Dry.

A silvery morning turned into a sunny afternoon at least for a short time and now the clouds have begun to roll in.

We had an early morning phone call to say the lads would be with us for the day. They've been been painting walls and woodwork and are nearly done. As my tester for the toilet walls had turned out to be a bit on the blue side they had taken my 1/4 tile sample to see if they could get a better match from a different paint brand but both the tester pots they brought for me to look at were too grey. In fact the tiles colours are greyer than I realised but in the end I went for a light blueish grey (as in the middle of the sea below) that toned in with the lightest grey of the tiles. If that turns out not to be 'right' it's only a small area to repaint.

Having had a good night's sleep I felt ready to give heaving concrete blocks around another go and by splitting the work into two sessions managed to fill the first of the raised beds. That's half-way up and as well as the concrete blocks I filled in the gaps with smaller rubble. This mostly came from a pile in the front garden and I was able to pace myself by only filling up my bucket half way. The sun was still shining when I finished so I gently pulled up weed seedlings in the pebbled area before going on to dig out the roots of one of the shrubs that had grown down through the bottom of a pot. I'd long since chopped off the branches but the roots needed work. That's one down and a few more to go.

The sun had gone in by the time I sorted myself out to sit out on the terrace but it was still lovely to sit out joined by Peter and Speedy. Can you believe that cat who in the days when we lived on the farm would have been ecstatic just to have tinned cat food instead of dry biscuits has just licked the gravy off his dinner and left the chunks? Hmm, the chunks have gone back in the tin for tomorrow night's supper. He does that once in a while, he's probably stealing another cat's dinner somewhere.

I had a bit of photography fun this morning playing with lighting or rather holding a torch in one hand and moving it around to experiment with the shadows. I picked up this stone (about 2" x 1") from the beach the other day because it had a sparkly side and it wasn't until I got it home that I realised it had crystals inside though I'm not sure if it counts as a geode.

This large prickly cockle shell benefits from side lighting showing up the spikes that give it its name.