New horse

Our walk to school passes between two fields where there are usually horses. Lately, there's been a new little horse. About two weeks old in this picture. Right before I took this, she was standing up and I wanted to show her all gangly-legged, the way foals are, but she decided to sit down, and we couldn't hang around...

To photograph or not to photograph...

Well, I somehow failed to take photos of either of the main things I did this weekend - school Spring Fair on Saturday (completely rubbish weather), where I do have the good excuse of spending most of the afternoon talking - on the PA, making announcements, etc - so no time to take pictures even if I HAD remembered my camera.  And today, the Girl Guiding Mother/Daughter picnic (completely rubbish weather), where even if I had taken my camera, and been willing to expose my hands (as opposed to keeping them under my legs for warmth) long enough to take photos, you wouldn't have wanted to see them - can you just imagine a handful of photos of cold people sitting around eating picnic food in the grey drizzle? Not really blogworthy, I fear.

So, you get supper. Dinner. Tea. Whatever you like to call it - an evening meal. In this instance, potato, cheese & onion pie. We also had salad. The pie was excellent. There are leftovers. Mmm, lunch tomorrow...

A walk in the bluebell woods

We had arranged to meet up today with friends, originally for a picnic and walk in our favourite woods (good for bluebells - normally it might be a little late for them by the May Bank Holiday, but everything is late this year due to the dire winter). As the weekend approached and the weather forecast got increasingly yuck, plans were changed from picnicking to a pub lunch, with the walk to follow unless there was a real deluge. Which, happily, there was not.




Here's the view from the pub window - nice view of the South Downs. So, we ate, and in due course, walked, with only a small drizzle of rain. The walking is fairly dry underfoot, despite the rain, due to the chalk hills, so at least it wasn't at all muddy.

Bluebells were indeed spotted, as can be seen in the top photo - they never look quite as magnificent in photos as they do in person in the woods, I think, but you get the general idea.




Here's one chap a bit closer up,



and another thing I love this time of year, ferns, bracken and other plants just unfurling.



And a snail - Helix pomatia, the Roman or edible snail. Apparently the Romans brought them over (a staple food) and now, they roam the South Downs. In as much as a snail roams.... One of our friends is a biologist with a PhD in snails (not this snail, as it happens, a different type) so we had fun searching for them in the undergrowth. There was a lot of turning rotting logs over to examine the bugs underneath, as well, which is good fun. It would have been nice if it had been nice enough to picnic, but after all, you can't have everything --where would you put it?