The wheat stubble in fields behind our home contrasts with the natural backdrop of Croft Hill. It unusual for stubble to be left to overwinter – usually around here it is ploughed in autumn, the soil disked to break it up, and drilled with winter crops which emerge before the cold weather puts development on hold, allowing an early start to growth in spring. I presume that the field will be ploughed and drilled in spring. The farmer has recently installed stakes, painted red and white, to mark the man-hole covers of drainage pipes running beneath the field, to prevent them from being damaged by machinery. When Lesia first saw one of these stakes, she ran up to it barking, just in case it was someone with another dog. Her eyesight isn’t what it was. Having realised her error, she gave the stake a quick sniff, and strolled nonchalantly back to towards, in an “I-knew-it-was-just-a-wooden-stake-really” sort of way.
