Last weekends walks were hugely successful despite low temperatures - hard to remember now we're enjoying summer warmth!  On our Bird walk we not only heard lots of birds, thanks to Simon Barker, (who is soon to publish the reults of his studies of Orchard Birds),  but found evidence of the Noble Chafer Beetle, and tucked into Legges' famous local sausages for breakfast.  And on the Botany Walk we were all immensely entertained by Gerald Dawes,  by the description of the chemical properties belonging to various plants (including some rare ones) and the statistics describing their 'movements', ending up in the farm kitchen consuming coffee and cake and discussing nearly every subject under the sun!  Next walk is about the management of orchard trees and hedges, led by Janet Lomas, on June 9th at 2.30pm.  There will be a cuppa and home-made cake afterwards.
Now I'm back to B&B and letting the Lighthouse - we have our usual interesting mix of tenants and guests : orchestral players (playing at the Three Choirs festival), internatonal furniture makers and woodworkers (doing a course near here with Gudrun Leitz in the woods), an American professor pioneering radical new surgical techniques, puppeteers, cider makers, and people just 'in passing' up and down the country. In between whiles I slink out to the veg garden and water my seedlings or do some much needed weeding! The cuckoo is singing well and our younger swallows have now joined us, somewhat later than their parents, though I don't think they are old enough to nest this year. All the various roses here are about to flower: Cecil Brunner, a tiny noisette rose which is at least 50 years old, as is 'Gloire de Dijon',  'Breath of Life', planted by a former partner of mine, on the farmhouse walls, and  'Graham Thomas','Malvern Hills', and 'Pegasus' up at the Lighthouse, where they fulfil a dual purpose of shielding the interior from overhead rays from the sun, with 'Grace' and 'Lady Emma Hamilton' as shrub roses, providing shelter from the road. How I enjoy the seasons!