The rain showers continue even when we are promised a few hot days they seem to be very short followed by more showers. At least it is not cold.
Di and I walked to the village and while crossing the bridge and generally looking at the river and countryside the brilliant blue flash of a Kingfisher took our attention although it was gone before we knew it, flying from the flood arch of the bridge (the arch nearest the Mill and normally dry) down stream to somewhere else.
Our driveway has been decorated with fox droppings, although we did not see him. Come late October November the blood chilling cry of the Vixen will echo over the water meadows again and the young Sparrow Hawks finally went at the end of August and left us in peace instead of the continual shrieking as they practiced their calls and hunting prowess on each other.

I came down stairs the other morning to make the tea (just one of my many jobs) part of the routine being to draw back the curtains, to find a young buck standing on the lawn having his breakfast. I would think he was part of this year's crop as his coat was a beautiful and even chestnut colour. He sported a pair of short horns on his head and seeing the curtains move made him start and move three or four yards before turning to look at me in the house; having satisfied himself that I was not a danger he went on eating. I walked out into the garden a few minutes later at which he left. The roses at the bottom of the lawn looked as if they had just had a good trim. Not the spiky bits, just the soft shoots. We shall be pruning the roses very soon anyway.

Corn Harvesting, The Modern Way
Dead easy! You cut and thrash it with the combined harvester (for those who don't know, it is a large machine with four wheels. Corn stalks go in one end and straw and corn come out of the other. The corn is offloaded to a wagon and taken to a silo on the farm for storage. The silo usually has facilities for blowing warm air through the corn to keep it dry. The straw falls to the ground, is baled, and also taken back to be stacked in the barn.

As it Was
Combined Harvesters started to become available after the war in the early 1950s but before that, once the corn was deemed to be ripe and ready for harvest it would be cut with a binder. This wonderful machine would cut the corn and lay it all pointing the same way and then tie it with binder twine into a sheaf, cut the string off and deposit the sheaf onto the ground. This operation was carried out with out a break and after the binder had passed along a field cutting a swathe of corn a row on sheaves would be left on the ground behind it. Then one or two men would spend their time walking around the field gathering the sheaves and stooking them up, putting the cut stalk end on the field and leaning the other end with the ears of corn against each other. The number of sheaves to a stook was not critical but the ones I saw generally had six or eight sheave each.  After a week or two if the weather was kind the sheaves would be loaded on a wagon and taken to the yard to be built into a corn rick which was thatched to keep the rain out once the rick was up to full height. When corn was needed later in the year the Thresher would put in an appearance and the day would be spent threshing the rick out. The sheaves went in one end and straw, now empty of grain would be baled and made into another Rick. The chaff (the husks from the seed would be blown into a heap and the grain would be put directly into sacks and taken for storage in the granary. Any of these events required four men for a day or more.

CreepyCrawllies in the Garden
It is useful to know the creatures found in the garden that are herbivore i.e. likely to eat plants, or carnivores who are likely to eat insects and are the gardeners friend. Some bugs are also useful at eating debris (poo etc) here are a few.

Arachnids (Eight legs) These include all spiders. False Scorpions Harvestmen, (tiny bodies very long legs). These eat mites. Springtails, insects, snails, and other small animals and so are definitely carnivores (to be cherished).