I made it

After an upsetting morning, *, reminiscent of a similar event last September, I was not really in the mood to do much today.  But with W's encouragement, I managed the same walk as I managed on the Monday after my previous op.

I think it was harder, but it's good to get out.  The hedgerows are abundant with berries, these blackberries just a few of many, joined by hawthorn berries, sloes, rosehips, and honeysuckle berries.  The hazel catkins are just starting to develop.

It has been suggested on Facebook that the thief of our goldfish is an otter.  Though I don't think an otter would have set one of the fish free in our wildlife pond, as happened last year.  Tomorrow may involve a trip to the garden centre to get more goldfish.  We have a motion sensitive wildlife camera and we'll point it at the patio, see if we can spot the culprit.

* For the sake of readers not friends with me on Facebook, here is the text of an earlier FB post:  We have a largish goldfish pool on our back patio.  It's invisible from the road, or the field alongside our garden.

Last September, someone paid us a clandestine visit, removed both the goldfish from the pool, along with a quantity of weed.  The weed, and one goldfish, ended up in our wildlife pond, from where we were able to retrieve it.  The other goldfish completely disappeared.  This clearly was human intervention, even if a heron could manage to balance on the side of our water feature and capture the goldfish (which I really believe is unlikely), he would not have moved fish and weed to our pond!

Earlier this year, we bought 3 more goldfish to keep the other guy company.

This morning, we woke to find the pond furniture (fountain and floating plant basket) dissarranged and the fish all gone.  We have to believe that the same person is responsible for both occurrences.  The annoying thing is that I probably heard them, at about 4am.  

Although we are not emotionally attached to the fish in the same way that we would be to a cat or dog, we would find this invasion of our property upsetting at any time, but I'm just 4 days post knee replacement, so feeling particularly fragile.   We can think of no reason for anyone to subject us to this prank.  The fish were only bog standard goldfish, bought from the garden centre for no more than £3 each!  They're not some fancy carp!  So no doubt we'll replace them in a little while.  We may invest in a camera set up for the future.