Burial chambers & seed collecting

Well, that's my mum away back home, it's been lovely to have her here visiting this past week but I know she's always glad to be going back to her own home and I would be exactly the same.
I think she had a good time while she was here, to be honest there's not much to show people once they've been a couple of times but isn't it always the way that you remember places you should have gone once you're sat at the airport waiting for their flight home!
Anyway I told her she'll just have to come again next year so I can take her to the places I had thought of - think it worked! Hope it worked! lol

Apparantly despite having been here a few times now I have failed to take mum to see the Grey Cairns of Camster, I'm not so sure though - I think she's just forgotten the trip because it's usually the first thing we take people to see because it's only 5 miles up the road.
Well just in case she forgets again I'll blog it here lol

These particular cairns are among the oldest stone monuments in Scotland, they're over 5000 years old and are two of the best preserved burial tombs from the Neolithic anywhere in Britain.
So much is still a mystery when it comes to these Cairns but we know they were definitely used as burial chambers - you can also enter the cairns via a tiny doorway but it's cramped and you have to crawl to the centre room on your hands and knees, I've done it many times but it's fairly creepy and not the spiritual experience you would hope for.

Just 6 miles in the opposite direction of our house is the Stone circle at Loch Stemster.
I've loved stone circles ever since visiting Avebury when I was a kid, these ones are on a much smaller scale than Avebury but it's still way cool to have them so nearby.

Not my image

The purpose and date of this circle are unknown though it's likely they belong to the Bronze age and while it's usual for the flat fronts to face inward of the circle (though this one is actually a horseshoe not a circle) the standing stones at Stemster have their sides facing inward - for what reason, who knows!

I've managed to have a quick check on the PT today in between pallet dismantling and I was pleased to see that the Apples are about ready for picking now. Neither tree is producing huge apples but the Braeburn is of a fairly decent size and the Golden Delicious would have been too had I thinned them out adequately weeks ago.

Braeburn apple

Golden delicious apple

+9

I've decided this year that I'm going to collect seed from plants I wouldn't normally bother with and I noticed the Echinacea was looking particularly brown and full of seed. I have no idea about collecting seed from from Echinacea and therefore have no idea what the seed is supposed to look like when it's ready to harvest. These were falling off the head as I picked them though so I guess that means they're ready?

Todays little watcher as I ferried back and fore moving wood was Bob the Great Horned Owl, he was a rescue case and has a split beak.
Say hello Bob

A funny kind of few days.

I'm on top of the gardening at the moment so over the last couple of days I tackled a job I have been putting off - jet washing bird aviaries.
Not just any old bird though, this particular bird is my daughters Buzzard, Darla.
First I needed to jet wash the aviary next to her that is now empty (my daughter recently sold her Harris Hawks) then move Darla into it so I could then jet wash her aviary and then knock the two aviaries into one.
I don't have much to do with any of the Birds of prey here because they're my daughters and Mr TG's but I chat to Darla every day and I stupidly believed this daily chat would be sufficient to endear me to Darla who would then be completely cooperative during the moving procedure.
Let's just say I soon realised my folly. Darla doesn't have mews jesses for some reason which would have made her easy to catch and despite my chatting to her every day it seems she didn't like me quite as much as I'd thought. It took me about 10 minutes before I could even get close enough to entice her onto a glove but no way was she going to let me move her. After a couple of attacks from her feet I figured I needed a new method and it needed to be a quick method, Darla wasn't freaking out though - I was!
In the end I put on two hawking gloves and simply picker her up - yep, it was that easy. After all that effort before I just needed to pick her up.
With Darla safely in the first cleaned aviary I could get on with cleaning hers and then began taking down the middle partition, all under the watchful eye of Darla who now has a very large perfectly clean aviary.

Thankfully all the other Birds of prey (Barn Owl, 2x Eagle owls & 1 Great Horned Owl) all have external flight aviaries with inside nest areas so they don't get in the same mess as Darla's (hers is an internal flight with external areas) and just need daily raking of pellets etc (NOT my job).

It's a shame I'm not so careful when it comes to the cleaning of my PT. Look what I found growing in the waste heap dump

Looks like a lovely Asiatic Lily to me!

Not sure what this one is but it's certainly not a weed

I've also been taking pallets apart with my super duper pallet taker aparter, looks like I'm going to have a good supply of scrapwood for all those winter projects I like to do (and I have a whole load of them). This is the wood from just 2 6ft pallets - even the stringers are perfect for re-use.

The only problem I encountered while stripping the pallets was the weather, well the sun in particular. It's hard not to climb on top of the pallets and soak up the sun when the sky is this colour

So why fight it I say!