Photo-a-day, 20th June

Piffle has reached that age where, whenever I find her curled up somewhere unexpected, I have to take a quick look to check she's still breathing.

She spent the entire day fast asleep on the patio, blissfully oblivious of the presence of any passing rival cats. (Actually, I have a sneaky suspicion that she's perfectly aware they're there, but pretends to be asleep because she can't be bothered to stir herself to deal with them but doesnt' want to lose her street cred...)

( This Cat Is Not Dead )

Photo-a-day, 21st June

Sunflower buds are just as wonderful as the actual flowers.

( Solstice Sunflower )

Pondlife

Over the last couple of days the pond water has cleared - the speed with which this has happened verged on dramatic. At the start of the week we could see no further than perhaps a centimetre below the surface, whereas today I can almost see the bottom.

Now that we can see what's in there, the abundance of life is amazing. To go in just a few weeks from a bare new pond to this is truly a wonder. We have pond skaters (two adults and many tiny ones), water beetles (at least two types), mosquito larvae (inevitably), some tiny fast-swimming larvae with three-pronged tails that I'm pretty sure are damselfly larvae (plus I've seen two species of damselfly actually laying eggs in the pond), and thousands upon thousands of water fleas (the water is literally teeming with them - they may actually have helped to clear the water by consuming the algae).

Life is amazing - give it any sort of foothold and something will come along to use it.

Photo-a-day

Grown from seed by DH.

( Cosmos in bud )