Seeing pink elephants...

Today we've had rain - glorious soft gentle warm rain - virtually all day! You can almost feel the garden drinking the moisture in, breathing a huge sigh of relief. And I've had a lovely restful homely day - stocking up the cupboards with food for the week, cleaning Chris's room (he's back for the summer on Wednesday), baking a carrot and apricot cake, overseeing a bit of gentle revision and catching up with a few bits of work. I now feel wonderfully relaxed and rested.

We ran the moth trap last night and amongst the many heart and darts and rufous minors, there was this wonderfully showy elephant hawk moth. These always look far too exotic to be British, but they are relatively common and turn up in the garden every year. The caterpillars, which supposedly look like an elephant's trunk, feed mostly on rosebay willowherb. I gently popped this one on some red valerian for it's photoshoot (well, you can't have too much pink!) It's wings were vibrating ready for take off,which accounts for the slight motion blur.