We’ve had a really good/bad day – good because it’s been gloriously sunny – the kind of day that makes you feel:

1. good to be alive
2. thrilled to bits to live in a stunning place like this
3. thrilled to be doing some physical out-door work
4. even more thrilled to look up from said work and see Dartmoor in the distance shimmering in the sunshine and Bodmin moor in the near view bathed in sunshine and looking super-saturated green.
5. chuffed to be making more progress with the garden and field.
6. Pleased to be a good enough blagger to get a lorry load of chippings from local trees that had been lopped by the power company dumped on our drive

Bad because:

1. A knife and fork has been uncovered by chickens scrabbling up the soil demonstrating that there is yet more rubbish under there
2. a vacuum cleaner was also found buried in the soil along with the enlarger that DM has already posted as his photo
3. The dismal realisation that a year and a half on into our time here, the place is still knee-deep in someone else’s rubbish.
4. The fact that not only were they complete slobs – the council would have taken away everything we’ve dug up for the cost of a phone call to ask them to do it – not only were they too tight to do that, they couldn’t even be arsed to open the gate, walk twenty yards into the field and pile up the rubbish there. It was simply lobbed over the gate and allowed to fall wherever it chose. Then the weeds took over the job of burying it.

I’ve actually had an ally today who’s been telling DM that we need to ‘tick a few boxes’ and soon – to give us both heart. I’ve been saying this for a while – not one single thing that we started is finished and somehow the will to make that happen is just not there…..

When I was on my fifth or sixth wheelbarrow run to move the chippings from the drive to their new location as weed suppressants I spotted this old saw with its peeling paint – clearly it was not considered functional but ornamental - I just decided that it looked good enough to take a photo of, though I’d planned on a studio session later in the day. The studio session got canned and so this was all I had to show for the day and somehow that’s appropriate. Old, rusty, worn-out and full of totally ineffective teeth – yep, that’s a good analogy for me today.

Last year, I was counting fat bottoms.....