A Cooler Day.

It wasn't quite the weather for shorts and flip-flops today, the sun shone but there was a chill breeze. I spent most of the day getting the gravel out of the old grass bed. My method of picking it out by hand was proving far too slow, I had originally tried sieving it but the holes in my trusty wire in-tray were too big. After hunting around in this house where things are kept 'cos they might be useful one day', I found a blue plastic greengrocer's tray that was just right. Fast as my pile of gravel is growing it won't be enough to provide a good layer over all the ground between my new plantings so I may have to bite the bullet and actually buy some chippings. Not from the DIY store, a delivered bag of gravel to cover 9 sqm would cost £140. There is a local quarry so I'll investigate how much they charge as we could do with more chippings in the yard where we park the cars. I think that's where the original chippings came from.

The pond is still full of thousands of tadpoles. It is also home to a number of newts. If you watch for a few minutes you can see them gliding through the crystal clear water like miniature crocodiles. According to my book they eat frog tadpoles but I haven't seen that happening. Maybe my tadpoles are toad tadpoles though the pond was full of frogspawn.

We are less than 4 weeks away from a general election. I had thought about having a small rant about politicians but decided that I would cause offense to half my readers and bore the other half so will keep my thoughts to myself. No politics on this blog.

Still no foal, Ben is as lively as ever and has a little high pitched whinny which he uses to get people's attention.