Hot.

And summer has returned, at least for one day. A greyish morning soon turned to lovely sun and plenty of warmth which lasted through until sunset.

While Peter took the car in for its MOT which it passed, I cycled down to the zoo. There the place was teeming with visitors because for the next few weeks Wednesdays are when they can see the exotic animals. These include all the reptiles and a reptile show and the insects as well as the wallabys, racoon dogs, rheas and Mr Moo the Jersey steer. He's not officially an 'exotic' animal but his field is part of the site where the animals we can't usually show live. And to be fair he probably is one of the most dangerous of the zoo's animals. Having been bought as food for the lions (by the previous owners) he was never handled and now he is enormous and has to be treated with great caution.

I took one look at the crowds in the zoo and tucked myself out of the way in this flower bed next to the wolf dogs. They stayed near me for most of the time and came up to sniff my hand through the mesh fence. I weeded, cut the dead wood from the Chilean lantern bush which didn't do too well last winter and then squeezed past the roses to get to the weeds at the other end which had almost taken over. Once that was done I tidied a few small flower beds and cycled home. 

There I put a second and then a third wash in the machine before giving the hedges a trim. 

The smaller plant baskets had arrived while I was out so my final job of the day was to redo all the pond plants. While I'd been trimming the hedge or rather chatting to a couple of my neighbours another, or maybe the same one I saw last week, dragonfly zoomed over our heads. Hopefully, once the pond plants have grown and attracted insects I'll see more dragonflies.

With no knowing when we'll see the sun again I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting on the terrace watching the sea and the birds. The sparrows are funny to watch as they whizz about in gangs of 10 or 12. I was alerted by the alarm calls of the wrens that Speedy was trying to catch their fledgelings who were sitting in the hedge cheaping loudly. A quick clatter of his food tin brought Speedy running indoors where he was rewarded with a few dry cat biscuits.

Beauty and the Beast, at the zoo.

It was a very different sunset tonight as the sun went down behind a cloudbank so here is another photo from yesterday. I now know that the beam of light is a phenomenom know as a sun pillar caused by the sun reflecting off ice crystals in the atmosphere.