Squawk!

The air in the garden is filled with the fluffy white seeds of the willow trees and there are plenty in the house as well.

A much calmer day today, helped by the fact that on Wednesday afternoons I'm on ppa time. In the morning the children had their first practice SATs test under test conditions, ie in silence and sitting widely spaced around the room. It was a spelling test which I marked in the afternoon and they didn't do too badly. Unlike our weekly spelling test when they are given a list of words to write, one side of the test paper has pictures of the things I ask them to spell and the other side has a story with gaps. The story is read through first and then a second time when they are asked to write the missing words.

There are simply not enough hours in the day to do all the things that need doing. I didn't get home until 6.30 so didn't have that much time in the garden. Still every bit helps and I have started work on the path from the drive up to the chickens' run, skimming off the soil and filling it up with stones instead.

When I first got home I was greeted by the familiar sound of jackdaw chicks ....... coming from the roof space. Those pesky birds must have found a way in somehow and now we will be serenaded by the hungry squawking of their brood. I'll have to go back up in the loft at the end of the summer and really make sure all the holes are made bird proof.

A tropical flower that was the size of a grapefruit.