Sunny.

The sun was out again and I had the whole day at home, how good is that? I even gave in to the holiday feeling and sat in a sheltered spot to read and have a coffee. The morning was a little cooler due to a chill breeze but that made for perfect drying conditions. I got a load of washing in the machine but before I could hang our cream bedding on the line I gave the 2 washing lines a thorough wipe. Those 2 ropes have been up for many years and really I could do with replacing them with new ones that haven't got algae growing on them. 

My next job was to chisel out the mortar between the slabs by Peter's barbecue. For some reason that corner didn't get any mortar when the slabs were laid down and only after I carefully put mortar in did I discover that water seeps out from the retaining wall and creates a permanent puddle right across the paving there. Something had to be done as green algae was happily growing in this puddle. If I've dug out enough of the mortar to allow the water disappear somewhere beneath the slabs then I'll put gravel in the gaps to make it look a bit better. 

It's time for all the paving to have a spring clean with the pressure washer so I thought I'd start with the paving by the barbecue. I don't seem to be able to run the pressure washer for too long before the water stops flowing. Peter tells me that our bore-hole water pump is overdue for replacement but at £500 I'll be content with doing a section then leaving it for a while to allow the tank to fill up. One other job done today was to rub down a few rusty spots on my green car. I found the rust had gone quite a way under the paint on one spot on the roof and by the time I had rubbed down to shiny metal there was a small hole as well. I painted the bare metal with metal primer and when it was dry I plugged the 2-3 mm hole with some chewing gum! Well it doesn't come off city streets so I thought it might do the job. Now I need to get some touch-up paint in the right shade of bright green (a good thing I don't really care too much what my car looks like.)

I took all these flower photos using the manual settings as the yellow colour burns out with the automatic settings. From the top;dandelion, daisies, kerria and king-cup.