Men from the ministry

Some of you will have seen TV programmes, where the men from the Environment Agency measure how many fish there are in a stretch of river.

Today they came to my stretch of Evenlode.

There used to be trout further up river at Charlbury. Will there be any there this time? Will there be any here?

first dump the net

I first saw this unusual van arrive and dump what looked like fodder for the animals. Why would a strange van do that, I thought? In fact it is a box with a large net in it

The men from the agency

Sophie and I were going in the other direction at that time. When we returned the men were still there having lunch. They explained their mission and posed for me and the blog.

They had not yet thrown in their nets.

They posed for my blog, asking me to call them men from the environment agency rather than the environmental agency.

It is just me who is a bit mental, I suppose.

The weather has been dreamlike, almost perfect, this week.

I never loved spring the way I do this year in the valley.

It was at this time last year I first discovered the place. It is perhaps at its most magical as the birds start to nest, the trees bud, the flowers blossom on the trees, and the sky is bright blue with vast white cumulus clouds scudding across the scene.

I was suffering from my old nasal allergies earlier in the year, but they have all gone now.

I think it was my allergic reaction to all the rapid growth of spring which put me off it as a season.

Not any more!

I asked the men from the ministry, or agency, as they are called these days, to stop by and let my viewers know how the fish are doing.

In the meadow

The weather was really lovely as G and Sophie wandered across the meadow at the heart of the valley

pretty blue flowers

Easter egg

not so gud with fud

Not everything is perfect in the valley. How kind of people to clear away their rubbish. How crazy to hang the Co-op bag on a fence. Who is going to collect it? Nevertheless it has gone now. I wish some of the other rubbish the picnicers have left was gone too.

New life from the fallen soldier

There is an amazing burst of new budding life from this fallen willow. It hardly seems to matter that it has cracked in two and fallen across the ditch.

The swans are nesting here

When I was young there were swans nesting at the bottom of pour garden  on the pond.  In winter they would waddle up to the house and we would feed them bread by hand. My dad had himself photographed in the paper feeding them.

Buzzy bee

Dead magpie

We found a dead magpie on the path. Once I found two of them hanging on a ewe tree in the Wychwood on Beltane morning. The old religion is still alive in the countryside in paces. I could not see how or why this one died.

More buds and blossom