Hearts in the hedgerow, swarming bees and the dog goes awol

Monday 25 May 2015
Pentecost

Cloudy 21 degrees

I knew as soon as I tried to move today that gardening or anything involving bending was out of the question.  I was as stiff as a board.  Creaked downstairs and ate some breakfast - muesli and strawberries.  OH always goes away when the berries start to harvest and I have to eat them at every meal.  My insides must be extra red.

Decided to walk the dog and hopefully be less stiff when I got back.  What a joy there is in looking at things really closely and seeing the delicacy of natural things

Euphorbia

Hartstongue fern

Dock seeds

Common orchid

Hartstongue fern

Common orchid

Mares tail

Oak leaves

Hearts in the hedgerow

Mares tail

This was a tranquil start to what turned out to be rather more exciting day than I would have wished for.  

I made a cup of tea and went outside to look at yesterday's plantings and heard a very loud buzzing.  There were about five trillion bees humming and dancing around my chimney pot. Running into the house at top speed, I taped up the holes in the wood burning stove, slammed all the windows and doors shut and raced down to the bee man at the end of the lane, with the dog in hot pursuit.  The bee man was having lunch.  He emerged from the doorway and a couple of bees came out with him.  He advised burning something which made a lot of smoke.  I can make piles of acrid smoke with dry wood and newspaper but today I had trouble.  I made a little pile of presoaked petrol cubes and piled on semi dry grass cuttings.  I dont know about the bees but I nearly axphyxiated myself.  The dog took the opportunity to run off.  For five and a half hours.

By some miracle, the car decided to start so I toured the lanes for an hour and he was nowhere to be seen so I came back, ate chocolate and drank a lot of tea and loaded two properties.  The American lady rang and, another miracle, she has actually sold her house. The dog snored loudly on the kitchen floor and I treated myself to stir fry chicken and some white wine.