Stowaway

My lovely sister came over today to have lunch with R and me. She's quite a bit younger than I am and is still working, so we don't get to see her all that often, but we made up for this today by talking ourselves to a complete standstill. There's an excellent photo somewhere, taken about 20 years ago by my brother-in-law, of the blur of heads and hands that is K and me doing Competitive Conversation, which I must track down and add to R's digital photo frame - it's a happy memory, which I know will make him smile whenever he sees it.

By the time K set off to brave the homeward journey through tea-time Oxfordshire traffic, the weather had closed right in, nothing was flying, and I thought I'd have to dig a victim subject out of a tree for today's post. But just as I was getting my gear together, R offered me this Red-legged Shieldbug, which had hitched a ride on his fleece while he was tipping kitchen waste onto the compost heap at the bottom of the garden - only revealing itself once he was back in his study, by flying down and landing on his desk. He'd caught it in an empty glass topped with a piece of card, from which it was trying desperately to escape, but as soon as he tipped it out onto this heuchera leaf it became quite passive, merely walking round in anxious circles and making no attempt to fly. In fact it seemed to find the whole experience pretty discombobulating - which I suppose you would in its shoes - and as soon as I'd photographed it, I decided that the kindest thing would be to return it to the wild garden. As soon as I offered it the glass it walked straight in, but then climbed out again and sat on the rim as I chauffeured it down to the quince tree, where it stepped off onto a leaf and marched rapidly away, without so much as a farewell wave.