Averting an Accident

After spending a lovely relaxing weekend in the New Forest we were soon back to hard work. In the area of SSSI that the ponies are grazing at the moment, there is a deep bomb crater. It is surrounded by brambles, so hasn't been easily accessible, but the earlier snow flattened the brambles so we thought we should climb down to have a better look at what was in it. We were horrified to find that, what we thought were more brambles, was actually masses of rusty barbed wire and other junk. The grazing officer decided there was too much junk and it would be too dangerous to remove it, so Tuesday was spent taking out trees and scrub from around the outside of the crater so that a fence could be put up to stop the ponies from getting in there. We then spent the afternoon moving logs...on Wednesday I could hardly move I ached so much! It was a good job done though as I dread to think what would have happened if the ponies had gone into the crater and got caught in all that barbed wire.

It is nice to see the stirrings of new life in the pony field. Cuckoo Pint is springing up in the old copse area. It looks lovely and juicy but the ponies never eat it so I'm guessing it doesn't taste as good as it looks, although, Culpeper says it will, 'cleanse all manner of rotten and filthy ulcers' and 'heal the stinking sores in the nose' and that, 'mixed with hot ox-dung and applied, will ease the pain of gout.' Hmmm...my old mum thinks she has a touch of gout but doesn't want to bother the doctor with it:)))))

Dog's Mercury is also beginning to come up and is another plant that the ponies will not touch probably because it is poisonous, although, again according to my Culpeper's Complete Herbal, if the leaves are rubbed on warts they will go and Hippocrates reckons that when applied to a female's 'secret parts' it will cure all sorts of women's problems...I'm shocked at the language :D

Sadly the garden remains devoid of snowdrops which no doubt the pheasants have something to do with. The pheasant below is the most friendly and follows me around the garden.

The area under the tree at one time had lots of spring flowers growing under it but this year it is just a patch of mud and the culprits are easy to spot. Luckily they don't touch the daffodils and they are coming up all over the place so we should have some colour soon.

We are off to Bedfordshire next weekend to visit my eldest son and his partner and to see a demonstration by Monty Roberts, the horse whisperer. We went to one of his shows last year and it was amazing so I am really looking forward to it.