Showers.

The morning brought warmth and a mix of sunshine and showers plus a double rainbow or at least part of one. At the zoo I'd been working without a coat when we had a real downpour. I tried to work on in my coat but had to give up and go and shelter in the animal food prep kitchen until the sun came out again.

A quick update on yesterday - no phone call from the doctor, she must have spotted that I'm having bloods taken on Friday and no delivery of a second vanity unit. Guess that was just an admin mix up. Pilates last night seemed more useful at least until I bent my toe backwards on my mat. It was painful at the time but I didn't say anything, you don't do you? but it was blue when I got home and deep purple by bedtime. Dramatically purple and red today, painful and a bit swollen but I'm sure it's not broken.

I drove down to the zoo and spent most of four hours weeding this 'moat'. There were a lot of weeds on top which unfortunately had already seeded but the majority of my work was carefully rolling back the pieces of carpet and digging out the dreaded bindweed roots. I had a go at digging out the bindweed nearer to the path in the spring and today I dug right down by the fence unearthing great handfuls of the spaghetti like roots. I pulled out a particularily tenacious root from under the fencing with a triumphant "Yes!" just as a man walked past which gave him a bit of a surprise. Being half-term there were a lot of visitors in the zoo with most children clutching treasure hunt sheets. As well as looking for different animals they had to find signs with pictures of bones or pumpkins. As one family walked past me the little boy shouted excitedly "Look, a lady!" That made me smile. I had a couple of nice conversations with visitors about the zoo and what I was doing. Once the weeding was done I planted some knautia seedlings, quite a few on the premise that at least some might survive. Because of the carpet under the thin layer of woodchip I had to plant along the edges which isn't ideal but might still work. I planted the phytostegia in the flowerbed by the wolf-dogs where it can fight with the mint at one end and with the vinca in the damp at the other end.

Seeing Mr Pea walking free always excites the children. One mum asked if we had cut his tail feathers to stop him flying off but I explained that it was just the normal moulting process.

Back home it was warm enough to sit outside to do some paperwork and enjoy the view. No choir tonight as our teacher looking after her grandchildren for half-term.