It’s officially summer in my world – my seasons break down neatly into chunks of three months and the first of June heralds the start of summer for me. Hurrah! Not a moment too soon either, it’s been cold, wet and generally miserable here for what seems like forever. David has this theory that it’s the village testing us to see if we have sufficient mettle to last here so it’s been flinging horrid stuff to see if we falter on our grand plan! Well, all I can say to the forces of nature is that we’re made of sterner stuff than that and we’re here and very happy to be so.

The weather has finally decided to let us off the hook and it’s a riotous day, blue skies, warmth and lots and lots of green stuff all around us.

We had the princely sum of £65 in our pockets, gained from selling some of Mad Maureen’s old furniture (mind you, that probably doesn’t even cover the cost of all the seemingly endless trips to the dump we’ve been forced to do on her behalf). You know what they say about hard cash – it burns a huge hole in your pocket. We thought this was a good reason to spend it as soon as we could and as we’re off this week, it couldn’t have come at a better time.

So, we decided to head off to our local Owl Sanctuary at Indian Queens to catch a shot or two and entertain Fin and Greg, our two tiny friends. I think Fin and Greg’s Mummy and Daddy had quite a good time too!!! (BTW - Greg is in this pic too - in his Mummy's tummy!!!

We were given cheap tickets for entry to the sanctuary because we’d been at the steam rally on Sunday and spoken to one of the owl handlers there. It’s such a cool day out for kids of any age (I mean the owl sanctuary, though the same could certainly be said of the steam rally), even my grand old age. I loved it.

I can say that in the last few days, I have been licked by a cow, touched an owl and now have been buzzed by a Harris Hawk, who brushed over my head as he flew. I reckon there’s not much that can beat that for an experience. This shot is of Fluffy the Barn Owl who entertained us with a stunning display. Fluffy is, I think (my memory has a few detail holes so apologies if I’ve got this wrong), an ex-pet who for whatever reason became ‘surplus to requirements’. They get quite a few of those at the sanctuary. Apparently there is an owl there who was brought up with a dog in the house. When the dog died, the owl was inconsolable and so he/she ended up in the sanctuary for crying all the time. That’s really sad. One thing isn’t sad though, these sure are graceful birds. WOW.

I’m in such high spirits at the moment that even a trip to the dentist this afternoon to have an ancient filling replaced couldn’t dampen them…..it’s a good job I am writing this though, my mouth is still well and truly frozen so speech isn’t coming out all that well!

MESSAGE FOR KIM.....I hope you've not already looked at today's pic - I'll copy this to tomorrow's just in case! I saw your post re the grass lady....I don't know if youn ever saw these....the mud lady and bad hair day - as you can see, I'm a HUGE fan of these. I was told about the Chelsea one and had already seen a pic of it but you are RIGHT to say it's me totally! Thank you!

Last year, I had piles of dosh, dosh loadsamunny in my handbag!