Autumn blowing in

Gosh it has been blowy this week - the garden is quite open, so it felt quite fierce, but not cold.  Sadly the wind blew the gazebo to bits on Monday and the lovely clay horse sculpture from Paul Michael Langford was also blown over - he was not too upset though as it was always intended to be a temporary thing, and was only expected to last a short time when the rain came.  It was a lovely sculpture though - he is talking of making one in bronze next year.

With the children retuning to school this week and the change in the weather we have been a bit quieter and can return to leisurely swimming rather than identifying the best customers to chase for food!  The most exciting thing to happen this week has been the 4 ducklings in the pen being allowed out - they went mad - we have never seen ducklings move so far so fast they went right down to the bottom pond on the first day (it normally takes a couple of weeks for them to pluck up courage for this!). But the best fun was watching the humans trying to get them off the pond at the end of the day, so that they could return them to the safety of the pen for the night -  it took many attempts!  These ducklings are smart though - last night they returned to the pen of their own volition - they have worked out where the food is now!

You may remember that these four have a mum and a couple of siblings on the pond (see earlier diary note) and we speculated as to whether she would recognise them when they came back -- she did not and was very careful to ward them off the much smaller siblings (they have not been eating as well as the ones in the pen!)

This Saxophonist by Alan Ross is part of trail

Sculpture trail ends next Sunday.  Next event on the books is Wine tasting on 30th September.