A vegetable dish....?

A couple of updates in this blog.  First is my Mini Mania for February.  We were allowed to make anything so long as it wasn't any form of patchwork and no bigger than 8".  I decided on this as I made something similar at a workshop a few years ago

Do you remember a few weeks ago I wrote about pruning the fruit trees in the orchard.  Well, I heard on the grapevine (forgive the pun) that a wall had fallen down and whilst I was there today I checked and 'yes' it had and just where I had pruned my tree.

Before ..

After

From the other side

What caused it - we have no idea but it will cost a great deal to re-build!!  Were the trees holding it up.  By the way, one tree we did not prune was this one that was in flower today.

A Cherry Plum

Anyway, a quick catch up as I suddenly realised that I haven't blogged for a while. 

Last Friday I went to a Quilt Show at Duxford IWM with friends and we had a good day out.  Not a large show but some of the quilts gave me ideas as a little bird told me that Mini Mania in a few months might be 'Tumbling Blocks'.

Over to Cambridge for the weekend to look after two grandchildren whilst Mum and Dad ran a half marathon as practice for the London Marathon when they are both running.  So cold and it rained as well; still they both finished with reasonable times considering that my son had been out on a stag party the night before.  At the end of the night the 'Groom' and his 'Best Man' were each presented with an envelope which was their entry into this run!!  They turned up, ran and finished and the Best Man had never run a half marathon before!!  Well done them.

Tuesday was 'Will' day and we walked along the embankment in the sunshine

and were accosted by a rather rough looking man who worried me, but all he wanted to tell us was to go and look at this duck

A Mandarin duck

sitting with the Mallards.  So beautiful, but was he an escapee from somewhere?  The first time I have seen one in the wild and not caged or kept in a garden.

I love volunteering at Chester Farm and always come away feeling in a good mood.  This time I was 'litter picking' all the rubbish blown onto the site after the recent high winds of 'Storm Doris'.  The weather was glorious and I was happy being outside.  Our volunteer organiser discovered a huge badger sett and they had dug up some Roman pot pieces - 

Mostly Roman pot but something metal (top left)

The small pieces were lovely

and as our resident Archaeologist was on site he was summoned and told us that it was a piece from a Castor Box from the 5th century.  The Roman equivalent of a vegetable dish that was only used in Britain so they were trying to be 'posh' even in those days!  As these were found away from a proper 'dig' they were going into a general box of bits and pieces and I was asked if I would like a piece and that is my hand in the photo above with my own Roman remain.   I am thrilled and will use it when I am giving a guided walk of the site.