Simple pleasures

As mentioned in my previous post, my husband recently underwent a total hip replacement and whilst he's done incredibly well with it and is now back at work and recovering well, we did have a period of 12 weeks or so when we were restricted to where we could get to on foot - with him on crutches - so not that far.  I could go out on a bus if I chose, but buses aren't as much fun on your own and when only using them through necessity for essential chores.  

Please click on any of the photographs for a larger view.

The scene where we settle for supper and to just enjoy being there.  6 days previously there hadn't been a single blossom on the hawthorns.

During that time, we were well aware that it was a temporary and necessary blip and it was a great comfort and motivation to us to have something to look forward to.  The time of the year helped enormously, having his surgery in February meant we were housebound in the least favourable season for weather and had the spring and summer ahead of us to enjoy once mobile again.  I feel sure it would have felt a little less palatable if he'd had surgery in late summer or autumn.

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I take great inspiration from the foliage that grows in the verges, it always fascinates me, especially all the different species of grasses.

As I've blogged about many times, one of our favourite spots is Beacon Fell in Lancashire, England - we've been going there regularly for over 40 years, long before we even knew each other.  It's a place that's very busy during the day, but once the teashop closes and the loos are locked up for the night, you only tend to find it frequented by locals and dog walkers and local cycle clubs who use the challenging inclines of the roadways.   And this is our very favourite time.

I've mentioned many times how obsessed I am with sunlight through trees and perhaps early summer evening sun is the very prettiest - with pristine new greenery and golden light.  I wish I could bottle how this makes me feel and take a sip whenever my spirits flag.

We've got into the habit in recent years of dashing up there at the end of a working day, whenever the weather is suitable, armed with a picnic and some reading matter.  We can usually manage to get there in time for a decent walk, then retire to a quiet parking layby which has fabulous views for a picnic supper from the back of the car, then we retire inside the car with coffee, a biscuit, some reading material and binoculars and stay till either we get cold, need the loo, or get driven away by nibbling insects.  We try and leave before dark because we often see good wildlife on the drive home at dusk.

We always stop and pause on this stretch as the bird song tends to be particularly good.  The woodland is mostly coniferous as it's a commercial plantation, but this area is mixed, so attracts a good selection of birds.

Maybe we're just turning into a pair of old farts, but there are few things I enjoy more - Mr Boo thinks that I'm a very cheap date.   Just as well, I don't think he could afford me otherwise!  It's at its most enjoyable at this time of year - the evenings are the longest, often still cool enough to be able to enjoy a decent walk, yet warm enough to eat supper in shirt sleeves and the countryside at its most pristine and enjoyable. 

They've taken the decision this last winter to thin out some of the coniferous woodland to allow more light in to encourage more forest floor growth.  Being planted as a commercial crop originally, it was densely packed and very little light permeated.  Hence there are more spots now where the sunlight streams through, giving rise to these gorgeous treats.

So,  we sat on Saturday evening, supervising the hay making down the valley through binoculars, listening to nothing other than the breeze through the trees, evening bird song, lambs baaing for their Mums, Curlews in the field adjacent and the distant hum of the farm vehicles.  We were passed all evening by a grand total of two cyclists and three cars - although one of those did go past twice.

The drive up there is a significant part of the pleasure for us, through delightful English countryside, much of which is farmed.  We'd love to have somewhere we love as much a little closer to home and although we have other places we like to go, nowhere else has quite all the right ingredients.  On the latest journey there we spotted a record haul of wildlife en route; a hedgehog snuffling along the verge, a hare eating at the roadside who stood up tall and gave us a good looking at as we passed; three different owls, hunting earlier than usual and several close encounters with curlews, variously in flight or perched on fence posts.

This particular area seems to be especially abundant with varieties of grasses at the verge-side, from tiny little low ones with feathery seeds to tall exotic looking ones that sway in the breeze.  I think they'll be at their most fabulous in another 3 or 4 weeks.

So it was the very thought of these such evenings that kept us going during our enforced immobile period at home.  We knew we had the very best of the early summer ahead of us to enjoy it and it was an absolute joy to get back there last week after looking forward to it for over 3 months.  And it didn't disappoint - it was all the more delicious for having to wait and being deprived of it for longer than usual.  We enjoyed it so much, we've spent 3 evenings there in the last 2 weeks.  I'm already watching the weather forecast to see if an evening this week will allow us visit no.4.

