I guess this is a typical British summer: after another short “heatwave” last week, we’ve just had a weekend of almost continuous rain.
At the start of the week, the world was a multi-coloured blaze of flowers and the buddleia-scented air was busy with butterflies and bees.
But this weekend it’s been cold and grey, and even the feathers, bells and face paints of the local folk festival have done little to brighten the atmosphere.
Continue reading “bee-long days”
Q. What’s black and white and red all over?
A. A sunburnt penguin.
or, possibly,
Yesterday’s newspaper.
I guess that that traditional gem becomes less and less appropriate as an answer as newspapers are now printed in colour, and, anyway, we tend to read them online as a never-ending rabbit hole of hyperlinks, not as a monochrome printed artefact.
Continue reading “tiger tiger”
At first glance, it may look as if the rather snazzy spider in the photo is lying on her back waving her legs in the air. In fact she was dangling a few inches above the kitchen counter, suspended from the ceiling by a thread. It’s probably just as well that I saw her before I put the mixing bowl down and started measuring out the flour to make scones.
She was the second spider I had to ask to leave the house this morning. I don’t suppose either of them really fancied being outside in the rain, but I decided I’d be happier if they left the premises, even if they weren’t.
Continue reading “de-bugging procedures”
I mentioned recently that there are certain words and phrases that I use over and over again: “rather lovely” occurs in a dozen posts here, while a search on “glorious” brings up 11 pages – over 50 posts. But it’s not just language that repeats; it’s also the topics.
There are daisies and dandelions scattered across these pages almost as liberally as the actual flowers occur in the neighbour’s garden, while bees bumble between posts, swallows swoop down and swans glide through at irregular, but fairly frequent, intervals.
Continue reading “more dragons”
I went for a walk in the park the other morning before breakfast. It was early enough that the only other people out and about were dog-walkers and joggers.
The light wasn’t very special and the grass was decidedly damp. We have had some lovely weather recently, but also some tremendous storms, so I’m not sure the plants actually know what season it is, but there were still plenty of flowers and blossoms worth taking pictures of.
Continue reading “morning after”
don't confuse the narrator 