Uninvited guests

Lashing wind and rain this morning, so on the advice of Tom from yesterday, stayed in bed reading the paper online until the weather improved! Which it rapidly did by late morning. We went over to the cottage where we used to live, to move my sofa (it's gone on loan to Sheila) and to pick apples from the little orchard. The owners live abroad and it's been empty since we moved out, except that today we had 6 very large Heffers to contend with. They'd squeezed in through a gap in the hedge and were making short work of the grass and the apples. They really are very big creatures up close up! They were very easily causing destruction to the lawns, trees and fruit bushes, so we herded them out and patched up the fence.
Walked on Lisa's land up to the Great wall of Glenlough and down to Big Toms old crumbling cottage. Glorious afternoon.
We picked plenty of apples, but it's not been a good summer and although they were plentiful on some trees there were many that were very small and some trees had none at all. I'll preserve as many as possible in apple trays and some will be cooked and frozen for all those apple crumble wintery evenings ahead.