Friday in the woods

Friday was the last day my family were visiting, so we had dinner up in the woods in the evening. The wayleave is now dense with leaves:and there's all kinds of flowers out on the ground, such as Violet:
and Blue Bugle:Also, our mystery tree has now flowered, thus confirming its identity as Crab Apple. I'll be interested to see if there are any fruit, as I've never noticed them before...
As we were cooking for six adults and my nephew Joshua:
we needed several fires going. There was the one we were sat round, which my brother Andy had started in the afternoon before we got there, and hot coals from that were used to light the kelly kettle to make drinks. I was also trying out my new pot stand attachment for it:With so many of us we couldn't fit dinner in one saucepan, so we had the big one on our normal cooking stove:and a smaller pan on my shiny new woodgas stove:
You'll notice it has a tiny battery pack - this supplies a controlled amount of air to gasify wood at the bottom of the stove, and more air at the top of the stove to burn the gas produced , just under the pan:I'll do a post just on this stove soon, including how to use it.

After dinner our neighbour Andrew called in to collect some wood for a caravan trip he's going on, so he can have a few camp fires on the way. He had a quick go with the air rifle while he was there:but seemed surprised he hit the tin can first time:Anyway, he got into splitting logs after that:
and we loaded up his truck.

My nephew had to go home to sleep, as he's only little, but my parents stayed up with us until dusk, sat round the fire.and we left with the sound of the Tawny Owl echoing through the woods.

Mike