long pause

Can it really be over a week since I last put a posting in here, time goes so fast. I blame Wimbledon for lots of my absence in here - we decided beforehand NOT to watch during the day, get on with our work, record the evening summary of "Today at Wimbledon" and watch that instead. Did we act in accordance with that decision? Did we heck! Two more busy days of tennis, I want Sabine Lisicki to win today and Andy to win tomorrow ..................... and shall we feel lost next week when it's all over? You betcha!

Last Thursday I started clipping the spirals, the same day as the plumber came to start work on the downstairs loo. Both processes are finished now except for painting the walls and skirting board in the toilet.

4 pictures of progress on spirals and pompoms in the front garden:

I'm pleased with how they look now, hopefully they'll retain their shape for a while. The bed that John was working on recently, to the right of the spirals, is developing nicely - as are the weeds, unfortunately -

I think I mentioned that the egg-laying is slowing down, it's easier to cope with 4 - 7 every day instead of up to 14. Also that the top groups of ducks and drakes spread themselves out more, although the boys still chase the girls and I'll probably have to wait another month before letting them all join at the big pond. On Monday this week I was amazed how boisterous the three drakes were up here, I had thought they were slowing down a bit with the summer moult. But no, Daisy especially was got by all three of them, time and again, Mocca as well, but she screams nice and loud. Don't know what's got into the boys, must have been the course of seaweed tonic I started putting into the drinking water that morning ..............

This is Daisy walking back after getting some food. The roses on the archway have surprised me this year, the creamy yellow one [name of Aleric Barbier or something like that] is planted behind the red one which gave such a show last year, and we had just 4 or 5 blooms of the yellow. This year it seems to have taken over, the red one is only just starting to show.

Other things doing amazingly well this year are:

the strawberries; the care John lavished on the bed with straw and netting has paid off. This was the first big pick last Saturday,

but we've had more than three times that since. I don't like to freeze them, I think they turn mushy and grey when you defrost them after, so I've made a huge pie, 2 lots of compote, and I'm forever thinking what else I can do with them apart from giving them away or stuffing my face with them .....

the chestnuts are coming, the first time I've seen them on the tree I planted as a sprouting conker:

the poppies in various wildflower patches I sowed last year are giving a lovely show:

Daughter Annie shared a posting on Facebook by a man called Eddie Gunn. Because we commemorate the outbreak of World War I next year he proposed for everyone to buy poppy seed and to scatter it in places like traffic roundabouts and other places which don't get tended much. I think it's a great idea and will join in remembrance of the thousands who died on Flanders' fields.

I had hoped that Dotty would get her wires removed yesterday, Friday, which marked 4 weeks after her operation. Her appointment is not until Monday afternoon, though, and I thought it was high time she had a wash and a preen - which is not possible without water. So I bought a little pre-formed koi pool and sunk it into a path within the fruit cage. Yesterday morning was the first time I put her into the water, and it was great to see her having a splash and being able to get in and out of the water by herself, in spite of not having use of her left leg. While I was weeding nearby yesterday afternoon I was delighted to see her preening herself, and picking up the worms I threw her, it gives me hope for her. The "sun shade" in the photos below are because summer has broken out yesterday!

Friend Brian came to cut the hay meadow yesterday ...

.... but I've not yet finished my cutting of the laurel hedges.

My little "red patch" in the garden wasn't showing much red, so I cheated by placing 3 pots with John's red geraniums in front:

This is the view from the opposite side which also shows that the pink peony friends Val and Colin gave me some years ago is flowering beautifully [in the little picture left it's the pale blob in the middle]: