Tail Tales.

This morning the clouds loomed greyly (is that a word? Spellcheck seems to think so.) overhead as I sat outside clutching my mug of coffee. Wrapped up in my warm fluffy dressing gown I was enjoying my view when what should I see but a black tail in the water. A scan with my binoculars which were as ever close to hand revealed not one but two tails belonging to a couple of dolphins that were hunting along the reef. It wasn't long before the sky darkened even more and we had a major downpour. However the Met Office page correctly predicted that the day would improve and by the end of the day we were back to lovely summer sun.

With no rain due I cycled down to the zoo for the usual weeding this time of one of the gravel sections. I was working near the ferret's enclosure something I'm not that keen on when there are visitors around as Ralph the ferret is usually tucked up in his sleeping quarters. So I get to hear visitors excitedly telling their companions that 'here's the ferret' whilst looking at an empty pen. Generally I let them know that if they look through the window of the sleeping quarters they might see Ralph in his hammock but he can't always be seen in there. Today as I weeded right next to his enclosure he came out and spent a lot of time being extra cute, and smelly much to the delight of the few visitors that happened to be around at the time. Afterwards I had my usual walk around, this time sans camera, to see what I need to do next week. As I was topping up the ponies' water I noticed that somebody had given Buddy's forelock a trim with a pair of scissors. In the horse world manes and tails are never cut with scissors and it looks very odd especially as it's a very high cut. When I asked nobody was quite sure which of the regular volunteers had done it though it was probably because Buddy has conjunctivitis, but honestly it looks so silly. One nice moment before I left was hearing a group of older visitors commenting on the lemon balm I planted in a narrow border along one of the paths.

Cycling home against the wind was hard work but after a short break I was ready for more gardening. All the plants in the rockery are doing really well. So much so that I need to start trimming some of the more vigorous plants back. I shan't do too much yet because while most of the plants should survive the winter's storms there are some that I bought just because they looked pretty that might not be so hardy. In the meantime the trimmings are being planted up in trays ready to go out as groundcover in the shingle garden next spring.

I finished off the afternoon with an hour of knitting in the sun before going off to Pilates.