6.30 am

I love being out in my garden first thing in the morning in this hot weather. This morning was wonderful. For some reason there were hundreds of bumble bees collecting in the flower beds. And I had left the sprinkler on overnight and a couple of wrens were playing in the puddles on the lawn and trilling away. I watched the baby frogs returning to the pond where they spend the day & I saw one consume a bluebottle that was almost half the frogs size. The little frog just sauntered up & dived on the fly mouth agape. And then sat there looking rather shocked. But presumably not as shocked as the fly. In my youth I could get an entire mars bar in my mouth sideways (until the tragic incident where I was unknowingly given one of the new king sized bars) but this was the equivalent of someone consuming a whole live sheep. In the other pond the goldfish seem less timid now, they have certainly sorted out the mosquito population. Unfortunately I discovered a fish corpse on the lawn - damn cats. But even that, or indeed stepping in a giant hedgehog turd with bare feet, didn't spoil my morning.