The mild winter this year has meant that the garden has survived rather better than usual and I already have a decent show of colour without any new planting, with annuals from last year not only surviving, but already flowering again - I don't think that has ever happened before.  I have a couple of good sized lavender plants and they are thick with busy bees.  Mr Boo is fascinated watching them - he wonders if they're all the same bees returning, or lots of different ones.

Recent finished work:

I've now entirely lost track of what I've already published and what is new, so I'll just show a few photographs of pieces that I know I've finished very recently.  The pendant below is double sided and the front features a cabochon I made in polymer clay which is a faux lapis colour and has been finished to a high gloss with many coats of acrylic varnish.  The cab has been set in a round pendant and held in place with lots of tiny individually sculpted leaves.  The reverse features an appliqued design of a daisy and a triple loop bail with tiny leaves and balls.

A large kite shaped and dyed piece of top drilled agate that I've made into a simple pendant with a wire wrapped bail and decorative folded poppy cap - taken from a tutorial design by on-line friend and talented fellow jewellery maker Keirsten Giles and her tutorial for Happy Mango Beads and I offer it with her permission.   Her version was in sheet metal, but I modified it to be made in copper clay, creating a custom texture sheet for it so that I could give it a border.   It proved to be an ideal solution for some oddly shaped stones in my stash.  I already had an idea in progress for it, but I like this one rather better.

I often find that once I make a particular design, I get a smidge fixated with it and make quite a few on the same theme.  It's also true to say that once you get into a flow with something, it's worth continuing to work once your eye is in.  Hence I made quite a few different versions of these rosebud knot wrap earrings.  I sell a lot of earrings in this price bracket, so it makes sense to offer a decent selection.

Now, let's see that weather forecast for Thursday again . . .

I do so love spring

I have been truly appalling at keeping my blog up to date recently and I do apologise, yet again, for my tardiness.

In my defence, the last few weeks have been a little odd and my routine disrupted somewhat, as my husband underwent a much-needed full hip replacement in early February and has been off work recuperating since then, only returning to work a few days ago.

With the mild autumn, my summer bedding lasted longer than usual, so I was rather late planting some new tulip bulbs I had and consequently, they've appeared rather late too and have been a welcome burst of colour as the weather has warmed and allowed me to be outside enjoying them.

He had been in debilitating pain and with much reduced  mobility and was looking forward to the surgery and hopefully the improvement it would bring and it has truly been a blessing for him.  He underwent the surgery under local anaesthetic, which I think was a rather surreal experience for him - he described it as like being placed on the table in an operating theatre and a screen put in place so that you couldn't see what was happening, then the theatre staff appeared to dismantle and re-model the theatre around you - at least that was what it sounded like with all the sawing and hammering.  He wasn't sure it was an appropriate time for undertaking a bit of DIY!

This batch of tulips were meant to be assorted colours, but they ended up all coming out yellow - but they've been totally gorgeous, with this deep gold colour and frilly edges.

But once back in his bed a couple of hours later, he felt great - absolutely no pain, hungry as all heck and between you and me, a little doolally from the meds.  He was home a few days later and went from strength to strength and whilst it has been a tricky time while he had -and continues to have to some degree - reduced movement, his recovery has been incident free and he was immediately better than he was before - just getting rid of the pain in itself was enough justification for the surgery.

 After all my lovely daffodils finished, I've had a second burst of deep yellow with these fabulous tulips - it's amazing how a few blooms can lift your spirits.

At his post-op follow up with the surgeon the doctor declared that all had gone very well indeed with fully successful surgery and that he'd be able to rock climb in six months. "Wow, that's absolutely amazing, I couldn't rock climb beforehand!"
 

The fist open flower I spotted of wild garlic growing along one of my favourite local walks.

So the last few weeks have been a little odd - when you can't bend much in the middle (necessary to prevent dislocation whilst the muscles holding the hip in place heal), it soon becomes evident how many routine tasks require you to do so.  Like washing your legs, putting on undies, trimming your toenails etc. etc. so I have had some odd wifely duties to perform - not to mention hauling a daft 'old lady' shopping trolley the mile or so from the supermarket.  And when you're on crutches, even the simplest of tasks take military planning as you can't carry anything you can't stuff in your pockets or hang around your neck.  Whilst we thought we'd planned well for this period, it was the little things we hadn't considered that took up so much of my time in assisting.

