Hare care

To our enormous delight, our young hare seems to have taken up almost permanent residence in the former farmyard below the house. Except in the very wettest weather he has been back regularly for the past couple of weeks at least, usually for hours at a time. DH and I are amused to find ourselves automatically glancing out of the relevant windows to check on his presence or absence. This morning he was particularly active, grooming himself thoroughly before settling down for a nice long nap in the intermittent sunshine.

Seizing his opportunity, DH eavesdropped on his morning toilette and in my first attempt at utilising all the facilities of YouTube, I've uploaded the result for the world to see. It’s short and silent and, we think, rather sweet.

I give up!

Not only did DH and I wake up to this view of the hills across the valley (in mid-May!) but when I logged on I was greeted with a positive blizzard of spam, not all of which had been caught by Blogger's spam filter. Sigh….   I won’t ban anonymous comments, otherwise several people I care about couldn't comment, and I don’t want to put on comment moderation, as I know some of you like to talk among yourselves when I’m not there. J

The ray of light in this gloomy situation is that the latest version of word verification is very much easier to decipher, so that even I can usually do it first time. This means that I can switch it on without feeling too guilty, until the spammers give up and go away. The sound you hear is Perpetua swallowing her principles and admitting herself beaten – for the moment…..

This place is turning into Hare Central!

At about half-past seven this morning, DH looked idly out of the bathroom window and noticed that we had another visitor in the field below the house. It was definitely not the hare who took a nap near the house a couple of weeks ago, being noticeably bigger and stronger-looking. We watched with delight as he had breakfast, before loping casually round the corner of the barn and out of sight. Two visits from a hare in as many weeks made our day from the very start.

Breakfast time (still from video)

Aren't I handsome?

Imagine our surprise then to see him back in the yard as I went to make lunch at about 12.30. Two hours later he was still there, stretched out on his side and basking luxuriantly in the warm spring sunshine. Now, at 5pm, as the sun starts to disappear behind the clouds, he has finally woken up and is meditatively nibbling a spot of afternoon tea, only feet from the front wheels of the very small campervan (did I happen to mention that the former farmyard is a trifle overgrown?) 

Sadly I doubt he has taken up permanent residence with us, but DH and I are thrilled to bits that he feels safe and comfortable enough to have spent a whole afternoon not ten yards from our kitchen window.

Postscript: After much discussion and scrutinising of the photos, DH now thinks that the hare in the field in the top two images was a female as she was much bigger. The Hare Preservation Trust has confirmed in an email that in hares the female is bigger than the male. Our afternoon visitors (one or more individuals) were smaller and more probably male. So we have had at least two different hares visiting us, which is even more exciting, as we had yet another visit for a nap and a nibble the next afternoon.

It's nice and comfy here

There's nothing like a good long sun-bathe....

Gosh, that was a nice nap!

It’s off to work we go

Yes, I know that in the UK it’s a Bank Holiday weekend, but I have to grab my opportunities when I can. J Yesterday evening DH left for a three-day visit to his mother and this morning I leapt into action. Just as spring has been much delayed this year, so has my spring-cleaning. Normally I get down to it in February, when DH and his brothers have a family get-together, but this year the weather was so cold and miserable when he was away that I simply couldn't motivate myself to leave the fireside and venture into the chillier regions of our rambling house.

But now the sun is making intermittent appearances and the temperatures are solidly in double figures, I have no excuse. So it’s down to work and out with the cleaning equipment while I have the house to myself with no interruptions. Today I had a practice run in my own study and am in fighting form for tackling the obstacle course that is DH’s office, before moving on to the rest of the house.  

Memo to self – don’t forget to clean beneath the fridge….

There are some days you can’t forget…

 …and April 29^th is one of those for me. Incredible as it may seem, it was 45 years ago today that my 22 year-old self and my stripling of a fiancé (a mere 21 year-old) tied the knot in the smallest wedding ceremony it is legally possible to have. Four and a half decades, two children, and three grandsons later, despite being considerably older, fatter and greyer, we are happier and more in love than ever and I still think I must be the luckiest woman alive.

As I type this, DH is sitting downstairs after one of his favourite meals, happily engrossed in his beloved snooker (the World Championship has just entered its second week). Meanwhile I’m comfortably ensconced at my desk with a glass of rather nice French rosé, thinking back over the years and realising that, with all its ups and downs, I wouldn't have had our life together any other way.

But today isn't simply our wedding anniversary. Eleven years ago today I had just reached the end of the first year of my second career as a parish priest. DH and I had temporarily exchanged our Welsh farmhouse for an Edwardian vicarage and I was busier than I think I have ever been in my life, before or since. Not only was my diary (which I have open in front of me as a reminder) crammed with pastoral visits, parish meetings and other appointments, but we had our eldest grandson staying with us while his mother prepared for the birth of her second child.

On the evening of the 29^th I had two successive meetings at the vicarage and DH was left to put Grandson#1 to bed, while I tried to concentrate on parish affairs, knowing all the while that DD was in labour. Finally, at 9.30, the last member of the parochial church council said goodnight and I was free to discover whether I had become a grandmother again. You can imagine my jubilation on discovering that, while I was busy discussing the minutiae of parish finances, Grandson#2 had indeed made his entrance into the world and Grandson#1 had become an older brother. 

Eleven years on, Grandson#2 is in his last term at primary school and looking forward eagerly to the adventure of starting secondary school after the summer holidays. Those years have flown, as did the thirty-four which preceded them, yet I can still remember every detail of that quiet, happy and rain-sodden April day when DH and I said ‘I do’.

Hare today…..

….or rather last Sunday, when we looked out of the bathroom window to see a hare lolloping gently across the farmyard towards the gate to the orchard field. Grabbing his super new camera, DH was able to record the way the hare settled down in a patch of rough grass near the gate to nibble a leisurely snack, followed by a quiet grooming session, before indulging in a long and well-earned nap. We kept checking back over a period of at least two hours to find it still there, obviously secure in its camouflage, even in such an exposed situation.

The photographs were taken at an awkward angle with a zoom lens from an upstairs window, but give, I think, some insight into the way hares manage to survive without a bolt-hole in which to take refuge. We were mesmerised.

Mmm, that's good!

Ah, that's better!

I'm not asleep, I'm just resting my eyes.