Excuse me

Lovely spring-like day today. Even though we wasted a lot of it on a lie-in. Lunch outside, watching the little animal soap opera playing itself out on some spare fencing. The frog was minding its own business, when Stumpy shimmied up the board looking for somewhere warm to bask. He spent some time with his nose in the frogs rear end, before crawling up alongside to snuggle up against him. This is the moment when Stumpy suddenly seemed to realise that he was snuggled up with a frog: he scuttled off fairly shortly afterwards. Only to suffer the indignity of gendarmes (little red and black beetles) running over him.

The frog just wriggled a bit and stayed soaking up the sunshine.

Meanwhile, Mr B achieved success in terms of floors/ceilings by getting rid of the last bit of rotten floor from the top floor of the house. Which now has very little floor as a consequence. Next job, if I followed things right, is to start getting rid of all the mess and rubble created from this last two weeks of destruction. Then some new joists and, in due course, new floors and ceilings. Then I suppose the cleaning/decorating cycle begins again.

But at least in a few days (once the rubble is gone) I can start cleaning the layer of dust that coats everything in the house.

While Mr B tore the house to bits, I was making a start on the same job in the garden. First, 20 metres of old wire fencing to tear out of the soil where it had fallen years ago, then on with scraping off the top layer of turf. This was relatively easy work - the earth being very soft from all the weeks of rain - though it was hot work (with me even down to a t-shirt). With lots more digging still to come I didn't want to break myself on the first day, so limited myself to a small patch. And then lots of garden planning, and research on fencing options to keep the bunnies out.

Coming up with the elusive perfect recipe for a sauce to go with duck and rice was a tasty end to the day. Now I'm off to groan for a while about my sore back (and trying to ignore the tickle in my throat).