Dry.

I've had a really busy day. I was woken by the sun shining through the window though later it was more hazy. Not as windy as yesterday and it was a fairly warm wind which was a pleasant change from the cold winds of the last few days. I've had the whole day at home and as well as getting through my list of jobs there were other tasks which revealed themselves to me as I worked. I've cleaned and oiled the wooden garden table and chairs,  cleared out the gutters at the back of the house, finished weeding and sweeping the front patio and removed the weeds and soil from the concrete by the wood shed. The only job which defeated me was fitting the new toilet seat which I had bought yesterday. I didn't get round to the 'fitting' part as after half an hour of struggling I had only been able to turn the plastic screw things holding the old toilet seat on, half a turn each. I gave up at that point and will ask Vytas to do it instead. The extra jobs included weeding at the back of the house, cleaning the outside of bathroom window which was speckled with orange mould, weeding in the bog garden and clearing the steps down to the stream. The stream is full of lots of little trout at the moment.

I also made some scones as I thought it would be nice to have a Devon cream tea (scones with jam and clotted cream) this weekend. I haven't made scones for a long time so I thought I better have a go today in case I need to buy some tomorrow. The first batch in the oven were taking a long time as the oven temperature wasn't high enough (that's the fun of a Rayburn) so I cut out the rest of the scones and began to tidy up. I took a handful of dough crumbs to throw outside, a 30 second job, but when I came back Patch and Squeaky were sitting on their counter looking down at Speedy with admiration/shock? who was on the floor with an uncooked scone in his mouth. I yelled and chased him into the sitting room. We did a lap around the room which included a quick dash behind the sofa and the scone was no longer in Speedy's mouth. I caught him, threw him out and closed the windows. I couldn't believe that Speedy had eaten the scone during the chase so I went back to check if he had dropped it somewhere but there was nothing to be seen. And when I went back into the kitchen there was Patch under the table and one less scone on the counter. That too disappeared in a flash so I guess they'll both have tummy aches from eating uncooked self raising four dough. The remaining scones were eventually all baked and I tested one, jam but no cream, and they were fine. 

Crocosmia 'Lucifer' is the first to flower of the different varieties of crocosmia in the garden.