Permaculture Project Progress

Another glorious morning in paradise. Crisp frost, melting almost as the sun kissed the grass, and air fresh enough to make you want to do nothing in life but breath it.

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The gorse has been trying to flower in a patchy kind of way ever since Christmas. But now it's really trying. I'm looking forward to when the air warms up and it fills the air with the smell of coconut.

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The woodpeckers were playing at headbangers today. I couldn't see them, but at the top of the hill I could hear two of them "chatting" with that da-da-da of theirs. .

Weighing up what you got to work with when the land is hilly is pretty difficult. And on 60 acres, it's almost impossible to see some of the detail when you're too close to it. So I've been trying to conduct a kind of photgraphic survey

Funny how, when taking a photo, no matter what the view is, there's a dog in the way..... until you want a dog in the picture, and then there's not a canine to be seen.

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It's not very successful though. The photos can be breathtaking, but the sheer scale of trying to catch the whole landscape in one shot just makes the job impractical.

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So instead I've assembled a map/aerial view of the area taken from on-line images. It was quite a bit of work to put it all together, but the resulting composite has come out splendidly well. It's quite stunning what can be seen of a landscape from the aerial perspective.... ancient ridge and furrow, old ditches, hedges and boundaries which are marked on maps but are invisible at ground level. Utterly fascinating! I got the whole thing laminated in A1 size. Pricy, but well worth it. I've got a super working tool now.

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While I was out, I picked up a PH testing kit while I was at it. Let's see what kind of soil we have. Lots of clay, but what else?

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As I drove back from Cheltenham, a kestral dropped out of the sky right in front of me to the verge, and some small innocent sqeaky thing became lunch. It was one of those two second events that take your breath away. The bird plummented down, and with absolute accuracy struck at the ground. It looked as though it should be certain impact, but it just flapped about whilst it subdued its prey. I'd have thought the poor little beast would have been stunned just from the speed of the impact, but it seemed to be putting up a fight.... not very successfully. I tried to slow down to see the follow on, but it's main road, and the kestral didn't look happy about having me as an audience either.