THE SWALLOWS ARE NESTING

They are repairing the nest under the eaves by the front door (which we hardly use) with mud from beside the pond.

We are not deserted though the house martins have taken up lodgings elsewhere.

Life is good with asparagus coming out of both ears!

R has been tidying the long grass around the copper beech hedge - still in its infancy - and I am a mowing and stuff.

The first rose is in bud as are both the wisterias - I must have pruned them correctly. We have both a blue/lilac one and a white one entwined near the kitchen door. Strangely one twists clockwise and the other anticlockwise, one flowers before the leaves come and the other after.

Yesterday went to Muncaster Castle to see the bluebells and azaleas - and also this Insect House built by a local school. I bet they didn't have planning permission.

What else to report from the garden - the service engineer has broken the top of the machinery housing on the septic tank, my knees are kna****** (worn out) and I am very limpish, the tadpoles are being fed on the fat/rind from a gammon - but do they like cloves? - I nearly cut a small frog in half by a ditch, the persistent east wind is cold and has brought quite a few twigs off the ash trees, the ash trees are really struggling to get into leaf as is the Wayfaring tree, the wood white butterflies are doing their mating dance, spiralling up in the woodland sun and the coal tits must be almost as exhausted as the chiffchaff. The coal tits are going back and forth, back and forth and so on feeding their young with seeds from the feeders, the chiffchaff never stops singing and it is such a tiny bird.

Still no rain though it is forecast for the weekend. This is the warmest and definitely driest spring I can remember. Going to a wedding Saturday so that might bring the rain.

Wasn't the picture of the US president (small p like me at present) watching the Bin Laden raid in the White House from a head camera, via helicopter, via satellite like something out of Science Fiction!

ps. Am I the only one getting Osama and Obama confused?

Hang on one of them is dead - but was he really buried at sea?

Another candidate for the Elvis syndrome.