A Special Duck.

We had a very wet night which carried on into the morning with sporadic heavy showers throughout the day. There were some very hot moments in the afternoon and the evening is looking to be rather nice. 

It wasn't worth going on a walk with so much rain about so Peter went and bought me an extending hedge trimmer. With the hedges always going to need regular trimming maybe a long trimmer that can be angled over the top of the hedge will make the job easier.

I had a look in Charlie's yesterday but they only sell the top of the range make and I wasn't prepared to pay £334. Instead Peter got me a cheap one from Screwfix which should be good enough for our few hedges.

The common scoter was here again this morning, and last night. My book, admittedly not that comprehensive, says that they are winter visitors which live in large flocks. As I watched him bobbing about on the waves my imagination started working overtime. Perhaps he is a rebel and when the time came for the flock to fly off to their summer haunts he and his mate decided to spent the summer in Wales. And now the rocks under our cliffs are his private fishing ground. 

I did a bit more research (RSPB) and found out that he is indeed special. They are Red Listed as only 52 pairs are known to spend their summers in Britain. He's even more special as the summer residents are shown as being in the north-west of Ireland and the very north of Scotland.

While the weather was so inclement I fitted four wire baskets to the insides of the cupboard doors in the utility room. I was going to build shelves inside but since access might be needed to the water pipes that go through to the bathroom that would have been difficult. I still need to give the plasterboard and the old pink plaster behind a coat of white paint to brighten it all up.

There may only have been eight screws to put in but after working out how to remove the suckers from the baskets (hot water, stick them to the sink and then pull hard), I had to cobble together a way to stop the baskets sliding off the screw heads. Then holding the baskets with my knee and putting in each screw with two different nuts threaded on was kind of tricky.

I also worked on the blue glass spiral and think I'm happy with the arrangement. I did a bit of sitting outside but kept getting distracted by plants that needed cutting and other small garden jobs.