A ram in the orchard at Sydenham's farm, Piedmont

The grant application was sent off this morning and the invite to the first public meeting of the neighbourhood plan has been completed and is ready to be sent out. so It has been a good week of bringing things to completion. Now we have to plan the holiday sequence for the last week of July and arrange to visit friends who live near by.

Once I had finished at the office I headed off to meet Helena at her work so we could attend the play being put on by staff and their charges. It was their take on the 'Jungle Book' story and was very lively and had become a musical though totally unlike the Disney production. It was good for me to see inside where she works and to meet some of her colleagues and the kids.

We were both rather tired by the finish at about 2-30pm, but we still managed to drive up to the farm shop in Bisley via the back road route up the Slad valley and over the hills via The Vatch, Elcombe and Catswood. I bought a few young plants too which now entails me doing some gardening this weekend, but it will be worth it for some healthy home grown vegetables, including climbing french beans, perpetual spinach, courgette and purple-sprouting broccoli.

On leaving the shop I immediately pulled over as I spotted the waving cereal crops turning golden in the field with a blue sky and scudding clouds as a backdrop. So we both got out and went our own ways to get a few pictures. I walked a few yards up a tiny one lane road and a man stopped in his car and asked if I was looking for deer. That sounded interesting and after he told me where he had seen some in a field further back up the road, I persuaded Helena to come for a quick drive down the lane.

It lead to an area we had visited before but not for some years. The lane wanders through the farmyard of Sydenham's farm, Piedmont, a lovely classic Cotswold stone farm house and its various buildings. We carried on up the road but didn't see the deer, so turned around and as we approached the same farm yard I spotted the little orchard where I had photographed some sheep previously. I lowed down and spotted them sheltering from the hot sun against the stone wall of the barn.

I couldn't resist getting out again to take some more pictures and tried to get some shots through the foliage of the apple trees in the small steeply sided orchard at the head of a valley that flows down for about a mile to flow into the Slad stream. The sheep soon started 'talking to me as if I might be bringing food I think, and then they all got up and walked briskly towards the wooden farm gate where I was standing.

They all turned out to be rams, whose woollen coats had obviously recently been shorn, and they were rather aggressive with each other, banging heads and bodies together quite firmly. They didn't stay with me for long when they realised I wasn't the bringer of victuals. But I managed to get this shot of one of them which I rather like.