Little Boat...My Island on the big blue sea. This is written on a baby grow worn by my little 11 week old son and he is worn it every other day for most of his life. And that is where I am with my life here, riding the waves with the baby..looking out over the peaks and being plunged into the troughs. Jamie Albert Brunet: 05.12.2011 is lying on my lap asleep. He is smiling, feeding, crying, burping, growing and my day just slots around him. We are living the dream and the nightmare of living in rural coastal Wight. The dream was walking around Thorness bay with Monica (25) and Baby Alice (15 weeks) with our rugged pushchairs in the still sunshine last week. The nightmare has been not knowing when Samuel gets back from work and him doing very long e.g 16 hour days at worst us being in our bed ready to sleep before he has found the ferry back and one night missing the taxis so we had to wake up and collect him. I am munching apricots...to breastfeed him good nutrition and have just chatted to my pregnant friend Estelle who I might meet up with next week.

It is two days before my first baby's estimated birthday.....

Frost and sunshine this morning. 7 chickens currently happy in the pen after being cleaned out yesterday. Golden leaves slowly floating off the trees at the back of the house. Our downstairs of our home practically finished...after 3 years...almost an anti-climax of DIY effort after all that Samuel and myself have put into it. However, this year I have been more "designer" and "project manager" rather than hands-on.

It is a waning moon. A bulb-planting time. A time to breath deeply and relax and a time for letting go so that next month we can re-plenish our energy and care for new life.

Poetry Please!

My Haiku Poem from May 2009:

Freshwater Rockpools

Glistening Oarweed

Hiding Reddish Anemones

Finding crabs with awe

An A* day again...what a great thing it is to live on the Isle of Wight. We did a little round walk from Samuel's history walks book (by Adrian Searle) from Mottistone Manor up to the Long Stone and round and back down to the church.

Another ten days have passed since my last entry! Yesterday, late afternoon I did a "history walk" with Samuel from Brook, along Compton Bay, up and around farmland then back to Brook Chine car park. I had only been on Compton Beach the previous week with school children learning about seaweeds. However, this time it was just us and the tide was very low (Samuel had checked online to plan our walk for low tide) and we wandered along the lowest point of shore gawping and multi-coloured seaweeds and mudstone and the giant iguanodon footprint casts which put the Isle of Wight on my list of coolest ever places I've lived when I first found out about them on my boss's geology walk in May 2007. The early autumn sunshine was perfect yesterday. We hardly met anyone on the farmland. We looked at late, plump blackberries (and ate some) a badger set and quite possibly a bird that was a Whinchat!

Yesterday we had a trip of a lifetime to Brickfields with 12 volunteers. The sun shone. The meadows were purple with Devils bit scabious flower and Davie the harbour master hauled out even the most stiff legged volunteers. This is me driving the sea sled at last! Summer has gone very quickly.

Today We finally identified John our neighbour's mystery butterfly that was found in his shed at Wilma near Rolls Copse. Barry Angell confirmed that indeed, as I had suspected it was a rare aberration of a White Admiral called ab. nigrina. Until this year I had not known anything about aberrations. One of the reasons, according to Andy Butler local butterfly expert is that they are kept out of public domain due to irresponsible and fanatical collectors that would pin butterflies and make them rarer/cause problems with land they are accessing.

I am interested to know more, preferably to the very genetic level. It is known that sudden changes of temperature cause these aberrations but how? Do they actually affect the genetic translation from DNA to RNA or what?

Anyhow, There is always so much to write in this blog and so little time: and I am at work! Now for the night wildlife workshop preparation!!!

Ebony and Snowdon are two recent editions to our garden from the Chale Show. They are Pekin bantams. Snowdon a boy, Ebony a girl. They are no longer scared of the other chickens and seem happy. They are resembling two fluffy balls. Alfie, Mike and Sarah went home this morning after a very hot and lovely summer weekend where we went on the steam train and went to the botanic garden and beach the day before.

Today was my third Wild Child Club and we went out to the quay in hot sunshine. It renewed my love of marine biology as we discovered tiny brittlestars that were living in the salt pan.

Tonight for a couple of hours I have been light trapping moths in our garden for the first time. I have identified 5 so far: Marbled Beauty, Brimstone, Straw Dot, Light Emerald and Setaceous Hebrew Character.

