It’s all (well nearly all) about horses this week. The paddock has finally fully recovered from the monsoon season formally known as winter! And below you can see that it is looking pretty lush and ready for the horses to come home for a few weeks. (By the way, it is on a slope and it isn’t that I wasn’t holding the camera straight 🙂 ). Oh and look, there’s a posing dog in the corner.

Here comes Tom, led by Sonia who helps look after the boys, on his way back and thinking longingly about the feast of grass he is about to have.

Every few months the horses’ feet need to be filed or washed or shoed or something (not really an expert on this sort of thing as you can tell!). Anyway, a nice farrier called Guy comes up and sorts them out. Here he is working on one of Tom’s front feet watched by Willow, who is looking fascinated by the whole process, and Clare. Oh and there’s Lottie again!

As you can see from the pictures, summer arrived at last this week and, even if the sun doesn’t last all the time, at least the temperature has risen to something quite normal for this time of year. The clue to the change in the weather actually came on Sunday when the first house martins appeared and by the middle of the week there were many more around. They have been starting to examine the old nests and repairing where necessary to prepare for the breeding season.

More of these little guys to come – however as they arrived the sheep in the field next door disappeared. Not sure where to – maybe another field or maybe …..

Here they are being herded off the field by a motorised buggy on one side and a sheep dog, just visible as a small black dot the horizon, on the other side.

Bye Bye sheep!