April Photo Scavenger Hunt

This month I'm joining in with the photo scavenger hunt 


                                            

The monthly list of things to find and other people's interpretations can be found on Postcards from the P.P.

Here are my offerings:


April showers

We haven't had any rain all through April apart from a smattering one night, so I had to cheat and get the hosepipe on this lilac tree!




Breakfast

This is my usual breakfast of Weetabix and orange.  I don't like the Weetabix to be crunchy or the milk to be cold so 20 seconds in the microwave solves both problems and some hot water in the orange warms it up too.








Your camera

A set of keys

An interesting shop name

A cross

A church

St. George's Church in Doncaster, recently renamed Minster Church of St. George.






Eggs

Something yellow

Fields of oilseed rape






A sculpture

These trees in front of the Mansion House in Doncaster have been likened to brains on sticks by locals.






Something to do with Shakespeare

"A horse, a horse!  My kingdom for a horse!"     (Richard III)







Something to mark St. George's day

The flag of St. George on our local church.

Variations on a theme

The other day Ilona on Life After Money gave a tutorial to turn a drinks can into a tea light holder.
I made two and joined them together back to back to make this

The drinks cans are so easy to work with so I cut another two, and joined them together one on top of the other to make this flower

Here they are together in the tree (the curly one is top left and you can just see the leaping deer under the bottom branch)

You may not know that St Mark's flies only live for about a week around the 25th April which is St Mark's day (hence their name!).  They are very distinctive as they are very black and their legs dangle down as the fly.  I've found out it's very difficult to photograph flies in flight but I managed to capture a couple here after taking loads of shots

Can you spot them both?  Well three if you count the blurred one that's in the middle.

Highs and lows

If you were paying attention earlier in the year you may remember how I'd made twiggy cages to protect some plants from rabbits in our little woodland.  Well here's one that worked for a cowslip

Sadly something that wasn't protected enough from the wildlife were our hens.  While there was no one at home on Monday afternoon a fox came and took three of them and injured the other two and Lotto the cockerel.    Lotto can't lift his head up so I'm wondering if his neck is broken.  He's drinking and feeding if I hold his head while I've got him on my knee though.   They're all still very much in shock, standing huddled up but at least they haven't got any worse so we'll have to see how they go on.


To leave you on a lighter note, some of our apple trees are coming into blossom and look very pretty

One I got right

Do you ever find things springing up in the garden that you don't recognise so you leave it, in the hope that it'll turn into something interesting but after months taking up space it turns out to be a weed?  I do this quite a lot (and also the opposite when I've forgotten I've planted something the year before and mistaken it for a weed when it's re-emerging and outed it before realising).
Well I had my doubts about the plant in the middle of this photo with the largish leaves, thinking it might be some kind of burdock

Now it's grown into this, an Honesty, which I have got elsewhere in the garden but they're very weedy compared to this so I'm pretty pleased with it. 

You may notice I've been doing a bit of tidying up in this bed which when viewed from the other side is also quite colourful just now

                                                              

I've received this blog award from the lovely Claire at Sweet Birdy Love

This award is given to bring recognition and give exposure to small blogs that have followers of less than 300 in number (300! oh to reach the heady heights of 30)
If a blogger is given this award and they choose to accept it, they should then link back to the person who gave them the award, then pick three lovely blogs that they regularly read (also with followers of less than 300) to recommend to others.

The three that I choose are:

HEART SHAPED

MUD PIE

POSTCARDS FROM THE P.P.

Take a look at them, you won't be disappointed.

Hitching a ride

Look who nearly ended up being taken for an unexpected ride out 

here's a closer look

My husband had loaded up the pick-up with bags of twigs and old hay and left it on the drive whilst he came in for a drink.  He looked out a bit later and saw Lotto the cockerel pop his head up out of a bag!    He didn't get in the bag in the field so he must have got over the gate and then up onto the pick-up.  I'm surprised he hasn't been out of the field before now.




I've been sorting out another part of the garden.  This is the before picture

and as it is now

I haven't quite finished where those bricks and rubble are piled up on the right that I dug up.  I didn't have enough plants to fill it and when I've looked at the price to buy more I've decided to use annuals this year - hence the piece of fencing to keep the cat off.  
Excuse the wheelie bin - that's my husband's version of a pond filter!  We really must do something with the pond as well.  We had to move it quickly a few years ago and haven't finished it off round the edge yet!  The square resting on the stones is a net to keep herons off.

When is a weed not a weed?

... when you make it into soup. 

Just take some of these:

add an onion and a couple of potatoes and turn them into this:

I thought I'd posh it up with a swirl of cream but I didn't have any so I used milk which as you can see is not quite the same!   
When I first made nettle soup years ago I just used nettles and onion, but it was really strong and I find it tastes better with potato in.


It was my favourite kind of sky this morning when the sun's shining but the sky is steely blue.  I've tried to capture it with this greengage blossom against it but it was much better in real life

The colour of these Dutch hyacinths really shines out in the sunshine

Hot Legs

I was reminded of the Rod Stewart song 'Hot legs'  when I spotted these in the garden this morning.  A couple of red legged partridges (click to make them bigger)

And speaking of the garden this is the view now down past the same silver birch tree.  I've moved my runner bean trellis further down and am going to use that bottom corner in front of the wall as my veg plot - the white on the ground is some more grill and other bits and bobs to keep the cat off. 

And here is the finished back border.  There used to be a conifer hedge along the wall, hence all the stumps.  At the edge of my new veg bed are a couple of blackcurrant bushes which were already there.  A lot of the existing plants were growing right up to the lawn, and my husband cuts the grass and shows no mercy to anything overhanging so I've dug them up and moved them further back.  I've also divided everything up and have ended up with plenty to fill the border.  In fact I've had 12 carrier bags of surplus plants that I've put on freecycle!