Owl on the prowl

Val enjoys the early morning spectacle of a barn owl quartering a field in search of food

- Val

IF you buy a cottage on the top of the Cotswolds in a village named Cold Aston, you expect to get weather – and lots of it. The fact that my cottage faces south across the fields means there is little between us and the Bristol Channel when a southwesterly wind blows. The weather turned here last September and, apart from a few fine days at the end of that month, we had low pressure spilling in from the Atlantic and dropping hours of rain upon us day after day.

Gardening has had to carry on, so I was togged up in every waterproof garment I own. Good thing, too, for the worst thing about all that rain was the savage wind that came with it. The cherry blossom on my ‘Kursar’ tree ended up on the ground, like pink confetti, and the tiny yellow flowers of Cornus Officinalis were carried into the lane some feet away. It denuded the winter-flowering clematis on the cottage wall and it snapped a mature Daphne ‘Eternal Fragrance’ clean off at the base.