This week skeins of pink-footed geese have been spotted over the farm, making their way south to their winter feeding grounds. Although many pass us by, for some the east coast of Scotland will be their destination and they will stay with us until the weather warms sufficiently for them to return to their breeding grounds of Spitsbergen, Iceland and Greenland.
This week I’ve had my nose so deep in Wildwood by Roger Deakin that I completely forgot about my songbird of the week. It’s captivated me, and to such an extent that I redesigned the front cover for fun. Its existing cover is very nice but these are the sorts of things illustrators do for fun so here it is.
Reading Wildwood caused me to stumble on a lovely blog called Dovegreyreader Scribbles. It’s written by a self-proclaimed Devonshire-based bookaholic and sock-knitting quilter, who used to be a community nurse. She wrote a post about how Wildwood made her look with new eyes at the hedgerows around her house and this is how I came across her blog. If you like countryside, books, knitting, quilting, and generally nice people who write well I recommend it wholeheartedly. While I’m recommending blogs I’d also like to mention the Devon Fine Fibres blog (the connection is that they’re from the same county). Lesley runs a very special farm where she produces Merino wool from a unique herd of Bowmont sheep. Her blog is so down-to-earth and full of the intricacies of farming life. If you’d like to get away from the headlines and find out what life ‘down on the farm’ is really like, she’s a breath of fresh air.
