Thank you Fiona for helping us plant these cheery yellow flowers.
Admin1 is reading If It Bleeds by Stephen King. Admin2 is reading The Death of Kings by Rennie Airth.
Category: Garden
Return of the Naked Boys and Girls
Soldiers diddies etc, back with reinforcements.
Admin1 is reading Shadow Sands by Robert Bryndza. Admin2 is reading Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens.
Exploring the Cosmos
A bee gets a taste of a daisy.
August was colder than June and July, saw 75mm of rain and managed to be the third least sunny August ever by just 3kWh.
Admin1 is reading The Dead of Winter by Rennie Airth. Admin2 is rereading La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman.
Flowers in the Rain
A very wet day: 25mm and counting. Nonetheless our dining companions turned up in their raincoats, enjoyed a lovely meal with us and scored 10 on the GWQ.
Admin1 is reading Vanished by Tim Weaver and Admin2 is rereading Strange Bodies by Marcel Theroux.
Passion Flower
Hottest day of the year so far: 31.1°C.
Admin2 is rereading Case Histories by Kate Atkinson, which is as tasty and comforting as a large box of chocolates despite being a selection box of senseless murders.
Every Home Should Have One
Our new combined clock, thermometer and flowerpot.
Admin1 is reading Smoke Screen by Jorn Lier Horst and Thomas Enger. Admin2 is reading The Evidence by Christopher Priest; forgetting to return your hotel key can have consequences in a world where parameters can shift unexpectedly.
Somewhat late, we scored 9 on the GWQ.
First Poppy
First of the summer poppies, a bit later in the year than usual.
Admin1 is reading The Missing by Jane Casey. Admin2 is reading Smoke and Ashes by Abir Mukherjee.
Flute/Cake
Sunshine at last! We had a family afternoon tea (salad, sandwich fillings, cake, trifle, lemonade, beer, gin and tonic) in the garden with a wonderful musical accompaniment. And we scored 13 on the GWQ!
Admin1 is reading Ruin Beach by Kate Rhodes and Admin2 is reading Let the Dead Speak by Jane Casey.
Tulips Again
They won’t last long so let’s continue to enjoy them.
Admin1 is reading Cruel Acts by Jane Casey. Admin2 is reading The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox.
Flower of the Day: Blue Poppy
This lovely flower, last seen in 2019, was a gift from our friend Jill.
Admin1 is reading No One Home by Tim Weaver, which was very reminiscent of Michael Marshall (Smith)’s crime thrillers.
Raindrops
It rained today, but the rainbow was in the garden.
Admin1 is reading The Cutting Place by Jane Casey. Admin2 is reading The Expats by Chris Pavone, a rubbish book about American chicanery in Luxembourg. This is the author’s attempt at rendering a Scottish accent: “Whot are you, soom kinda fookin bobby?”
We scored 9 on the GWQ.
Tulip Time
The garden after an April of freezing nights and the sunniest ever days (237.145kWh) and some heroic tulip planting by Auds and Bobs.
Admin1 is reading Three Hours by Rosamund Lupton. And whatever the opposite of misanthropic is, this book was it — a real change from my last two. Set over three hours of a school shooting incident in Somerset, it’s terrifically well-written (almost Kate Atkinson quality), engrossing and emotionally charged. A wonderful, page-turning read.
Admin2 is reading Leonardo’s Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms by Stephen Jay Gould. Snappy title, eh?
Stepping Up
Meet the new steps; better than the old steps which were a threat to life and limb.
Admin1 is reading Death Bed by Leigh Russell.
Digging for Victory: Season 2 Episode 2
Radishes are coming up, carrots and leeks will be here soon. Yesterday was our sunniest day so early in the year: 10.371kWh.
Admin1 is rereading Lethal White by Robert Galbraith. Admin2 is rereading Trio by William Boyd.
Plum Blossom Time
Today was the sunniest day this year >6kWh.
Admin1 is reading Ten-Second Staircase by Christopher Fowler and Admin2 is reading The Cut by Chris Brookmyre.
Digging for Victory: Season 2 Episode 1
It’s the spring equinox and the first radishes and carrots are in the ground. The netting is an attempt to keep the birds and squirrels away, and to stop the local cats using it as a toilet (we’re looking at you, ginger bugger).
Admin1 is rereading The Burning Man by Christopher Fowler and Admin2 is reading Never Forget by Michel Bussi, a compulsive but implausible “girl” book, about a boy.
Flower of the Day: Camellia
A sign of spring at last. Today was the warmest: 19.4 °C and sunniest: 5.258kWh this year.
Admin1 is rereading Bryant and May on the Loose by Christopher Fowler.
Willow Pattern
Spring is coming, but where are the frogs?
It’s world book day!
Admin1 is reading The Night Hawks by Elly Griffith. Admin2, inspired by the Kate Atkinson book, is rereading The Seed Collectors by Scarlett Thomas, which does indeed feature academics with unfinished books and dissertations, and confusions over parentage, but has a lot of old people and botanical disquisitions so reads somewhat like a Margaret Drabble book. Not going to reread a Drabble book next, though, because we have NEW BOOKS!
Fish Food Frenzy
Coming up for grub.
Admin1 is reading Sidetracked by Henning Mankell. Admin2 is reading Cold Christmas by Alastair Gunn which was bollocks.
In Your Dreams
Last night Admin1 dreamed that he was writing a blog post about a tiny elephant that unexpectedly appeared in the garden with a bat balanced on its head. So here it is.
Admin1 is reading The Wych Elm by Tana French.
We scored 10.5 on the GWQ.
An Unexpected Visitor
This morning Admin1 was disturbed by a cacophony of rawk-rawk sounds from a squadron of magpies in the garden. And looking out of the window he saw why…
…a sparrowhawk, feasting on one of their brethren (presumably). There wasn’t much left to identify the victim apart from feathers.
Admin1 is reading Perfect Death by Helen Fields, which was soapily melodramatic and only borderline readable. Admin2 is reading The Ottoman Secret by Raymond Khoury.
Talk about the Passion
Passion flowers and fruit again. Spot the snail.
Admin2 is reading The Catch by Mick Herron.
And we scored 12 (or arguably 12.5) on the GWQ.
Tit’s Arse
A lively baby tit was hopping around helping itself to food and never staying still for a minute so we never got a good chance to photograph it. But here is a back view.
Admin1 is rereading Quite Ugly One Morning by Christopher Brookmyre. Admin2 is reading Summer by Ali Smith.
We scored 10 on the GWQ.
Plant of the Day: Arum maculatum
Also known as snakeshead, adder’s root, arum, wild arum, arum lily, lords-and-ladies, devils and angels, cows and bulls, cuckoo-pint, soldiers diddies, priest’s pintle, Adam and Eve, bobbins, naked girls, naked boys, starch-root, wake robin, friar’s cowl, sonsie-give-us-your-hand, jack in the pulpit and cheese and toast.
Admin1 is rereading One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night by Christopher Brookmyre and Admin2 is reading Oranges and Lemons by Christopher Fowler (thx Christopher).
Flower of the Day: Magnolia
A second flowering for our purple magnolia which came to us as a tiny wilted seedling with a reduced sticker and then spent several years neglected in a pot.
August was our rainiest ever August with the hottest ever August day, coldest ever August night and our sunniest ever August day but the month overall was our second cloudiest ever August, overtaking 2012 by just 9 watts, and the temperature averaged out as average.
Admin1 is reading Ghostwritten by David Mitchell and Admin2 is reading Every Man for Himself by Beryl Bainbridge; a write to remember.
We scored a mere 13 on the GWQ.