Quite pleased with myself now! Need sleep though! Also think I should focus my marine thoughts into this blog a little more and decide where my work/life direction is heading!

Today we went to the the sea service at Newtown at 3pm down at the quay in the wind and sunshine. It is my third year as the seasonal nature reserve warden and the last two sea services I have either been busy or away on the mainland. It was really nice to go, meaningful to be outdoors and the refreshments in the boatshed were delicious. I am on my way to a fiddle concert at Havenstreet with Samuel. I am preparing props for my children's activities at Newtown and yesterday I bought a suitable smugglers chest! Above is a picture of such a chest and a home-made puppet theatre used for marine nature and ecology education at Chichester Harbour.

31st May: Wow.....I have got some rest since we finished celebrating effectively 27months of planning and preparing two weddings with our huge families. On 23rd May we had a "blessing" in France at Samuel's church. It was just right for Samuel and I enjoyed the party more than I usually would. I would like to write more about the weddings as it is quite unusual the way we did things. I would also like to keep in touch with people we met on honeymoon and thank all the people who have been so generous to us. Since we got back the weather has turned exceptionally warm and sunny. There has been a great migration of painted lady butterflies (see photograph above) and I counted 21 on a woodland transect where I wouldn't usually see them. I think this is amazing...to witness a migration of a butterfly that has hatched in Northern Morocco make its way onward to mainland Britain. I only saw one or two in meadows last year so I think that this is a special year for this butterfly. One day, maybe when I am older I would like to witness the Monarch butterfly migration in Mexico...but who needs to when this natural phenomenon occurs on your doorstep?

No eggs from the chucks today and only one yesterday after three eggless days. I really enjoyed having a day at home with Hedley today. I have been slowly contemplating from escaping my career/winter rut but enjoyed a nice long walk to the beach at Thorness with Hedley. From a distance we saw approx 20 curlew fly up from a field, 157 pale-bellied brent geese and 3 oystercatcher. Hedley was really good on his lead...but once off the lead went mud bathing and found some other labradors and dogs to play with before I had chance to call him back and re-lead him and ask permission for him to play.

I think ...reading back my last couple of posts...that I just needed a holiday. And we have just had three days away...still on the island. We tried out our new tent camping. We slept really well the first night but the second day and night it was really windy and I just did not feel right..quite anxious actually. Today it has been calmer though and I slept o.k. We went back to the Alverstone Mead hide and fed and photographed red squirrels. We counted three individuals including a darker furred version I called "blackie". I gave blood for the second time today and this time thankfully did not faint. I had a siesta and ate loads of pasta before hand just in case though!

My estimate is that today 27th August (over one month of laying) that our chickens have laid approx. 50 eggs. Though I haven't been blogging and recording eggs every day this is an estimate based on the fact we normally get two eggs a day and only about three times there has only been one egg. If this is the case we will have had 8 boxes worth of six eggs. That is really about £9.20 of eggs which is the equivalent of one £8 chicken paying for itself!! (allowing the bit extra towards feed and pellets)

We are back home from a long weekend in France...narrowly catching our Eastern Air flight again which was fortunately delayed (Samuel had remembered the wrong time and we were in a panic!!! This is the second time he has done this to me!!!)

We arrived home to hear that our chickens have been escaping and need their wings clipping but have laid THEIR FIRST TWO EGGS.

Have not written in this blog for nearly five months as we are dealing with the aftermath of our wonderful, amazing and expensive wedding. Nearly one year in our house and seven weeks married so far!!! Bet the time goes quickly.

It has been a wonderful cold, bright Friday with the nearly full moon visible in the sky. Alison stayed overnight from Bournemouth and we went out for a walk down the hill, through whippance farm and up along the eroding coast path towards Cowes. Alison is recovering from a cold but still enjoyed the walk. We saw a lady with a telescope who had counted 240 Brent Geese that had literally just flown in as we returned from the walk. There were also a couple of redshank, several oystercatchers and higher up the cliff, a kestrel hunting. Last week Thursday I counted 175 Brent Geese so I think that more have flown in. I also saw what looked like a redstart which was cool.

What I have discovered about living with a garden that backs onto woodland is the wide variety of birdlife to surprise you. Today Alison pointed out a Great Spotted Woodpecker feeding off my peanut feeder as we were tucking into soup for lunch. Two days ago (Wednesday) I saw a Green Woodpecker grubbing about at the bottom of the garden nearly all day.

