Grey.

After a wet night the day was grey and damp. The day stayed warmish with fairly high humidity. In the late afternoon the sun tried to break through the clouds but never for more than a couple of minutes at a time. 

A man turned up at 8.00 this morning to work on the rayburn so I missed my chance to cook my morning porridge (I had porridge for a late lunch instead.) Today's work was not another repair but to swap the double oil valve, only needed if you are using the rayburn to heat the central heating, for a much less temperamental single oil valve. At the same time the redundant central heating burner was removed. The deal was that we got the better single valve and in return the heating company got spare parts which are no longer made. It took all morning for this to be done and apart from hearing heavy sighs from the engineer there was a plenty of heating talk with Peter. Lots of stuff about oil flow rates and levelling adjustments. I left them to it.

I did go and potter around outside in between wondering when I was going to be able to get something to eat. One thing I did was to replant some of this creeping Corsican mint which was growing in the lawn. For some time I had noticed a strong mint smell when I mowed one patch of grass but it took a lot of looking to find this tiny mint. I labelled it 'micro-mint' in the propagating beds and then searched on-line to find it's real name. Only then did I recall that many years ago I had bought some to grow around the stone steps. That planting failed because the soil there gets too dry but obviously some escaped into the lawn.

My main gardening job was to cut down all the alchemilla growing in one of the raised beds and do a bit of weeding there. That lead to me clearing the steps down to the stream, sorting out a bit of the path along the stream and weeding the bed with the spreading hardy geranium. I call that variety my thug because it spreads quickly if not treated with a firm set of secateurs but it has a pretty purple flower and is good for awkward spots.

Hardly any butterflies around today but the montbretia was buzzing with the sound of white tailed bumble bees visiting the flowers.