WRENS, RABBITS AND SALMAN RUSHDIE

It is so wet the grass on the lower lawn is becoming scarce. I have a window of two days (it is Wednesday) to try and cut what grass there is (and chew up the turf). And it is not warm - 20C seems like something from long ago.
So Global Warming is a joke here - milder, cooler and wetter. At least the rhubarb likes it.

R heard a thud and I went out to find a stunned wren that had flown into a window. I placed it on the log pile to recover and it soon flew off. Such a tiny bird weighing nothing and sitting in the cup of my palm. It does have disproportionally big feet though.

Nothing to do with gardening but how strange dreams can be - from where do some of them come? (Well, I know, inside my cranium but . . . ) Last night I dreamed that I was in Tashkent on a small farm (no I've never been there) researching a link in ancestry between my ex senior partner's wife and Salman Rushdie! I know I had read about him in a Simon Armitage book two night's earlier - the bit about Margaret Drabble giving him sanctuary when the Fatwa was after him but why the connection to S?

Keeping up the wildlife theme R and I were trudging across the soggy lawn by the bottom hedge when she stopped and pointed. Only ten feet away was a young rabbit munching away totally unconcerned that we we there - cheek!

To move on - we have courgettes - which seem to suddenly become small marrows before I harvest them - and the Bramley apple tree is laden with fruit. We do have damsons but not a bumper crop.

They say there can be much in a name but this rose - Rhapsody in Blue - is now in its second flush - yet blue? Wishful thinking there? No doubt some bright spark will insert a gene into a rose and create all sorts of strange colours.

Other garden news - the agapanthus is doing well and the new white one thriving.

 The opium poppies are now starting to cast seed but I leave them to do just that, and I like the dried heads as an extra feature of the garden.

 I have dragged a lot of weed and algae and crowfoot out of the pond to give some open water but. of course, got spattered with mud much to R's tut-tutting. Soon it will be wading time to reduce the water lily somewhat.

Occasionally a little magic creeps into one's life. I have been standing outside the house with my brother-in-law N watching 15 or so house martins whirling about above our heads repeatedly visiting one of the nests and chattering loudly.

Time for coffee.