Bunking off with the dogs is a daily treat.  Taking the camera makes it all the more fun.  Down by the Hutt River I spotted some new things to snap and keep practising my photography.

Although I’ve seen loads of white cow parsley I’ve never seen yellow.  There was masses of it on the river banks so I couldn’t resist a close up.  Especially when there were some bees doing their thing.

Here’s another shot – I so love the detail my Nikon gives me.

These grasses were so majestic.  Upright and fine in detail.

And a swathe of crocosmia to brighten the banks.

Mason was just loving all this undergrowth to sniff

The Hutt River sits in a steep valley – you can see some of the houses perched up top.  It’s mighty windy up there when the wind blows.

But Fortnum is more interested in the river itself. The source of wonderful drinking!

There was plenty to see and do down by the river as you’ll see from yesterday’s post.

Whilst I revel in the opportunity to capture nature for real we’ve been experiencing that nature is often a cruel world to be in. We’ve lots of rabbits on our land.  Pesky rabbits that will eat the trees, bushes, flowers and vegetables if we didn’t fence them off.  But it’s their home, their watership down.  They can be fun to watch and give me a good distraction from chores. The bassets like to think they can hunt but they can’t so the we and the rabbits live in a good co-existance at the moment.

The cruel world of nature though has had baby rabbits, small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, dying.  First Fortnum found one just lying and picked it up.  Then yesterday I found one half drowned in the chicken pen.  Despite my best efforts – it was dried off, warmed up with a hot water bottle, watered and fed and perked up – it went to sleep permanently lying in a bed of hay. And last night I found another one lying in the chicken pen wet and bedraggled but very much dead.

I can understand one bunny getting trapped or washed away in the torrents of rain we’ve had but two is more than a coincidence and on top of a stray death it seems that there are cruel forces of nature at work.  Who knows.  It might be poison in the forestry, it might be the fact it’s turned real cold or it might be that there is something that is sickening the baby rabbits and they just don’t survive.  Whatever, I’m not enjoying the experience and wish that whatever it is would stop.  But that’s nature I guess.