Soon be Back to Bows

With the open shoot at Avalon on Sunday I've cut all my arrows down to the same length (27 1/2" to the base of the point) and I've been shooting a few arrows every day trying to concentrate on consistent form and shaking off bad habits. An old cork coaster has been pinned to the target boss which makes a satisfying noise when I hit it, it also helps the focus.

I've got 15L of cider pressed, it's bubbling away like crazy already and is still very cloudy. The Plum wine is looking a nice colour and beginning to clear. There's one more batch of apples lying on the garage floor waiting to be done.
To get the last few apples from high up on our apple tree I made an apple picker from a plastic bottle. The idea came courtesy of YouTube and it's really effective... it helped that I had a big old bamboo pole lying around. It's highly entertaining too, like some sort of party game for grown ups... fish the apple off the tree. it's clever the way it catches the apple as it comes away.

I've got the repointing of the chimneys all finished and the ladders stashed away again.

Mrs Deer the wooden sculpture in the garden was getting a bit in need of maintenance (about 10years old now!) so I tightened up her leg joints and added bamboo pins (about 3/16") to keep them more secure... she gets cats and squirrels jumping on her which can make her collapse. The ridge along her back had come off too, so I dowelled that back on 3/8" at the rear and a bamboo pin at the front.

There's a warm damp Autumn feel to the garden, the pond is nicely full and one of my Froggy friends was smiling at me from the reeds. I zoomed in with the camera and the face recognition software homed in on him!