Saturday 1st August - Flowers, Flying springs, Flying Ants

The other day, as we went out, I spotted a scarlet pimpernel growing amongst the weeds that make up our front "lawn". We treated with grass with something-or-other (well, HE treated the lawn with it). I'm not sure what it was supposed to do, but the results are not entirely unpleasing. A lot of the weeds, and all the moss, have turned blackish-brownish-deadish, leaving a certain amount of grass, and a delightful variety of wildflowers flowering weeds. I shall be sorry when mowing has to happen again.

However this confusion of ground-cover made it very difficult to find the spring from our lovely new doorbell. He was applying Loctite to various parts of it, mainly to avoid the possibility of the spring working free and making its escape, when, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, that's exactly what happened, pinging it's way to freedom and laying low in the long grass. The spring, I mean. Obviously. It took a little while, but we did manage to find it again.


We reckon the whole town was built on a huge ant nest.

Their little sandy anthills are EVERYWHERE.

They have even built a huge, dark brown edifice inside the compost bin. There was great agitation when I went to add some more kitchen peelings (and extinct credit card slips - them composting worms are as good as a shredder any day). The flying ants were all ready to fly, but were too big to escape through the little ventilation grills. Consequently I was mugged by them as soon as I lifted the lid.  Aaaargh!