A welcome visitor

Hopefully this little chap is eating lots of slugs, though I still find lots (to the delight of the chickens!)

He has lovely eyes . . .

On closer inspection

I never really think my garden looks that great. It's made up by too many plants that flower or look their best at different times of the year - there's never a spectacular moment when everything peaks.

But having said that, there's lots of plants and flowers that are beautiful in their own right, so it's nice going round the garden and taking pictures of the individuals - never mind that the overall effect is (to me) disappointing.

A dead end . . .

I love councils - the elected members are, by and large, individuals who want to do the best they can for the people who elect them, the officers are (probably) intelligent and highly qualified, but the result of their combined efforts are often just plain stupid.

I came upon the sign above on one of my slightly longer Sunday walks with the hound. On the face of it, it's quite sensible - warning motorists of possible delays while council staff or contractors spend eight days working on a stretch of road.

That's fine, but this particular road (a farm track really) is a dead end. It serves one property. In the five years that I've walked this route (admittedly, usually on Sunday mornings), I've seen three cars and two bicycles using it - one of those was someone who'd turfed their dog out at one end and drove along with the animal trotting behind.

Who decided it was a good idea to spend eight days working on this road? A good use of resources?

I don't mind paying my Council Tax. I figure it's part of living in a civilised society that we all contribute. But I do sometimes wonder if councillors and officers on local authorities realise they are spending other people's hard-earned money and that we deserve at least a little common sense applied to their decisions.

Eight days of work on a dead end road serving one property, common sense, I think not!

By the way, in case you can't read the sign, the prats in this particular case are Cambridgeshire County Council.

Rant over. The reason I took the picture was that I thought it was funny that they should warn of delays on a road used by the inhabitants of one small bungalow.

Birds of a feather . . .

The mother-in-law's parrot - a vicious old bird . . . and the parrot's not much better!

arc-adia

I know it's not universally liked, but I think the Debenham's store on the arc in Bury St Edmunds is a great building - its curves juxtaposed against the angularity of the other buildings is fantastic.

I'm not sure about the development as a whole, though - it all seems a bit crammed on.

Jolly boating weather . . .

Last weekend, when the weather was warm and sunny, we went to Flatford Mill and Dedham - Constable country.

We weren't sure what to expect - Mrs DW used to go there a lot as a child, but not recently, and I'd been there once abour 25 years ago. We rather expected it to be awash with American and Japanese tourists. However, we arrived quite early and it was surprisingly quiet and peaceful.

Since there was no queue, we decided to go for a boat ride on the River Stour. A little electric boat took us up the river from Flatford towards Dedham for 15 minutes, turned around and brought us back.

It was a bit 'twee', but the boys enjoyed it and the two 'crew' were quite amusing (inadvertantly). Mrs DW was slightly miffed to be asked to change seats for 'weight distribution' but said this was due to the large couple who followed us on, rather than her.

Boat trip on the Stour

Pirates ahoy

Egyptian goose (apparently)

Canada geese and goslings

After the boat ride, we sat by the river and consumed the coffee ad cake we'd brought with us. DW was a bit greedy, but no point carrying a few odd cakes with us for the rest of the day!

Then, along the riverbank to Dedham, which was very pleasant and enlivend by a herd of young catte which came bounding (do cows bound?) towards us. This wouldn't have been a problem, but the people on the boat trip had said that the weekend before, there had been a huge stampede when a woman let her Rottweiller dog off the lead.

Dedham's a beautiful, picture postcard village, only spoiled by the traffic and the rather large number of chavs gathered along the riverbank there (mostly from Essex, I'd guess) - one family every 10 metres.

Swan at Flatford Mill

Having said that, we were then a bit chavvy ourselves - stopping at the very nice Little Chef near Stowmarket for a 'chippy' tea. That's once we'd found it! We felt a bit sorry for the place - it used to be right on the A14 but now the new section of road has been built it's a bit off the beaten track.

Catching up

The collared doves have successfully hatched and raised two chicks. This picture was taken a couple of days ago, but the chicks left the nest today. Theyr'e currently sat looking a bit miserable on next door's pergola.

The nice weather has meant plenty of walks with the hound and pottering in the garden - I've also recently taken on an allotment, but more of that at a later date.

Highlight of a recent early morning walk was coming face to face with a fox family - a vixen and two cubs. Of course, it was sod's law that I had just put the macro (close-up) lens on my camera, so the shots I got of the two cubs - mum saw me first and did a runner - are a bit crappy.

The cub in the the foreground was obviously a bit confused when mum disappeared and, for a moment, I think it thought J was its mother and came bounding towards us. It then realised its mum was not black and white and would probably not be straining at the end of a lead (just a reminder that J is half foxhound!).

On the same walk, we came across this man-made rainbow. The colours and patterns changed as the crop sprayer swivelled around. I was quite mesmerised and stopped to watch for quite a while.

Not too far away is a turf farm, which has this run of power cables crossing it. I pass it quite regularly and I've noticed that the poles have started to lean more and more - I don't think I'd want to have to rely on these for my electricity supply. A decent gale in the winter and they'll be over.

Couple more pictures from recent walks - I love the straight lines created by farming and some of the smallest, most insignificant flowers can be beautiful when studied closely.

Finally, for now, a rose in my garden, backlit by the sun.