Painful but fruitful day off

Wednesday 29th August 2018

Clearing nettles, thistles and brambles now that the bees and butterflies have finished enjoying the flowers was quite a scratchy and prickly task which yielded far more blackberries than I could pick.

Bellingham Show

Saturday 25th August 2018

Children gathering for mounted fancy dress

 

 

Incredible bike stunts in main arena

A team (of one quad bike and three horses) in the more traditional Inter-hunt relay race

All day the Church stand offers somewhere for quiet rest and refreshment.
My disappointment of the day was that when at the end of my work I went to collect my delicious (though not technically good) strawberry jam from the produce entries, it had disappeared.

Falstone Show

Saturday 18th August 2018

This is what Falstone Border Shepherds Show is really about

Hounds and...

...cakes are also important.
(As expected, my jam came nowhere, my vase of garden flowers was second out of two and my photographs picked up one or two prizes.)

Falstone Show jam

Tuesday 14th August 2018

After a confirmation discussion, pastoral visiting,  and an afternoon appointment at the rectory, there was jam to be made.  Even though I hadn't got the right kind of strawberries, it's important to put in entries in various classes or there wouldn't be a Show!

Outdoor parson occasionally in church!

Saturday 11th August

A quick bit of glebeland maintenance before the lunchtime wedding: the thistles need to be allowed to flower for bees and butterflies but must then be uprooted before the thistledown blows around; and the sorrel and docks have to be removed before their seeds drop. The purple loosestrife is visible in this picture in beautiful clumps.

The idea is to restore the rectory glebe so that people walking the footpath through the rectory land beside the river can enjoy all the wild flowers in their natural habitat.

 

     If there is anyone who can help me to identify and photograph the plants through the seasons for the benefit of visitors, please contact me at the Rectory at Bellingham.

A weekend of celebrations

Tuesday 7th August 2018

Members of the bicentenary congregation amongst exhibits [spot the difference between the congregation and the exhibit!] in church following the celebratory service in St Aidan's

 

During the parish Garden Party at the former rectory: my predecessor, the Revd William Elliot, reading his journal about his life as a naval chaplain before he came to Thorneyburn two hundred years ago

 

Today I had to hurry from a wedding preparation session back to Thorneyburn to meet a photographer from the local paper who wanted a picture of the group who planned the events.  [See Events page for pictures.]

Bicentenary of St Aidan's Thorneyburn and Greystead Old church

Friday 3rd August 2018

Sky at Thorneyburn when I went to add some items to this weekend's exhibition.

A reminder at Greystead that the former church there was also one of the naval churches built in 1818

[Much more information, pictures and history in the  booklet commemorating the bicentenary]