Verona Strauss.comjust because life is fun! …

Verona has a new pet; she rescued it herself from a neighbour’s garden. She saw it crouching under a piece of wood, shaking, so picked it up and bought it home in the palm of her hand with a wide smile on her face.

She says he has bitten her twice, but not hard!

After a read of her Wildlife book, she identifyed her new pet as a male vole. She’s not sure if he’s a bank vole or a short tailed vole and she’s called him Claus.

So far Claus has some feta cheese, blackberries and some pyracantha berries from the garden which Verona picked for him.

Claus has been introduced to the cat, who, fortunately is too old and full to be bothered.

Claus has a nest built from dead grass, old feathers and some of Verona’s hair - he seems to love it and burrows down deep inside!

Verona

This morning Verona is outside doing some repairs to her tree house with Daddy. She has her own tool kit which she is very proud of. It’s ‘real’ child sized tools, not one of these naff kids toys. She has just changed the blade on her saw and they are seeing if they can salvage the tree house as some of her friends want to play in it, but we’ve not been able to let them for safety issues.

It appears much more wood than we thought has gone rotten. The tree house was built when Verona was still in nappies from old scraps. The tin roof was donated by a neighbour. Her interest in the tree house has grown over the past few months. She’s very much into creating her own spaces and dens at the moment, so I think she might have some winter fun in this!

By the time I got outside to see what they were up to, Verona had given up being chief labourer and was getting on with the ‘real’ work of playing, leaving her Dad to it!

Ready, steadY;

GO!!!

Autumn is certainly in the air and we had a wonderful walk today which happened by ‘accident’.

We were driving home from doing some errands when I spotted something special in the distance. It was sitting, hunched motionless next to a pond. I asked DH to drive back and investigate. We parked the car down a track and started to follow our noses. It was very overgrown and we soon found ourselves in the thick of a woods:

In a beautiful wood

Surrounded by lovely old oak trees:

Ancient oak trees full of great energy and wisdom

We found food to sustain us:

perfectly ripe blackberries

High tech weather stations:

it looks like good weather for a while!

The first signs of autumn:

beautiful red leaves

and finally we found the pond I had been looking for:

waiting silently by the water

Where we waited (some more patiently for others) to see …

A heron flying above the pond looking for lunch

A heron!

It felt very special to see this bird, but it didn’t want us around, so we made our way back through the trees and left it in solitude to hunt.

It was a beautiful part of the countryside found quite by accident, but I think it might become one of our favourite places.