Tiny Mushroom.

The morning was spent trimming the ivy from around the back of the house; a rather distasteful annual task, particularly when the sun is shining. The dry dust gives me hay fever to the extent that I end up with an over-dose of anti-histamine and still end up with sore nose and eyes. If left, the growth clogs the guttering which isn’t very clever; but we keep it as the birds love it in spring and the bees love the late autumn nectar flow. I didn’t bother to look for nests, but it’s a safe bet that there were several new ones this year and we do know that there was a pair of wrens occupying one by the back door, but they’re so secretive that we rarely see them once the young have fledged. There are so many young starlings about that I suspect they have been nesting there too.
 
It seemed a shame to waste all the piriton so I went to see the bees in the afternoon safe in the knowledge that I wouldn’t have to take any more if I was stung. I was disappointed to find that the vandals who had slashed the polytunnels had also had a go at the bee hives; by the look of the one hive they had tampered with, they had been seen off by the residents. A hive strap had been undone and left on the ground, a roof removed and left with it, while the crown board (which keeps the bees contained once the roof is off) had only been partially removed. The perpetrators were probably naively expecting to find jars of honey inside being from the class of yoof that doesn’t realise that meat comes from dead animals. Thousands of bees boiling up through a carelessly opened gap can be quite intimidating to the uninitiated, even when wearing protective gear.
 
The Blip of the one of the tiny mushrooms that surface in our lawn each year was taken during the balmy evening. It would be nice if they had the courtesy to form a fairy ring.