What A Day!!!!!!!!

I bought Bill a flying lesson voucher from nearby Shobdon airfield in 2007 for Christmas,,,,it got mislaid for several years and came back to light recently...so Bill booked up for a flight in a couple of weeks time as they were very busy! Then last night he had a call to say there had been a cancellation and he could go today at 1.30pm..So off we went with our friends Marion and Phil....ideal weather for it--we all sat in the sun waiting for Bill to fly away!

The little 2 seater plane

must admit I didn't fancy going up--the cockpit was tiny!

Bill got in there quite easily! Getting out was another matter LOL

Got some cracking shots of Ludlow---

cant believe how big it looks from the air!

to the left of this picture is Greenacres and the light coloured field is the one we look out on from our house..

brilliant view!

WOW!

Booking in was done here!

Bill had a lovely certificate to show he had flown the plane!

We came home for a lovely BBQ to find a message from one of my students saying she had some fish for our pond--we had seen her and her hubby on Wednesdays market and she mentioned she would have to get rid of the fish as her pond had started leaking.. so off we went to their house after the BBQ to collect them! All 57 of them!!!!!!! All shapes and sizes including some tiny fry..some real beauties they are!

ready to go in,..

swimming away happily

The large ghost koi is called Patrick--after Patrick Swiz of the film Ghost fame..

some beautiful big shubumkins..

the big koi is called Inky because he looks like he has ink spots on him...they all seem to have settled down OK,,,the filter will have to be cleaned out more often now no doubt but it will be so worth it...they are a beautiful sight! All in all a  very busy day--all quite unexpected..but what fun we have had! A tiring weekend ahead-- we are off to set up my display at Much Marcle Steam show tomorrow ready for the weekend show...never done this one before--so am hoping it will be a good one--the sun will be shining at least and we will be taking the  fan with us to keep us cool in the marquee..Im really looking forward to it!

Fish

I
Ive been trying to get some snaps of the fish as I want to do some paintings of them.
It was lovely to sit and watch them for a while today-but so hard to get soem good pics! The water is lovely and clear now and the lillies are growing really well.Some of the leaves are 18in across.
We throw food onto the leaves and watch the fish try and work out the best way of getting it off there.Moby the big grey one swims across the leaves and takes the food with him while the big Silver favors coming up underneath and pushing the leaf out of the water so the food rolls off.
Its amazing how they have grown over the years-Moby is one of the original ones we had 8 years ago.

Michael Jordan

I mentioned the other day that one of my students had a blog on which he has his paintings-well he has gone one step further now and has his own website on the brilliant website http://www.affordablebritishart.co.uk

He has started to put his work on there already-take a look-there is some lovely work on there, Im sure Michael will do very well.

http://www.affordablebritishart.co.uk/gallery.php?artist=MichaelJordan&aid=386
CONGRATULATIONS MICHAEL!

Blimey!!!!!!

As I was making the last post about the pigeon, Bill yelled up the stairs to me ''come down quick''when I rushed down I saw that a sparrow hawk had flown under the net that covers the fish pond.

It had obviously been chasing something (not Bills friendly pigeon I hope!) and got under the one end of the net that has been raised up by the one big plant that lives in the corner of the pond.

It was just hanging off the net, so I grabbed the camera and got these couple of shots of it.The fish all dived to the bottom, thinking it was a heron maybe.

Bill just lifted the net at one end a bit more and off he flew down the field.

he was a beautiful bird and I expect he has a young family to feed as well-nature is cruel sometimes but everything has its place and you just have to accept it.

Mellow Moods Class

Today we had Jan and Jane to paint the Mellow Moods painting.

It was great fun to see how each painting progressed-first of all with the sponges and later with the brushes!

It was a very straightforward painting to do and both of them agreed that it was quite an easy one to do!

I will work on another colourway for this class for later in the year

In between painting we had breaks to go outside and see the fish in the pond, they have all grown massive over the past few weeks-the new ultra violet light has worked wonders and the water is now as clear as can be.

It wont be long until they are spawning now the temperature is rising.Then the fun starts -checking constantly that any havent jumped out of the pond!