A Weather Report...

Yesterday, for the first time in just over 4 months, the temperature reached the heady heights of 10°C! We sat in the garden soaking up the sun (well I sat, the children ran about wrecking the place) for well over an hour when we got back from school, and it felt fantastic! I am also happy to report that our uninvited guests haven't eaten the bulbs, and they are actually growing even though most of them were planted upside down (not by me)! I will post photos of those at a later date as they are still just green sprouts, but for now I will leave you with a picture of these, they are absolutely everywhere right now....

Mr Blue Sky

Today's sky was gloomy and grey (and as I am about to post this it's actually snowing again!!), but yesterday morning we had a perfect sky of the most brilliant blue without a single cloud in it! The lack of really tall buildings here makes the sky seem big, I am sure I never really noticed it as much in London. I spent the morning constantly crossing the road to walk in the sun, it was great to feel its warmth (and hard not to walk into anything when the temptation to walk with my face sky-ward took me)... At the time I was searching for a present for a friend when I came across a shop selling this beautiful hand-printed Japanese paper. As I was about to place an order from my usual supplier in London (I need it for end-papers for a job I am working on), it saved me waiting for it to turn up! It obviously also made me think of Japan and the hell it's going through right now. We have donated money, but it just seems like such a small gesture, and I spent the rest of the morning resisting the stupid urge to hug every Japanese tourist that I saw, and tell them how sorry I was at what their country is going through.

On a much happier note, one of our visitors came to see us unusually bright and early this morning, maybe he's on nightshifts at the moment! He had better not be eating any bulbs...!

Uninvited Guests

These two have been turning up in our garden for the past week between 5 and 6pm - unexpected, but very welcome! They are beautiful and timid creatures with a penchant for old apples from the fruit bowl(originally meant for the birds) but they seem to like them!... The pictures are not great, but you get the idea! I have no idea what kind of deer they are, but they have very cute white bottoms!