How better to spend a Sunday afternoon...

...than having lunch with a group of good friends, fabulously catered by one of them, and putting the world to rights afterwards over cups of tea in the garden. (And I have my eye on her yellow penstemon and a fine variegated hosta.) There was enough in flower in our garden for us to take a little posy of flowers with us. We're still waiting for the summer stuff, though one of this year's achilleas is starting into creamy yellow flower, and a rudbeckia is showing colour - amazing, since it has survived our unusually severe winter in a container.

Martyn spent some time rejigging the waterfall to the pond, which had been losing water. Unfortunately, nothing much seems to have changed, but the hot weather must had led to a bit of evaporation. The new batch of fish seem to have settled in: I was out semi-sleepwalking yesterday around 4:30, and most of them were up, hoovering the surface of the water. Some of our tadpoles have made it as far as turning into tiny frogs - and the blackbirds seem to find them just as tempting.

Meanwhile, back in the study, my laptop has developed a serious dose of the vapours: it will no longer start Windows. It seems to have taken exception at the news of its imminent retirement, and gorn orf in a huff. Excuse the anthropomorphism: computers do seem sometimes to have an almost human cussedness, don't they? Tiresome, since I have a meeting to minute on Wednesday, and I am unfortunately past the stage when my old hands can comfortably minute a couple of hours' worth in longhand. Or not with any real likelihood of my being able to read them afterwards! Fortunately, I can borrow one of the laptops I got for the Magistrates' Association, since its present custodian will also be at the meeting.

Both the pond and the garden need a couple of days of steady rain. Preferably spread pro rata over a corresponding number of nights, between midnight and 6:00 am, please.