Dear Readers, my long-suffering husband went off to work today (and I don’t envy him what with it probably being the hottest day of the year so far), and so I took myself carefully off to the garden to eat my breakfast. The garden is cool first thing in the morning, and is never completely blasted, unlike the front which is positively Mediterranean, and so I was enjoying my fruit and yoghurt when I was accosted by a squirrel that was running along the fence with a peanut in its mouth. It saw me and stopped dead in horror. Then it growled and flicked its tail at me, though whether in anger or confusion I have no idea. Then it shot off back into the whitebeam, where I notice there is a massive drey. The garden has been pretty quiet for a few weeks as I’ve been confined to the house for most of the time, so I think that the squirrel thinks that s/he now owns it.

As does this little chap/chappess.

How I miss my cat Willow! But this cat wandered over, doing that blinky-eye thing that cats do when they’re trying to be friendly. S/he jumped up to get a stroke on the head, then wandered past me and into the kitchen. It occurred to me that s/he’d probably done that a few times before when we weren’t looking – Willow used to be fed in the kitchen until we moved her food upstairs to get away from the ants that would swarm into her food bowl. Then the cat wandered back out and did that roll-y thing that they sometimes do.

There was a little bit of tail thrashing going on, though, which in my experience often means that a cat is confused/conflicted, so I let them go on their way. They sat on the step in the sunlight for a while, watching the collared dove on the bird feeder who kept a close eye on the feline.

Honestly, the garden is an absolute jungle. Everything has gotten away from me this year. But there we go! I will get the trees and hedges trimmed later in the year once they’ve started to go dormant, and then I think I’ll need to find someone sympathetic to help me with the heavy work. And in the meantime, I hope that the squirrels and birds and insects are enjoying it.

As it’s going to be so hot, I’m planning on taking it fairly easy today – I managed over 2000 steps yesterday, so I know I can do it, and it’s supposed to be cooler tomorrow. This is a marathon, not a sprint, so one day without progress on the step count isn’t going to cause problems. Plus, I remember that knitting and typing both trigger my Garmin watch to add a few additional steps so who knows what the count will be by the end of the day!