Mud and Birdsong

The compost loo

cane ceiling

Funny shaped entrance

Tiles on the roof

Sophie and Erica

Tiff, Erica and Bhakti

Wild Iris

One of the views

It's been a funny month, with rain and cool days, but when the sun comes out it's hot instantly. The weeds and the vegetables and flowers loved the rain. Everything is getting huge. The fields are frothing with flowers and the air is bubbling with birdsong. The cuckoo, the nightingale, the golden oriel, they are all singing and swooping across the hill in front of us. And the swallows, or course.

The fig trees have come into leaf; fresh, green, fluttering on their thin branches, almost as though they are unattached. Some sweet peas that I sowed last year but didn't come to anything have come up under the fig tree and that makes me so happy. I love their sweet smell.

I had a mud workshop on Thursday and four friends came. It was so nice to share my enthusiasm for mud and to get some help with the work. It is very nearly finished. The roof is on and the walls are nearly all plastered. Hurray!

I am painting an old iron bedstead which I will put down in the studio for guests. Isabella and I slept down there last weekend. It was great, even though we were only on a thin mattress on the floor. We had Bonnie, of course. She was on guard a lot of the night, listening to different noises outside.

The potatoes are coming up and I have earthed up some and mulched some with old straw, to see how that works.

The chickens spent a few days getting into the vege garden and making a right old boorach of my compost heap and newly planted tomato plants.... grrr, but I have closed the holes and hope they forget all about that lovely place....