Katharine Faraday Boyd was born in 1879 in Hampstead, London, England to Philip and Lucy Boyd.  She is my Great Aunt, on my mother’s side, and played an important role in the family.  Although I never met her, she died 2 years before I was born, I was always told about “Aunt Kate”.

Great Aunt Kate wrote a daily diary from 1894 (so she started when she was 15 years old) until the day she died at 81.  This is amazing and I now have 67 years’ worth of personal diaries about to be sent up to Shetland.

There are a couple of years missing but I think I can live with that.  They may turn up somewhere else or actually may have never been written (though, I doubt that).

The writing is teensy-tinesy and there is a weather summary for each day written on the side.

The writing is small because the diaries (mostly Letts) are also ridiculously little too.  About the size of half a passport.

Great Aunt Kate led an extraordinary life.  She lived through two world wars, volunteered helping refugees in London and Belgium (received an OBE and a Belgium medal), went to the Slade School of Fine Art (the Henry Tonks era), looked after her younger sister when her mother died very young amongst many other achievements.

I am not quite sure what I want to do with the diaries at present. I have a feeling I should transcribe them, or some of them, because the history will be fascinating.  So that’s a project for the winter, and possibly many more to come.  Realistically possibly the rest of my life will be spent trying to decipher teensy-tinesy writing.  Am I mad to want to do this?

07:00 dog walk, I walk out of the garden gate and guess who I see? A beautiful roe deer just standing there.

I watched him a while trying hard to take a photo without looking like I was actually moving or taking the picture.  Of course he leapt away and then stopped again to look at me.  This time I made Lambie/Muzzah noises and we just watched each other for a long time.

Eventually I had to leave as Mum and Ted were well on their way with the dogwalk.

The weather was looming in a threatening way.

We upped the pace and walked fast round the agreed route.

Still, the morning first-light had it’s moments before the rain well and truly arrived so I took the opportunity to take photos of the beautiful old oak trees.

This is a “stag oak” for which the house is named.

From the National Trust website – “There is an old saying that ‘oaks grow for 300 years, rest for another 300 years and then slowly decline for a further 300 years’.”  So this tree is over 600 years old.  Wow!

Anywho, I am glad we got home before the torrential rain started.  I hope I see the deer again. He was nice.  I wonder if I could bring him home too (strokes chin), though I doubt Lambie would be too impressed.

Yesterday, Mr Foxy had two lovely rainbow trout skeletons plus the fish heads.  He was a very happy chappie.

Today, poor lad, he had two rotten tomatoes, a peeled over-ripe banana, a breadcrust (brown, of course, to keep Vulpes vulpes healthy) and two lamb chop bones with no meat left.

An interesting fact, foxes are not impressed with tomatoes – see how he throws it away but keeps going back hoping it is not as bad as he originally thought.

A robin was very happy with the fruit.

Another interesting fact is that both these films were taken is broad daylight and Mr Fox arrives in under a minute.  He knows. He is watching.  He is always there.  Just in the background but there.  I am very tempted to put out food, sit down and see what happens (though I won’t of course).

My back has “gone”.  I am not sure where but it is not a happy spine, all twingeing and owie. It’s all my own fault and I must admit that am struggling as I can’t take painkillers (they do awful things to me) so I went for a nice walk hoping it will help.

Hopefully I will feel better soon.  The volume on my Painpod is up so high so it will hurt more than my back.  This seems to be helping and the walk did me good.

Mum’s beautiful garden is slowly being “put to bed” for the winter. It is work-in-progress.

The Catalpa tree has almost lost its leaves and is now left with just the lonely swinging beans pods.

The enormous leaves will all be swept up once the last leaf has fallen.

Obviously, little Teddy followed me around while I took my photos.  He loves the leaves and runs up and down the garden to shout at potential invaders.

And here is the potential invader – aka, Mr Foxy.  I left the top of an eggbox-ful of leftover food beyond the garden gate.  The food is not suitable for man nor dog and Mr F iss the end of this house’s food chain as Mum can’t have a compost heap because of rats.  We think it is a young male fox who is looking very good.  I have a secret hankering to tame him down in the next few days and bring him home to Shetland, which obviously I won’t, can’t and would never do but I do ❤️ foxes.

Anywho, here are some photos of the rest of Mum’s beautiful garden.

It may be Autumn and everything may be dying back, but there is so much beauty and colour around.

And here’s Teddy.  Enchantment by any other name.