Summer Time, But The Living Ain't Easy

It's dry, it's sunny, it's hot.
It's unbelievable.
June - for once - is doing what is says on the tin.
We must have brought a little bit of Paris back in our bags.


I'm even getting a bit of a tan - a farmer's tan, that is, which ends where the clothes begin.
I've been working non-stop in the garden, along with our lovely French Canadian wwoofers, Olivia and Marie Christine.
They've been slaving away, as you can see.

Knit, knit, knit...

In fact, they're practically on their knees.

But then, wwoofing is exhausting work.

However, it only takes a quick look round the garden to see just how hard they really have been working, bless their cotton socks.
They've weeded, edged grass, dug beds, pruned, cleared paths and carted endless barrow-loads of garden rubbish away .

See how hard we've all been working.

The dogs, on the other hand, have played tag with the girls, chased each other, chewed bones and tried to chew each other's teeth.
TeenQueen has done a good deal of walking about in the flower beds.
Admonishment runs off her like water off a duck's back.
But they haven't done a whole lot of sleeping in the garden.

Perhaps that's because it's extremely noisy. And I don't mean the digger rumbling in the field outside.
Every bird in the west seems to be nesting somewhere in our patch, and the orchard is full of young rooks. Half of them are learning how to take off and land , the others are being initiated into the joys of digging for leather-jackets. Its a raucous business.
But the swallows outdo them easily. They have got their young ones out on the bean arches, and in between loud singing and flying lessons, there are noisy feeding sessions.
It's a sound, I have to say, that makes my summer.

Me! Me! Me!

We sit around the table at supper almost too tired to talk.
Well, Olivia's never too tired to talk.
And Marie Christine enjoys a good natter.
Come to that, I'm not often too tired to talk myself.
In fact, now I think about it, there are only two family members who are so fast asleep they don't talk at supper.
The ones who didn't do any work in the garden at all - unless you count burying bones in the compost heap as work, that is. 

Model Dog and the TeenQueen hard at work as usual, chewing each other's teeth