After a few month’s of being relatively quiet I’ve actually been quite busy both socially and work wise of late!

A visit to Southampton

I went down to see the family for six days which covered my birthday. It was the first time that my son, daughter and grand children have all been together on a birthday for 7 years, the last time being my 60th!

The visit had an added bonus of seeing the new P&O ‘Brittania’ sale into the Docks there. Very grand and from the thousands who were lining the waterfront along Southampton Water, you could see the Ocean still has that great patriotic feel to it.

Some Deer in Knole Park Sevenoaks

Work Wise

One side of me say’s to hang my oddjobbing tools up once and for all, but I find it hard to say no, especially to people who have given me so much work over the years, that in turn, managing me to survive often!

At present I’m doing… 4 cleaning of wrought iron gates, fixing a large flower pot, sorting some door handles, painting two doors plus a gate, fixing parts of the Tennis Pavilion which I painted last year and painting a large toilet!

The plus side is that there’s 16 acres there and the wildlife is quite varied. There are three owls living in the garden trees, so I have my camera ready at all times. Needless to say they talk to each other all day but actually finding exactly where they are is quite difficult.

Parakeets in Knole Park and a Kingfisher at Warsash in Southampton

Wildlife Pursuits

This has been good of late, a visit to Titchfield Nature Reserve, Warsash (both near Southampton), Knole Park and Sevenoaks Nature Reserve, so quite a few photos and new pages in the ‘Other Wildlife’ section of the web site.
I just wish the weather would brighten up, it’s cold strolling around with a large lenses and at the ready for that quick shot before whatever it is moves on.

At the Show

The Edible Garden Show

I went up there last Friday and it was really great to meet up with old buddies John & Val Harrison who run allotment-garden.org and James Sean Cameron of hortchannelTV .

Compared to last year I have to say it seemed there were fewer Stands.
Very noticeable was with Poultry. Last year there were many, this year very few. This can only confirm that keeping chickens in the garden has become slightly less fashionable for want of a better word.
Even so, the Down the Lane Forum is still quite active and visitors to the web site are steady, all be it less than two years ago.

Beekeeping showed pretty big at the Show this year and there seemed to be more an emphasis on eco-friendly and eco-method gardening.
The older style of see everything off with spray is now being replaced with using Invertebrates and other creatures to create better gardening.
This is great and goes in nicely with the emphasis we are putting into Garden Wildlife on both the Forum and Facebook pages.

So the next few weeks will continue with a more busy theme; carrying on with the oddjobbing, a few house sitting days, visiting family again in a couple of weeks and doing a lot of web site changes.

The Pink Ferry serving Hamble with Warsash, been going over 400 years – a nice way to travel!

Lastly, to conform to Google guidelines, the web site will become what they call ‘mobile friendly’ any time now. This will mean that viewing the site on a mobile will not be the same as a Laptop or Desktop.
Regular visitors via mobile may find this quite disorientating at first (it will me!) so please grim and bear. There’s sure to be a few bits and bobs I’ve missed, but it’ll all come good in the end.