But we're gradually returning to something like normal now and progressively lowering all the hospital-loaned seats to more normal sitting heights and we took the bed off its stilts yesterday - which has had the rather disarming effect of making me feel taller - which is rather a nice sensation when you're only 5' tall.

 I love to see woodland in spring, when the pristine greenery first emerges and you get carpets of early flowers like bluebells.

The one thing we have managed to do well during this period - and to be frank, when you can't go anywhere by mobile transport it was our only form of outside entertainment  -  was walk.  So weather permitting, we've been out most days, just walking from the door and have watched the spring emerge - more like erupt - from the dark blandness of winter.  And it has been a particular joy this year when your world has become quite small, you really do appreciate that little bit more just what is right under your nose and you perhaps otherwise take for granted.

When you stop and study and area of woodland like this, there are dozens of lovely delicate species of flowers - this patch mainly features pink purslane and bluebells, two of my very favourites.

 So whilst it has been an odd time for us both with this rather strange routine we needed to adopt, it has also been a blessing in many ways too - we've spent more quality time together than we normally manage around work and has allowed us to evaluate what matters and spend our time more wisely.  The downside to that is that I've been tardy with things like blogging. I hope that you'll forgive me.

I love the buds of Hawthorne before they open, they make perfect little white globes before the petals burst open.

Him having returned to work this week, I have had a blitz on getting pieces finished and photographed and onto my site and these are a few of the pieces I've finished lately.

 I haven't done any chain maille for ages, so enjoyed working on this Full Persian bracelet with a chunky copper clay toggle.

 Faceted dyed jade wire wrapped antiqued copper bracelet with copper clay leaf shaped toggle clasp.

Carnelian wire wrapped bracelet with copper clay toggle clasp.  The texture on the toggle loop was my own, created originally from a photograph of a fir cone, made into a two tone graphic from which I made some texture sheets.  It's my current favourite as I think it looks like tooled leather.

Rosebud knot spiral wrapped rondelles of Snake Skin Jasper.  I love this method of making beads into earrings, but it necessitates two pieces of wire passing through the bead and not many beads come with a suitably sized hole.

Copper clay pendant featuring a central section filled with filigree scrolls and a set Padparadscha coloured cubic zirconia stone.

I remember clearly the evening that I drew this design, early last summer, sat in the car, at sunset after a lovely evening walk and a picnic supper in one of our favourite quiet spots.  That particular area of countryside at that particular time of year was full of different verge-side grasses, with different shapes of seed head and all moving rhythmically in the warm evening breeze and I was fascinated with them and wondered if I could capture something of them in metal.

Congratulations Dr Who

I did sit down to post this last Saturday, on the 50th Anniversary of Dr Who, but time ran away with me as always.

As I'm sure you'll realise, if you've read any of my earlier posts, we do like to spend as much time as possible in the English Lake District.  Largely for holidays, but we also thankfully live close enough that we can just visit for the day too. 

Until 2 years ago when our favourite place to stay became unavailable, it was our habit to spend Easter up there - it was always something to look forward to during the shorter cold days of winter and was a lovely time to be there; with new lambs, daffodils and the first signs of spring.

So, in 2007, we were staying up in our favourite place and whilst out and about one day, saw the oddest, surreal thing.  I never did find out anything further about the incident and it remains a delicious mystery to this day.

We were traveling over Kirkstone Pass, a slightly wild, high and barren moorland stretch bridging the gap between the Troutbeck and Patterdale areas.   As a passenger, it is my habit, when not nodding off to sleep, to look out of the side window at the scenery etc and I always scan tree-lined areas for deer. 

As I passed this particular item just off the road, there was a two or three second delay whilst my brain did its best to comprehend what my eyes had just seen.  When it did, I asked my husband to stop and as there were no other cars, to reverse back to what I thought I'd just seen.  Nope, I wasn't imagining it, there was Dr Who's TARDIS nestled amongst the boulders. 

When we saw the opening sequence of The Day of The Doctor last weekend, where the TARDIS was 'parked' on some moorland, for a brief moment, we thought this was the scene we had witnessed, being filmed.  Until common sense took over and we realised that was 6 years ago and on watching it back, it wasn't the same stretch of road, even though initially, in our excitement we thought it might be.

