Through my Kitchen Window

We don't have a dishwasher - our previous one "died" just before we moved here 6 years ago and we've not yet replaced it. So I spend a lot of time standing at the sink looking out of this window while I do the washing-up. One of the first things we did in the garden was to make a flowerbed outside the window so I would have something interesting to look at, and I really appreciate it every day. So far this year I've enjoyed hazel catkins, witch-hazel, cornus, snowdrops, daphne flowers and now hellebores and aubretia.

And I get to spot quite a few animals and birds while I wash up - pheasants, partridges, moorhens, blackbirds, robins, dunnocks, great tits and blue-tits, various finches and once a woodpecker. I watch rabbits and hares - once a young hare even took up residence in the flowerbed for a while, and occasionally Mr ( or is it Mrs?) Fox - a magnificent creature, but not a welcome sight when you're a henkeeper...

This morning it was a tortoiseshell butterfly and some fat bumblebees working over the Aubretia flowers.

Maybe one day we'll get a dishwasher: but if we do I think I will miss my washing-up sessions too much...

A walk in the wood

We are so lucky that we have in our village, only a 5 minute walk from the house, a 90-acre ancient wood, which is carpeted with bluebells and wild garlic in Spring, full of fungi in Autumn, and home to Red and Fallow deer.
Every weekend, I like to get I. outside for a walk, accompanied by whatever other family members are around. Today it was just me and him, and we walked down to and around the wood. Although there wasn't much wildlife to see today, I. entertained both of us by pretending we were on a train and keeping up a running commentary along the lines of "On your left you can see... In this oldest part of the forest..." all the way along the whole walk. I was enchanted.