Stitched-up Farmer, Transition Movement, Plea for Rain, Lilac & Rhododendrons

Yesterday was a day of alarm when the Farmer, in his efforts to provide me with what he calls 'blog-fodder' went to the extreme measures of requiring a trip to our local GP's surgery for emergency stitching!
Whilst working with his large and very safe bandsaw, he managed to trip and fell onto the spare blades that were near by and neatly sliced open his right forearm. He now has 6 stitches & 4 steri-strips holding together an eight inch wound and some impressive looking bandaging.  He was very lucky; he could so easily have opened a vein or artery in his arm.
We are very fortunate that our surgery is only 4 miles away and that they are prepared to do emergency work such as this instead of sending us all way into Carmarthen to our local general hospital. We were home within the hour and the Farmer then spent the rest of the day prone upon a sofa after I had insisted that he take things easy for a while. He was all for rushing straight back out side to work as is his wont. After  a couple of hours he began to ask why I wasn't bringing him grapes & Lucozade so I felt that the sympathy tap could be turned off at that point, though he still could not go out to continue sawing wood. Fortunately a neighbour had just given him a supply of back numbers of 'New Scientist' so they kept him occupied for the afternoon.

I have recently been nominated onto the Core Team of our local transition group, Trawsnewid Calon Teifi (http://www.calonteifi.org/) and went to a meeting last night. The group is very active on various different fronts designed to help local people undertake growing vegetables and managing woodlands and learning new (old, traditional) skills. Today we have another basket-making course here at the farm which I shall enjoy.

The rain which were expecting yesterday evening has not not arrived, so we hope it might come today. The Farmer is getting rather desperate for rain as he has three fields with over £1000 worth of seed on them, that are just not growing as it has been so dry lately. Also we need our established leys of grass to grow well now for the silage crop that will be taken off next month.

Despite the lack of rain, the weeds in the gardens are doing very well! I am waging a constant battle against buttercups,
There is a large lilac tree outside the holiday cottage and it is in full flower now and looks wonderful and the rhododendrons are just starting to open. We have some very old rhododendrons which were planted well over 100 years ago and are huge and when in full flower are a magnificent sight.

The Farmer has just come in for breakfast and has brought me bunch of meadow flowers for the kitchen table, pink campion, stitchwort and ferns. They are lovely.