HERE I GO AGAIN (AGAIN, AGAIN, AG . . . )

A glorious day - Saturday - sun shining, had post lunch tea sitting in the garden in the sun - cool breeze but once in shelter - !

Above is the far garden from our bedroom window, wood on the right, veg and fruit beds to the left, daffs on the banking (and all over the place). And then the snowdrops on the top banking before they were over.

Today AS came and left with 2/3 of our copper beech hedge - all we could extract - for his new house and garden. As we got our other beech hedge from him - fair exchange. R and I transplanted snowdrops as they are over. This is best done whilst they are "in the green" and bigger clumps are dug out, split in half and half put back. The other half is split into three parts and planted elsewhere in the garden. Some of this is by paths, some on the banking and some where the bramble lady has been clearing.

Some of the drains/ditches have strange algae on them - orange and fluorescent. At first I thought this was pollution from some buried junk but I was wrong.
(Actually the bramble lady has reached to the far wall and found a tip - metal, glass and the remains of two push mowers up to now.)

The hazel in the bottom hedge has been a shower of golden catkins for a few weeks.
I have been doing the stream and hedge bank removing brambles, ferns, honeysuckle and such and the lawns have been mowed. I had the mower and its trailer out too and shifted manure which was spread on the banking bed beneath the house. I also raked off the bramble cleared area.

Earlier in the year R bought some gladioli bulbs at the Greenodd potato day (I know) so these have been planted up un pond baskets and compost so they can be put into the flowerbeds to fill any gap later in the year.

Now for a little tale regarding birds. We have had red-legged partridge in the garden and in the field below the house. In the field there were three males and one female and the lads were going at each other like Don Cockell and Rocky Marciano. (Whoops, dated myself.) 

They were so absorbed with themselves they did not see Miss Partridge quietly wandering off and leaving them to it. (No relation of Alan Partridge who has a place in Coniston.)

Talking of birds we are beset by a blackbird again - no, not the house windows but the cars. It is attacking its reflection in the car windows and wing mirrors and covering everything in white youknowwhat. Not good for the paint.

What else?

The past-it bulbs in pots have been planted out down by the log pile and path to the Wendy House.

No sign of my ring.
Another grey squirrel relocated.

Saw the solar eclipse - at exactly the right time it appeared through misty clouds for about 15 seconds - we got about a 95% cover here. It went darkish and coldish and quietish and as I was standing on the first tee at the time I then hit a not too baddish drive up the hill into the murk.

Now, when I was a lad clattering around the boys' yard at school in the rain and cold we had nothing like this -

School Class on the beach at Armacao de Pera - an irresistible photograph.
Today it is 16C and stormy in Faro on the Algarve - it maybe only 10C here (Sunday) but the sun is warm and shining from a clear blue sky. All right there was a frost last night but I am now going to sit outside in the garden with the newspaper and have a coffee, listen to the birds singing and try to forget all the things that need doing in the garden.