Sunny.

Lots of sun with a few fluffy clouds and a constant cooling breeze. Perfect sunbathing weather, maybe even too good. We try to limit the amount of time actually sitting in the sun and also use high factor suncream. 

Peter has now progressed to cutting all of the communal grass, not just the bit in front of our house which I think is taking community spirit a bit far. However he has persuaded a couple of the neighbours, the ones with young families, to cut the grass once in a while too. I just think it would make the job easier if the other three households that have lawnmowers would join in as well. My contribution is to mow our little lawn as it's an awkward shape and has plants spreading over the grass that need moving out of the way. 

I noticed the other day that one of the passion flowers wasn't looking happy. I thought it was due to insects so I sprayed with bug killer. Then today I saw that the plant was just about dead. Closer inspection showed slugs had stripped the stem, aargh! I've applied slug pellets but I've little hope that the passion flower will recover. And it had half a dozen flower buds about to open. I keep my use of slug pellets to a minimum but this is one case where they are needed.

This afternoon I thought I'd follow Peter's example and use my Kindle to read a book. (Invisible Women is the sort of book you can only read one or two chapters at a time.) Up till now I've just used my Kindle to play Scrabble which keeps me well entertained and hopefully working the brain. This morning I downloaded a free book but when I went to read it outside I couldn't see a thing. I tried turning my chair around and shading the screen but nothing helped. In the end I went and found an Ian Banks book to read on Peter's shelf. The majority of our vast collection of books are still packed away from the last move. Only when Peter came to join me outside did I find out that I should have tried increasing the brightness of the screen but by that time the Kindle was back in our bedroom and I was too settled to give it a try.

Last night's blazing sunset.