Sunny.

I thought the weather men had got it wrong again when they forecast a sunny day and out of the window were dark clouds but it turned out they were right and the day brightened up as the hours went by.

This morning the Hospice shop people came in their large van which took a lot of manoeuvring to turn around in the yard. Disappointingly they didn't take all the chests of drawers, the wardrobe or the cupboard as they said that people coming into the shop preferred more modern items.  They did take a couple of chairs, the coffee table and the stripped pine dresser. I'd rather they made money out of them and not an antique dealer. However they gave me the phone number of another charity who also take furniture and they will be coming next week. Later a nice chap came round to look at the piano which he is going to have. He's a self taught guitarist who is now learning the violin and the piano. I'm only thankful that I'm not faced with having to break up the piano.

During the day I got on with a project that turned out well. Because Squeaky had been indoors at night she had her own extra large litter tray made from the blue storage box. While I was thinking what to do with the box and not wanting to use it for anything else I came up with making a litter box for the other cats. At the moment they have free access to the outside so haven't needed a tray but when we move I will need to keep them inside for a time. Also as the gardens are small and many are paved or have decking I thought it would be better if they used a litter box which I can keep outside by the cat flap in the kitchen wall. I had been looking on line for a large litter box when I thought 'Why not make my own?' I used a jig-saw to cut out the clip-on section of the blue lid and then used Gripfill to stick it to the upturned clear box. That way the top can be taken off for cleaning. I cut a piece out of the clear box to make a doorway and then cut down the waste piece, drilled some holes and used split rings to fix that as a swinging flap.

Here Patch has gone into the box after a piece of cheese. He was soon joined by Speedy proving that should they want both cats fit in the box together. Total cost of this litter box was £6.

With the sun came the butterflies. Today there were a lot of comma butterflies, usually I only see one alongside the red admirals and small tortoiseshells. 

The comma butterfly gets its name from the white mark on the underside of the wings. They are also called angle-wings because of the jagged shape of the wings. 

I've been trying to get some photos of this male southern hawker dragonfly for a few days and finally I found him sitting on the hydrangea bush.