guess it's when they go back for the Autumn term. For the weathermen on TV it's the last day of August. I think Autumn things have to start happening first, like the trees changing, getting cooler and needing the heating on. Pulling up the bedding plants and putting pansies in, planting bulbs. No-one in our village has their pansies out so, it's decidedly definitely not ended yet, my planters and tubs are still looking far too showy to be pulled up ... though I admit I have ordered some new plants and bulbs.

Summer so far has been quite pressured work-wise for MTM. The company he works for has been doing school upgrading and extensions ... he's the Contracts Manager on FIVE of them. The programme of works has to be fitted into the school holidays and so he's been extremely busy. Not helped by one of the door manufacturers letting them down on delivery dates. Here it is, the last Sunday before the kids go back and he's had to go to one of the sites to get everything handed over on time. He left very early and he'll be there til late. 

I'm continuing working on terracing of the garden in his absence. We had a couple of weekends when we couldn't work on it. During some high winds in the middle of August, a huge branch one our willow tree broke off and fell into the river. We got Dave in, the tree surgeon and he cut it up for us with his chainsaw; with MTM's help, it was retrieved from the river. We got some logs to dry out to use in the wood burner later on but that was one weekend used up on that.

I was very relieved when it was removed, the branch was so big, it went from bank to bank, I had visions of all the slugs and snails I have thrown to the other side of the river merrily marching back over it in the dark!

There were a stack of smaller branches to be disposed off and we put them where the terracing is being done to have a bonfire. We left them to dry out and obviously they were in the way of getting the soil dug out so that was another weekend gone but conditions were rights during the week for us to burn them so we're clear to get on with it now.

We got quite a bit done yesterday morning. This is how far we got before we ran out of timber and got rained off at lunchtime.

From above,

from the side. The bed on the right isn't falling downhill, it's straight, honestly! It's just the barrelling on the camera!

and from below.

I'm doing some more digging out today getting ready for the next timber delivery.

The buckets you can see in the photos have seen some action, that's how I've been digging the soil out and moving it around. Mainly it's had to go up hill. Weed roots go in the large black gorilla bucket and are deposited onto the compost heap. Rubble and subsoil (what little has been found) is used for backfill for the paths. The topsoil is really, really deep (we're talking well over a metre in places), we're so lucky! The only bit of subsoil I've found is near the uppermost bit of the slope but even that has a decent covering of topsoil.

The excavations have uncovered all sorts. Lots of bits of metal, many of which are unidentifiable but some nails. Considering the house used to be a blacksmiths forge, I've been very disappointed not to find any lucky horseshoes but maybe the nails were used on horseshoes, are nails lucky? Of course they are!

There has obviously been some stone and brick terracing in the past very similar to the crumbling wall at the bottom that was here when we arrived; there's lots of rubble in the soil and on occasion we've had to get the pick axe out to remove walling, fortunately, mostly we seem to have chosen a different lay out to the original and only come across really tough walling to be removed on a couple of occasions.

At some point one or more of the original walls must've collapsed and rather than repair/rebuild someone in the past decided to just make it a slope and everything got moved around as it was done because there is rubble in pretty much all of the area, some areas are "cleaner" than others though.

Some of the biggest pieces are good enough to form a new rockery so they've been set aside for re-use. I'm only removing the largest stones. Medium ones are having to stay put for the time being as there's so many; I'll remove the biggest medium bits from the top few inches as and when the beds are planted. Smaller pieces of aggregate will stay and be handy for drainage. Where I get a very rubbly bucket, I've ensured it's got well buried under better quality soil or used where the paths will go. 

Just look at this litte bottle that I found entirely intact   . so cute! I feel like an archaeologist! I wonder what it once contained.

I also found some bones, I think it must've been a cat or a small dog, they were quite scattered around, I didn't find a skull which may've identified the species. Where the greatest concentration was, I also found some bulbs so the romantic in me has imagined the person who buried a much loved pet, planted the bulbs in memorial. Aside from a single patch of daffodils, they're the only bulbs that were already here in the garden when we arrived, I've never noticed them flowering, they're in a quite shaded area so I've replanted them where most of the bones I found were reinterred. I am very interested to see what they are next year if they survive.

There's been lots of pottery too, most of which has been reburied as the shards are quite small, some very boring and plain but here's a selection of the prettiest bits which I'm keeping above ground for now.

My temperature blanket still thinks it's summer too with all the lovely warm colours during July and August continuing into September. I've taken this picture from the very top terrace of the garden which was already here when we arrived, you can see the lay out of the new terraced beds, so high up it almost gives you vertigo! The design of the beds was MTM's idea, all going off at right angles, he really should've been an architect instead of a builder! 

So the decision is made, Summer hasn't finished yet. The days are still longer than the nights, I hope you're have a more restful summer than MTM and I are! (We love it really!)