Visitors.

After a seriously bad night's sleep (my fault for trying to go from 2 to 1 amitriptyline tablets, I'll try 1 1/2 tonight) I gave up at 6.30, listened to the radio and heard the good news that today was going to be a scorcher and also a warning for isolated but severe thunderstorms tonight and tomorrow. Made myself a cup of tea then did my exercises. As I'm finding it difficult to fit the exercise bike in the afternoon I did my half hour straight away before going on to the usual round of morning housework.
Once the postman had been at midday I built up the dam and took the gratings off the gutter at the top of the drive.

When I walked up the drive to take the box of peelings to the compost heap I spotted a small, young bird sitting in one of the azaleas only a few feet away. I turned back to the house to get my camera and there at my feet was Patch who was following me to check out if there was anything good to eat in the box. That poor trusting fledgling wouldn't stand a chance with Patch so I scooped the cat up and shut him in the kitchen with some milk. After I took some photos the fledgling flew into the apple tree which is a bit higher up and for the rest of the day the cats were too busy sprawling about outside on the warm paving stones. Later on as I swept the paving around the scree garden and then crawled on my hands and knees pulling up as many of the seedlings growing between the slabs the bird appeared again. I've looked it up and it's a young robin which might explain some of its lack of fear around humans. It perched on the side of the bucket I was putting weeds into, cocked its head to peer inside with one eye then the other eye before spotting a beetle crawling across the slabs. It ate the beetle, picked up a worm before jumping into a little gully to catch another worm and then came back and ate the first worm. If I had thought about it I should have recognised this very robin-like behaviour.

I was quite glad that some of my work was in the shade as it got very hot indeed.

I was talking to Peter in the kitchen when all of a sudden I noticed a loud buzzing noise. Being somewhat wary of strange noises after hearing but not recognising the sound of the barn burning the other week I went out to investigate. There above the roof was an enormous swarm of bees. I quickly went back inside to shut all the windows. Then I got concerned that the bees were congregating above the chimney which takes the hot air from the rayburn oven. Not wanting to take any chances I put a bread crust in a foil dish into the oven hoping that the smoke from the burning bread would deter any bees from trying to head down the chimney. (That's why we can't smell anything burning in the oven.)

By this time the bees had dropped down behind the house. Hoping they were going off into the trees I looked closer and realised they were going into the tiny space under the flat roof that sits over where the piano is in the living room. That space is inaccessible and the only way to get in would be to take part of the roof or the ceiling underneath apart. I rang up a local bee lady, there's a good website which gives you the phone numbers of bee keepers in the area, but there was nothing she could do if she couldn't get at the bees. She did explain that often a swarm will stay for 3-5 days before moving on again so I'll keep my fingers crossed. I'm not sure I want to find out how much more I'll react as in the past for each bee sting my reaction was progressively worse. The only other option is to call the council to exterminate them, something I wouldn't really want to do. I may try some loud piano playing underneath to discourage them.