The thunder of hooves

Well, it turns out that she is anybody's for an apple.  After days, maybe weeks, of approaching her gently and offering her apples out of our hands whilst she shyly declined and pawed the ground, she has finally come around.  Today she came thundering down from the top of the field when she saw us.  N fed her apples, but the pics were blurred, unfortunately.  Still, this action shot from a long way off shows her enthusiasm for being hand fed.  The research proposal is finished, finalised, well honed, and hopefully good enough to beat the opposition.  Now we are into clearing everything away in preparation for the autumn migration back to Ireland.  It feels sad, but it has been a good year and as long as that old sun remains determined to wander off each October towards the southern hemisphere, then we will migrate home to Belfast where the weather is no better, but where we have theatre, cinema, galleries, music events, friends, family and loved ones.  By the way it is possible to be in more than one of the last three categories (oh dear, that's the researcher in me coming out!).