Perfect day...

The sun has come out, and the house is filled with music... One lovely niece is here, enjoying access to C's piano (she doesn't have one where she lives) and we're being treated to bits of the soundtrack to The Piano, and snippets of Life On Mars and Perfect Day. Lovely stuff...

As a quick aside, by emptying out a tub of earth the other day I have inadvertently created a Sparrow Sandpit to go with the existing Bird Spa... the headless dove is just there to keep 'em in line.

You say the 'lido', I say the 'lido'...

Leedo, lydo, leedo, lydo,

Let's call the whole thing off'.

I spoke to a friend the other day about the word lido, which I've always pronounced as 'leedo', but she insists is 'lydo'. However it's pronounced, I like to think of our back garden as a kind of bird spa, with lido, diving boards, sun terrace, breakfast buffet and so on. This morning, for instance, the various bathing pools have been splashed in, drunk from, and generally enjoyed by all the birds who frequent the garden.

The sun is still working its way round the house so the contrast is rather harsh, but I spotted a goldfinch having a drink on the top step, and a sparrow preparing for a bath in the little dish at the bottom - usually used by the baby sparrows, who also use the aloe vera plants off picture to the left as a diving board. There is a slightly larger and more private pool tucked under the lavender bush at the top, which the blackbirds quite often claim as their own. As you can see, solar floodlighting is available for those evening dips. I think of everything.

Over in the rather more exclusive Pear Tree Pool, a blue tit enjoyed having the place all to itself before the junior sparrow rush. If anyone is still not sure what 'drookit' means, observe...

I'm also taking advantage of the weather to wash some linens that will be added to the wedding bunting I've been asked to do. Scraps of tray cloths, unloved because of tea stains (who thought that crisp white linen and dribbling teapots would be a good combination?) and tired and torn lace will be cut up into pennants to add to the mix for a 'shabby chic/country style' wedding. Should be lovely - if I do it properly!

Is it any wonder that allium seed heads feature so often in illustration and design, with their crisp clear silhouettes? Look at this lot taking a bow...

Oh, and yesterday evening, when I was relaxing in the living room, who should poke its head round the door but the big, black moggy? Clearly s/he reads this blog, and took my comment about not chasing it away anymore as an open invitation to stroll in and make itself at home! Ooooh, blimmin' cheek!

Ecletic landlady...

We have most of the usual non-paying guests - the occasional wasp, bee, moth and fly, numerous spiders, the drunken lout of a slug who leaves winding, silvery trails all over the living-room carpet every morning - and now a couple of blackbirds have set up home, tucked up in one corner of the porch, surrounded by roses. Lovely.

ps That reads as if I'm being sarcastic - I actually really do think it's lovely!! The slugs I can do without...

Mother nature...

When we got home on Sunday we found a dead mouse on the doorstep. This has happened several times before, and it has been suggested by cat owners that it's a gift from a local cat. We do have one particular big, black moggy who comes into the garden regularly, and has even been known to curl up for a snooze on the welcome mat - I shoo him out as best I can, but I have to say he does have serious 'attitude'. I've stood looking up at him lounging on top of the shed, skooshing him with water from a plant spray, admonishing him in proper Gary Larson cartoon style (I know, I know - all he hears is blah, blah, blah) but in a Carl Larsson setting, and getting nothing but insolence and disdain in return. 'Can you climb trees? No? Didn't think so. Then off you pop!' Perhaps the mouse is by way of an apology for his being so rude.

I'm a wee bit fickle. I try to protect the birds from the cat, but also try to save particularly handsome worms from the birds. I feed the birds, and fill water dishes for them, but get irritated by great lumpen pigeons just gobbling everything up and pooping in the water. So I wave the pigeons away, but I'm delighted when I see Mrs Chaffinch at the food dish, and I love watching the blackbirds splashing about, even if it means I'll have to fill up the dish again. I mutter, 'Hey! You! Get off of my thyme!' when the sparrows start tugging away at it, and yet I am thrilled when goldfinches alight on the cornflowers...

and reduce them from this...to this...

I'm glad I only have one garden to worry about...it's exhausting...