But at least we know where The Doctor takes his Easter holidays.

I've lost track of what I've been up to lately work-wise - I seem to spend a lot of time re-making older designs as I get orders for them, so my new designs take a back-burner sometimes and I work on new stuff in short bursts between looking after customers - and my productivity hasn't been helped with a recent root canal issue - the tooth was as painful as anything I've ever experienced and it seemingly triggered frequent migraines too (in that they've stopped now the tooth is better, suggesting that was the cause).  Thankfully, after several hours in the dentist's chair and doing serious damage to my credit card balance, it is all fixed and feeling significantly better.   So I'll just post some of my recent work.

This ivy leaf design was a birthday gift for my Mum - it has 4 independent leaves, two in copper, two in bronze, each riveted to a backplate which allows it to be worn as both a pendant and a brooch.  The back ended up much more of a task than I was anticipating - largely because I'd decided to rivet the leaves in place, which precluded some of the pin ideas I had in mind as I needed to allow space to rivet in 4 places, then position the pin. It looks simple enough, but it seemed to take me a while to get there.

I wanted to set the pin slightly off to one side, so that it could be worn horizontally, as well as vertically, without flopping forwards away from the garment at the top-most edge - if the pin is down the centre, it will tend to pivot forwards due to the weight of the metal.  Now that I have it sussed, I have some more leaves ready to make another to sell.

I also made a pair of earrings with the same copper ivy leaves on teardrop antiqued copper hoops.   The photo I uploaded looked rather better than this - Blogger seems to have decided that it knows better than me how my photos should look and is seemingly adjusting the 'exposure' as I upload them - it's bad enough that it takes me several attempts to add each photo - and therefore an age to make each blog post - without them looking horrible when I'm finally successful.

This coral and copper bracelet was made as a birthday gift for a friend - featuring a large copper clay leaf toggle and red coral beads.  I have a few more like this, with different beads, coming through to sell - when I can magic up the time to work on some photos, that is.  Was it ever thus!

New woodland friends and new designs

I'll not bore you with trying to make excuses for my blogging tardiness - yet again - the weeks simply get away from me - thankfully because I've been nicely busy and keeping on top of customer orders and e-mails and trying desperately to make a few new things and develop ideas and new skills is more than enough to keep me out of mischief.  I don't even have any energy left for any mischief.  More's the pity.

Please click on any of the photographs for a larger view.

We were disappointed when a favourite woodland sculpture vanished from one of our regular walks.  But earlier in the summer when we set off for some fresh air on an especially nice evening, we were delighted to see a new friend had taken up residence.   It was only on a subsequent visit that Mr Boo pointed out that he was even nicer from behind - aren't his wing tips and tail just gorgeous.

I'm also feeling a bit left behind and out of sorts at the moment.  The years are being added to my own clock at an alarming rate and I work with a very old computer that I simply can't afford the pennies - or the time it would take to get set up again properly - to upgrade to something more appropriate.  And these two facts are leading to an increasing feeling of frustration when using some of the sites I frequent - especially ones that have recently undergone massive overhauls - that aren't seemingly conducive to easy navigation with an old computer.

A have a series of 'hedgerow' designs in mind at the moment, so was taking some reference photographs of emerging blackberries in the lovely golden evening sun and this comma butterfly landed - I haven't seen one for ages.

Flickr was the first of these to drive me to distraction.  I can fully appreciate that the interface was stylistically a little dated, but it worked and I enjoyed using it - it was fast and easy for me and I felt comfortable with it.  Then came the upgrade and it was like trudging through treacle with lead boots on in comparison.   I'm not sure it's entirely my fault that the improvements feel anything but, but reading the forums there, I'm certainly not alone in my frustration with it.  I fully understand that with my old gear, I need to make some on-line compromises, but this feels rather more than that.  And don't even get me started on what Yahoo! have done with the same upgrades to 'Groups' they are just now unfathomable!

I've finally found some time to work on some new design ideas.  Small copper clay filigree heart with a champagne coloured CZ stone.

I finally braved working with some silver clay / PMC the price of it feels like it stifles my creativity a little - I'm conscious of how little you get for your money and the need to make it go as far as possible.  The leaves and balls are all created by hand and individually applied.  The fine silver pendant hangs on a Sterling silver and garnet belcher chain.

