Painted ladies

The other day, between the showers, we had a stroll in the garden. There seemed to butterflies everywhere. There were the usual suspects – cabbage whites, small tortoiseshell, speckled woods, the odd red admiral – then we noticed some strangers in our midst. They were Painted Ladies. I’ve never seen the live creatures before, just pictures. And how pretty they are. They’re a very welcome addition to our visitors. Clearly something is going right with our garden planting to attract so many visitors.

On our own

It’s strange. The last few days various people seem to have been apologising to us for leaving us on our own, as if that’s some sort of hardship. We may have been married for nearly 44 years but we still relish just being together on our own. It’s one of the problems of having lived here for nearly 20 years. Whenever we go out, we seem to be joined by others. It’s difficult to find somewhere nice to go just to be together, to have a private talk or just a simple convivial chunter. Indeed most of our chuntering is done at home, behind doors shutting everyone else out, over something to drink & some cool sounds.

Don’t get me wrong. There are times we do appreciate seeing friends. There are times we need distracting from our worries just like everyone else.  But there are times it’s nice just to be the two of us on our own.

Still raining

The rain continues. It’s not stopping the collared doves. Our over-dinner entertainment was provided by them as two males chased after the one female. Action spread from the garage roof to the food feeder to the shed roof & back again. There’s was much cooing & strutting.

Life is slowly settling, though I confess I’m half-waiting for the next emergency to arrive. It just seems to have been one thing after another since we came back from Norway. We no sooner got the Fox out of hospital & on the mend than we had problems with the phone & internet. I don’t know whether it’s just a sign of our age but I’m finding it increasingly difficult to cope with these crises. What we need now is a prolonged period of quiet. I can’t see it happening. We already have doctor & hospital appointments mounting up, but at least they are planned fairly routine monitoring rather than emergency, critical problems. Even the idea of another holiday this year seems too much.