The wildlife is barely managing to get from the feeders to the pond without first hacking a path with machetes.  It's still far from clear when I'll be able to get out and cut the grass - even if I can persuade the mower into life.  The pond is very high from all the rain we've had, and has attracted at least one visit from our neighbourhood heron: I chased it off as I opened the curtains this morning.  No idea how many of the latest batch of goldfish have survived: another effect of the near constant rainfall in recent weeks is that the water is very murky.  Too murky for the heron's liking, we hope.  The mallards are spending more and more time in the garden, so we are slowly learning more about their behaviour.  Once she has finished eating, swimming, snoozing or just lying about, Madam looks east for a while, then taxis out as far to the west of the grass as she can before launching into her eastward take-off run.  Even then, they just clear the fence, and fly between the gable ends of a couple of houses down the road.  I'm hoping she's heavily in egg.  Himself is just heavy!  Other visitors include a family of dunnocks, plus the usual crowd.  And the starlings are back.

Apart from the grass, the garden isn't looking too bad.  The pansies are flowering well in their tubs  and baskets, and the aquilegias will soon be covered in bloom.  The aphids are flourishing as well, of course, so I must admit to having been out there with noxious chemicals. 

Another trip to the charity shop and the tip today: we loaded up a lot of junk from the loft, and separately some of the numerous bags and holdalls that had been gathering dust up there.  One holdall looked just about big enough to take a carefully folded MI6 agent, but the contents were just (inorganic) rubbish - honest.

Off to the framer once we'd been to the tip - three of my daubs to do, plus an oil landscape that has been knocking about in other frames, neither of them specially good, since I acquired it from a relative some decades ago.  We've chosen some different mouldings this time, so I'm looking forward to seeing the results.