This is a blog I discovered from last year and made me smile as I went to harvest more crops earlier today. Despite everything, I hope our little visitor returns this winter!

I was surprised to see that almost all the vegetables we grew last year had been eaten up by myself, my kind and unassuming husband and some nameless little creature. This wasn’t particularly strange, but it was rather odd that the dark store shed was littered with bits of straw from the boxes.

     It isn’t easy growing lots of vegetables, enough to store through the winter, but it is so rewarding. We often leave the carrots and swedes in the ground, protected by a layer of straw. And I love the smell of the sleeping apples and drooling onions in the shed. There is such an earthiness about the whole thing. However, I do moan about it at times.

     I recently asked my kind and unassuming husband what he would like for lunch and he frowned before disappearing down the garden path. How odd, I thought, but he soon returned, with a handful of  vegetables, looking and smelling as fresh as when we picked them months ago. He said he would like nothing better than homemade soup and some seeded bread, also homemade. So I  set about cooking. There weren’t enough onions, so I strolled over to the store shed, which was just as well!

      How on earth he managed to stay all this time without being traced, I will never know. But a rather full hedgehog slept peacefully on a small pile of hay in a corner. I will keep a careful eye on him!

       Thank heavens our garden for waifs and strays has many safe houses for the amount of visitors  that arrive, often un-noticed. But I do wish they would tidy up after themselves!

        The soup and the bread were delicious! Just as well I made enough for an army, as we had more visitors (the two legged kind) and a wonderful afternoon followed.

DIGGING by Edward Thomas,

To-day I think
Only with scents, - scents dead leaves yield,
And bracken, and wild carrot's seed,
And the square mustard field;

Odours that rise
When the spade wounds the root of tree,
Rose, currant, raspberry, or goutweed,
Rhubarb or celery;

The smoke's smell, too,
Flowing from where a bonfire burns
The dead, the waste, the dangerous,
And all to sweetness turns.

It is enough
To smell, to crumble the dark earth,
While the robin sings over again
Sad songs of Autumn mirth."

For those of my readers who have never been to Wales, where I live with my kind and unassuming husband, let me tell you a little secret, it is outstandingly beautiful but extremely WET!

There are all forms of rain in Wales! Fat rain (big wet blobs), lazy rain (rain that would rather go through you than around you), drizzle, pelting, misty, graupel (German name)a soft hail or snow pellets, and snow of course. All this rain is the reason we have such a lush green country.

I guess the shape of our landscape with mountains and long stretches of coastline can cause the weather to change dramatically one hour to the next. We are also close to the Atlantic ocean and the Irish sea.

But we also have stunning sunsets and sunny days to crawl into and savour. Take today for example, it began with rain, ordinary straight rain which was warm, nevertheless. Then sunshine by lunchtime and a mixture at the time of writing, but as usual, the golden hour is upon us and the colour is magical. I wouldn’t swap Wales for anywhere else on earth!

However, I would like to add that it is a struggle in our allotment garden where the corn on the cobs are over a metre tall and were forced to the ground by the fat rain and a wicked wind yesterday. My kind and unassuming husband and I struggled for an hour to tether each plant to a pole (broken branches) so that they could all have a chance of survival. I have to say that they are all looking good today. Well done Mr Kind and Unassuming Husband! 

One day I went to the shop to buy milk and came home with a goat called Billy! I had no idea what I was going to do with Billy, but I assumed it would all fall into place. I was wrong.

     My kind and unassuming husband was very surprised when I opened the gate to our home for waifs and strays with a goat in tow. The bearded animal snorted when he saw the garden. Heaven, he must have thought, a Billy Goats Heaven!

     I was a very kind but assuming wife, my husband said, to think that we could easily accommodate this animal that had one eye on the washing line and another on our prized allotment. But Billy was here to stay, at least for the time being.

     He didn’t make friends easily, which was probably due to his horns. These  had the potential to toss an unsuspecting person into the air. And they certainly scared many of our friends away.

     And he escaped, once or twice, could have been more but I hate to think about it. Oh, the trouble it caused. We thought that Gilbert the Great was a handful, but Billy the Goat beat him hands down.

     ‘A goat can live for twenty or more years,’ a friend told me kindly, ‘but I suggest you don’t tell your kind and unassuming husband that.’

    ‘He’s probably not far off old age,’ I replied and instantly felt sorry for poor Billy.      

     I knew we couldn’t keep Billy indefinitely, our home for waifs and strays just wasn’t right for him.

      ‘We could rent him out,’ I said jokingly, to my kind and unassuming husband many months later. ‘Someone must need a natural lawnmower.’

      He shook his head and said that Billy deserved somewhere permanent. I agreed.

       It was after Billy got into the allotment, that we sought a new home for him. I asked Tom the Egg (he really did exist) if he would put some posters around the villages and off he went on his new bicycle.

       Within two days, someone called and asked all about Billy. What he looked like, colour, size etc. When I had given them a full description, they asked if they could come to see him straight away.

        Well, what a surprise. Billy found a new home on the stage. He was to star in a play which was running for another four nights, then live the rest of his days on a farm close by.

        I have often been to visit Billy and delighted to write, that he is a happily retired acting goat.

 Goodnight Billy! I often wonder where you came from.

Tawny owls (Strix aluco) often frequent our home for waifs and strays. These adorable creatures are more vocal in autumn when territories are being established by youngsters setting up on their own. Many people think they go ‘twit twoo,’ but, the female calls ‘ke-wick,’ with the male responding ‘hooo-hoo-ooo.’ Well this was spring and the village where we live was extra warm and peaceful due to the glorious weather and lockdown. 

     We found the first owlet sitting on the floor beneath a large oak tree. It was late afternoon and the foxing hour was closing in. Thankfully, the weather was kind and we placed the young bird on top of a shed and watched for hours, from a distance. Its mother could be heard across the field and the wee owlet responded. We were sure it would be fed so headed indoors.

      The owlet was still there the following morning and down on the ground was its sibling. We made enquires and discovered it was quite natural for a young owlet to be out of the nest before it can fly and sure enough, both owlets would climb up the tree at night. Indeed, far wiser than we had thought. We decided to let nature take its course but monitored their safety until one day they could be heard with their parents, across the field. They had found their way home.

       Life at our home for waifs and strays is always busy and never ever boring. There is always something to fix or replace. Animals wonder through our garden, stay awhile and leave. Nature is always entertaining, especially around our wildlife pond this time of year. For me, there is nothing better than sitting on the old bench with a cup of sweet tea, watching the world at its best.

Life at our home for waifs and strays has certainly changed during the last few weeks. Covid-19 has seen to that. Of course, our animals are blissfully unaware that life on the outside is a troubled one. However, the garden has had time tenderly spent on it and is now looking like a thriving allotment with enough vegetables planted to keep us until autumn. The hens, bless their souls, are old but still present us with deliciously fresh eggs most days. And down in the pond, a battle has evolved, tadpoles versus newts, with the occasional kestrel watching from above. But, for now, I have a battle of my own.

     Whilst my kind and unassuming husband works tirelessly in the attic, I still go to work at the small but perfectly formed hospital near the city. The ward is quiet with cancer patients coming in and out for operations. We are typical nurses, who laugh and cry together as we share in the knowledge, that life will never be the same again. And despite not being on the front line, we are armed as a team with PPE, to fight the enemy we can only see in the fear and sadness on people’s faces. Some of us on the team have had or think we have had the virus but unfortunately, we were not tested. So, it’s onwards and upwards in a battle to help ourselves and others, survive this coronavirus war.