This is the temporary flower bed that I have made where the turquoise shed once was at Brookside. Although it was an amazingly sunny autumn day today I mainly stayed indoors. I tried to get up to date with our finances, surfed for wedding venues and about 430pm went next door and had a cup of tea with John and Sue our neighbours. They had once tried and failed to get planning permssion to build a bungalow at the bottom of their garden.

I am getting excited about going to Kenilworth this weekend as I think I may have found a venue for our wedding (for a small wedding) at Kenilworth Castle. I have to get myself organised to do my first self-employed writing contract at Canon's Asby in Northamptonshire.

We will have to see how it all goes.

It has been eight months since I last really wrote in this blog. I think a good six months I was living alone in Ventnor in a tiny musty bedsit striving to learn my new job with National Trust at Newtown and also finishing my MSc. project with had been two years outstanding. So many different experiences and changes in these eight months that I had to search hard for a photograph to summarise this entry.

I have chose a photograph of the quay at Newtown Harbour as I have had a few challenges going out in the small boat and tying it up afterwards. I still have much exploration to do of the estuary waters.

Also, we have now moved! We are living together and sharing the good times (wedding fairs, dinners with good food and a business trip to Korea) along with the bad times (long travel to do anything on the mainland, Samuel being kept late at work)

But today on the 1st November I feel much more alive and with so much time to myself I hardly know what to do with it. at noon I went for a walk outside. Along the Rolls Hill Road (six cars going by) and through Whippance farm track to the seaside at Thorness Bay. I love this walk already. Not the car part...but reaching the shore at low tide. Today with the sunny weather, about 15*C average temp. it says on the net. I saw three groups of Brent Geese Feeding at the water's edge that must have arrived for the winter. They all appeared to be the pale-bodied form. In the first group I counted 35 geese, then 29 then 30. I saw about three Curlews, one feeding with each group. En route to the shore I heard and saw a meadow pipit churping and saw 4 collared doves and a couple of rooks resting in an oak tree in the field after the farm. A Crow or two were around too. In amongst the seaweed were at least 7 turnstones and a beautiful white Little Egret trying its luck.

I saw a red admiral today as well. Not bad for November. My general knowledge of wildlife has increased exponentially since arriving at Newtown to work. This year I saw many things for the first time including an Osprey, Ringlet, White Admiral and Silver-Washed Fritillary Butterflies, a long-winged conehead cricket and a singing Nightingale, a tall sprouting Ivy Broom Rape and many other natural history wonders.

Beautiful Autumn leaves have now all fallen. This is another photograph from my walk in Riverside park in the autumn. I have been reading through information about Skokholm Island today and typing up our household budget. Now we are living together I would like to see if we can afford to move house again. A bit boring really but relaxing enough. My pet lovebirds are still doing courtship displays and regurgitating food into each others throats as a demonstration of their mutual devotion. Samuel is currently playing on the playstation. He is nearly 30 years old and loves doing this to let off steam. Fine if it means I can have time to myself up here!

I have been back in Hampshire over one month and got used to living with my partner Samuel again after so much time apart while I was working as a ranger in Norfolk.I have taken some photographs of my local surroundings for you to browse over the next few days as I add entries.

I have so far had two interviews for contracts but have not found a job yet.

I am not rushing on the ideal job hunt as we have been re-decorating our house and I have other projects such as some study to finish off. We just have to be careful with our pennies!

Our house has been back on the market since one week. We had 5 viewings but no offers yet. Still, this is very positive. It is hard to resist the temptation of viewing other properties we might buy which certainly would not be able to afford if we haven't sold our house. Now we have done more things to it like change the curtains and repaint the lounge/dining area I quite feel like staying in it for a bit longer anyway. Here is a picture of Riverside Park one mile from here.

Goodbye for now Norfolk!

This is my final image from the garden at Woodview Annex: A comma butterfly feeding on the rotting grapes. I am now just one week and a bit returned to Southampton where I live in a semi in the city suburb of Midanbury. Although it is considerably more built up here I like my house here as it is on the top of the hill and it has a great view for fireworks in November. My nearest river to my home is the Itchen where we used to look after a boat. I might go for a walk there tomorrow...watch this space.