Dry.

A mostly dry day. There was the briefest of showers just now but no sooner had I brought in the towels and dust sheets it stopped and now (bottom photo) we have bright sunshine.

There's probably some local bylaw against having your washing out in the front gardens but with the back garden in the state it's in I deem this an exception. I just want to dry off the cloths we used to mop up the utility room until the washing machine is plumbed in and they can be washed. I suppose I could take them to the launderette but there's so much else to do.

With the morning jobs done, so much easier to swish around with a dry floor mop than to do the hoovering, I escaped to the garden. I would dearly love to work all day chopping at the brambles and other stuff but my back begins to protest after one bag has been filled and today's two bag session was actually too much. Still, bit by bit I'll get there.

My goal today was to uncover the wooden bench which had been buried under a mass of brambles and that whippy rose. Now that has been achieved I'm not sure if the bench can be restored which would be a lovely thing to do. The escallonia on the left hand side has spread inwards about 6-8 ft so it's going to need a lot of cutting back. Going by the hedge on the other side of the garden that we pruned back hard last year it will recover from a mass of brown sticks to make a flowering green hedge once more. Eventually I aim to keep it at least 6 ft high to keep the garden private.

Some of the brambles were the size of chunky rhubarb though a lot tougher to cut with the loppers. Then there was this monster sized stem that took even more effort to chop up. Some of the brambles had bunches of ripening blackberries on them and being the soft hearted soul that I am I carefully cut them off and left them on the pile of sticks in the middle of the garden for the birds and mice.

While I worked the resident robin hopped about just a few feet away. Our robins are bold birds, aggressive towards others of their species and unafraid of humans. Let's hope it knows to stay clear of cats.

Having reached my limit for gardening I went down to the shop to buy some milk. Naturally I went for a walk along the beach first. Although the beach is mostly shingle the sandy areas change from tide to tide. Some days there's hardly any sand while today I was able to walk the whole way along the sand. The make-up of the strandline also varies. There's usually a lot of stringy type seaweed which I'm guessing is thong weed and today there were clumps of bladder wrack. Also there were sizeable heaps of seaweed fragments mixed with sand and small stones. One heap was the size of a sleeping cow though most were the size of suitcases. Sadly there was the body of a guillemot lying on the stones.