Grey.

A very gloomy grey day today which almost felt like a white-out.

My first job of the day was to clear more stuff from the garage into bin bags as it's rubbish collection day tomorrow. There was also a pile of cardboard boxes to flatten so they can be put out for the recycling. Then I swept and tidied the path beside the house, something I've been meaning to do for a while. That included cutting back the elder bush that grows over the wall (from next door) and spreads across the path. Not a lot of fun in the summer when it gets covered with sticky black aphids. My outside work wasn't all just tidying up, I got to use up the last of a bag of ready-mix mortar. Some I pushed under a slightly wobbly paving slab in the back garden and the rest was used to repair a drainage channel running beside the path next to the garage. That was after I'd cleared out the leaves and soil in the channel and chipped away some old mortar that was partially blocking the drain cover.

Before all this busy work outside we'd begun the day with breakfast (porridge) overlooking the sea. Despite the lack of colour or variation in the sea or sky there was plenty to see. First my attention was caught by two diving birds. They were hard to see from the house even with binoculars, so I popped a tea-cosy over my coffee and trotted down the road to get a better look. Standing on the edge of the cliff they still only showed up as blobs on my camera but I was able to see enough details to identify them as cormorants. There must have been plenty of fish around because as I got to the edge of the cliff a heron flapped away (above) and there were two oystercatchers on the rocks (below).

Best news of all this afternoon was a visit from the builder, the one who is going to do the terrace and then the raised beds in the front garden. He's coming again this afternoon with the chap he works with to have another look and they are starting work tomorrow morning (hopefully). I'm glad I'm out tomorrow because their first job is to bash/drill out the raised section of the terrace which used to be the floor of the bay window which is bound to be very noisy. I'll leave Peter on tea making duty.