Brown and blackbird

Another day of mixed weather - the odd burst of sunshine, but rain in the air when I came in from the garden at 4.30. I've been checking and relabelling my potted ferns - always annoying when I find that a label has gone and I'm left with some obscure unknown fern. I found a tie-on label lying on the ground saying simply 'Boot soil' - I've forgotten which fern it referred to. A few years ago the president of the British Pteridological Society (aka the Fern Club) went on a fern exploration over in the USA. He cleaned his boots before packing up to come home, but on unpacking found a small amount of soil which he'd missed. He promptly potted it and in due course a fern came up! 

I chose another shrub to plant today. This time it's a pink form of the fragrant Rhododendron maddenii subsp. crassum, to give it its Sunday name. Later flowering than some, a little more tender than many, but more beautiful than most, it's planted on the lip of the bank where it will hang over the edge and be visible (and odoriferous) from the road. Daughter Two gamely stood on the ladder to stop me sliding down the bank while I chipped out the hole with a hand mattock.

We've been seeing some brown-billed blackbirds in the garden over the last couple of months. Thought at first they were incomers from the Continong, but it appears that they're this year's male hatchlings - the brown bill and brown wingtips soon become yellow and black respectively. This is my Blip today, taken through the window.

Limerick of the Day:

While traversing the steep streets of Chippenham
Mick was always afraid that he'd slippenham.
Then he chanced on the ruse
To cut down on the booze
And to buy some new boots with more grippenham!