I can only really judge from my own little corner of Flickr - I've had very few comments on photos recently and my contacts used to post a page full of photos every day, yet I'm only seeing a handful of new images a week now from all of them together.  So I'm not the only person that has reduced my time there significantly and I can't comment on other photos myself as on my low res. monitor, all of the links and buttons pile on top of each other and navigation is pretty much impossible.

A little silver leaf pendant I made as a treat for myself.  It's set with a little peridot coloured CZ stone and oxed to bring out the texture of the leaves. 

I also made a big decision a few weeks ago to stop supporting my Etsy shop and allow the stock on there to just expire naturally when each listing time was up.  There are a multitude of contributing factors to that decision, not least of which is that it only accounts for a tiny percentage of my sales, yet takes a significant portion of my online maintenance time to manage the shop there - with the perpetual changes to the format and search algorithms etc. it simply takes more time and effort than were justified for the return.

I'm a smidgy bit fixated on sticking little copper balls on everything at the moment - they serve many functions - they can fill gaps for design balance, add texture, cover blemishes, reinforce delicate areas, hold gemstones in place etc. etc.  Here I just added lots of them - because I could!

It wasn't an easy decision and I know that a chunk of me will probably live to regret it, but it was also a great weight off when I finally made the decision and has allowed me to give my own site a bit more time to address some stuff under the hood that I wanted to attend to and to work on the head full of ideas I had waiting to take form.  Thankfully, I've managed to make progress on my new ideas and they're gradually filtering through to my shop - I seem to have spent a lot of time recently working on photos.  But I set myself little targets and rewards - list 2 new things and I can have some bench time and the like.  It's a bit of a poor do when you have to bribe yourself to get stuff done!

Copper leaf and earring set.  Done initially to test the embeddable eyelets that they hang from, which worked incredibly well.  I can't claim any design credit for the leaves, these were created using a sugar paste cutter with an impression plunger - I picked them up in a cookery shop bargain bin in the summer and they work really nicely.  I try to make all my own templates and textures, but I do rather like the simplicity of these and their ease of use.

Perhaps my most extensive piece of metal clay work to date - a large red jasper cabochon mounted in a pendant festooned with tiny leaves, tendrils and balls and held in place with several small leaves.

In my next post I want to try and write more specifically about the metal clay work I've been doing - trying to ascertain a brand of clay that will manage the type of things I want to create - like the fine detail in the pendant above and the heart pendant higher up - and the perpetual frustration of honing down a good firing schedule for the nature of the pieces.  I've had a couple of spectacular failures lately, so if I feel brave, I'll show you those too!

Garden progress and woodland evenings

I find myself yet again apologising for my blogging tardiness.  It had been my habit for a long while to write on a Saturday morning and that loose routine made it easy to keep up with it.  I always felt like I had loads of potential ideas to blog about, if only of interest to me, so it never felt like a chore.

One of the reasons I started a blog initially, was that as a keen photographer, I would often take a series of photos that weren't of gallery standard in themselves, but perhaps the story behind them or the theme of the series was where the interest lay.    The ones amongst my words here for example are from my garden, as I try to rescue it after post-flood repair works, of which more below.

Please click on any of the photos for a larger view.

Many photos in themselves don't stand up to solitary scrutiny, but when part of a story, they have more combined interest.  Blogging allowed me the luxury of publishing photos alongside a little wording that explained the context - and served as a personal diary of recollections; stories that might otherwise fade from memory.  So for me, blogging was pretty much a personal process.  The fact that anyone else might possibly enjoy reading or looking at the pictures was pure bonus.  I'm well aware that it's pretty much a self-indulgent process and I won't mind at all if no one else finds it of any value.

I've never kept a diary and there are times when I regret that and think that maybe its true value would be long into the future when grandchildren might find my musings and it give them a glimpse into a different world.  Much as I have done recently reading what were largely everyday events in the brief pre-war diary my grandmother kept.  A little snapshot into a different time.

But life has simply got in the way recently and my best intentions, with many things, have simply had to be abandoned.  Anyone who has followed my previous writings may remember that we were flooded last August, losing two garden areas and everything in our cellar.   We made two insurance claims; one to replace all the contents we lost (which in retrospect fell a long way short of what we subsequently realised was lost) and another to clear the resulting mud and floodwaters and repair the physical damage to the property. 

