Neat

It rained again. And again, and again. 

Because this had put me in a vile mood anyway, it seemed worth me spending the morning challenging my car insurance renewal, which was being quoted at a 50% hike over last year's price. Having used a comparison site to get some much cheaper counter-quotes I phoned the current insurer, and told them I was going to have to cancel if they couldn't reduce next year's premium. Which they promptly did, but not by enough to keep my business - so I'm now back with the insurer I used very happily for about a decade, up till a couple of years ago when their prices suddenly became uncompetitive. 

I hate having to do this ridiculous dance - all the insurance companies strenuously deny that they lower their quotes to attract new business and then raise them once they think you're a fixture on their books, but it's patently obvious that they actually do. R (who was deep-cleaning his study, and therefore having an even less joyful morning than me) tried to cheer me up by pointing out how many rounds of coffee and cake I'd just funded by switching insurers, but as we were stuck at home at the time, and not out having coffee and cake, this notion was much too theoretical to sweeten my temper.

Eventually the rain stopped, though it was still heavily overcast, and the garden was yet again so saturated that most of it was off-limits. Still, I took a camera and the macro binoculars, and went around the sections I could access to see if anyone was about. Generally things were extremely quiet, but in better news there were at least four hairy-footed flower bees working the front border, one being the first female I've seen this year. The males did a kind of double-take as she zoomed through the pulmonaria patch, but then went back to feeding, patrolling, and bickering as though she'd never been there at all, which is behaviour I've seen before, and makes me wonder if newly-emerged females don't smell attractive enough to warrant attention.

Given how dark it was in the front garden this afternoon, my decision to try to get some plumpie flight shots was a triumph of ambition over common sense, and the photos I managed to capture paid for their fast shutter speed in high ISO and ugly grain, so this image has needed significant smooshing. Still though, there's something about a hairy-footed flower bee in flight that charms my soul. On the one hand he looks almost cartoonishly improbable, and yet he's flying so neatly, with his proboscis and his little legs tucked in, and his attitude is so focused and alert, that he somehow defies you not to take him seriously.