I have to enjoy my hostas at these early pristine stages, as this is considered the most prized delicacy in the garden by my very healthy population of large snails.  Of course they're healthy, they gorge themselves nightly on all my lovely green goodies.  They think I'm totally fabulous for providing them with such a delicious and varied menu.

The entire process, even for our relatively modest damage, has been much more of a task than we could possibly have imagined at the time of the event - and one thing did tend to lead to another.  We've had a whole string of surveyors and builders poking the property and it ended up with us having a whole section of the house re-built and the drains under the house variously lined or replaced - not all of it covered by the insurance claims.  It was a total of 7 months of [expensive and disruptive] work.  Granted, if everyone had worked in a more timely manner, it was only really a few weeks work, but these things inevitably drag out to a disproportionate time-frame - most of it spent waiting for someone to produce a report, authorise materials or some-such other administrative delay.

And once the building work was actually declared finished, we were still left with an almighty mess to sort out.  Just about everything we own was covered with stone dust or mortar, my remaining little courtyard garden was pretty much trashed and we still have rain leaking in somewhere where it wasn't before the flood - all the repairs seemingly achieved, was shift it six feet along the wall.  A matter we still have to resolve under our own steam, but we think we've identified the problem and think we can fix it without engaging more tradesmen.

I love the shape and spotted 'bee approach' of these Mimulus flowers - and this one is augmented by soft raindrops clinging to it - and I have a pendant based on the shapes already started in copper.

So every spare minute since has been spent finally cleaning and trying to restore my tiny little garden to some of its former glory, so that at least I can enjoy it, should we get a summer in 2013.   At least we're faced with this task at the best possible time of year.   We're also using the opportunity to turn the cellar into a more useful space and part-workshop for some of my processes.  That has progressed well, but can wait to be finished whilst the good weather favours progress outside first.

Added to these flood-initiated tasks, a close family member also had a recent accident and is currently resident in a rehabilitation centre which necessitates a 120 mile round visit a couple of times a week to visit and manage their affairs, so that too is making a hole in our available 'spare' time.

Towards the end of the building work, the project manager rang me and said that the final skip outside would be collected in a couple of hours, so to make good use of it if I had anything that I wanted rid of.  I'd been looking at some of my sorry looking plants - those that had survived had not been tended to over winter as I simply couldn't get to them, so many that survived the flood had since fallen into a sorry state due to my own enforced neglect.

So in a slight fit of pique, I ceremoniously dumped the contents of many of my large pots (my entire garden is in pots) into the skip, deciding that a new start might be more therapeutic than trying to make the best of a bad job.  I already knew that I'd have a lot of work to do out there, so had left a little of the insurance settlement to buy new plants and had been squireling away a few pennies to add to it too.  It turned out to be a great decision, it has been much more fun buying new and starting over.  There were some nice surprises though too, a couple of plants I'd put in last year, treated as annuals, were coming up again, so whilst I lost what felt like a lot, it wasn't as bad as I'd been fearing, once I took stock and started on the remedial work.  And some of the sorry looking specimens have responded better than expected to a lot of watering and feeding and the therapeutic sunshine we've had of late.

This area was a building site a month ago (the replaced drains were right under this spot, about 5 feet down) so I'm delighted that it's starting to look like a garden again now.  I took the photos about 3 weeks ago, so the plants are already twice the sizes here.

I decided that rather than get depressed and over-faced by the enormity of the task, I'd set aside a short period each day to make some progress - if I gave it 30 minutes each day I was sure that I'd soon see results.  That approach paid dividends, once I set myself the task of concentrating on a square meter at a time, it actually wasn't as bad as I feared and the improvement was tangible within a handful of days.  Once things start flowering, it should hopefully look pretty fabulous again - I have planted a lot of blousy fuchsias and wall hangers full of lobelia for reliable colour that my prolific and hungry snails thankfully don't like.

As we've had a spell of nice weather recently, we've indulged ourselves a couple of evenings out in our favourite woodland and a couple of evenings ago, it was about as perfect as it gets, it was a long warm evening with a pretty much cloudless sky and we had the place almost to ourselves, it's very much a daytime place and often very quiet in the evening, so is our favourite time.  We pack something to eat and head off after work and recharge the batteries.

If you're a regular reader, you'll know of my oft-stated passion (and a real need) for being amongst trees and seeing sunlight filter through them, there's little else makes me as happy and does me as much good.  My happiness is cheaply bought: