Feathers, Faces, Flowers

It's Magpie season here. They are nesting and very territorial at the moment.

I haven't had any problems with them, but the daily bike riders try all sorts of contraptions to stay safe from their swooping ways.

Bike helmets full of cable ties, looking like some weird pincushion seem to be the most popular deterrent.

I love the Maggie's, they come and visit my garden and bring their young to feed, finding many juicy, wriggly, creatures.

I love hearing them sing their warbly song and watching them strut around the yard.

I do get a little bit upset when they start taking chunks of my door mat to use as nesting material.

I think they ruined two door mats last season, but I have forgiven them

More playing with fabric, thread and old book pages.

I'm trying different things and seeing what emerges from the page.


Still more playing to be done, lots of inspiration around at this time of the year.

A LITTLE FEATHERY VISITOR

I found this little fellow out in the orchard, on Wednesday morning.

It was sitting on the fence and was so still I thought it was dead, but it's little chest was still moving, albeit very slowly. I carefully reached out to touch it, expecting it would awake and fly away in fright, but no. It just sat there, as if it was frozen to the fence. I gently picked it up having to uncurl it's little claws from the fence wire.

It was still breathing, but obviously it wasn't well.

I took it inside found an empty shoe box and put an old face washer in it and placed it near a heater.

I expected it to warm up and wake up. It took a couple of hours for it to show any real signs of life. It opened it's eyes, stretched it's wings, looked around but didn't try to fly off at all.

I was quite fascinated by this little ball of fluff

When it seemed awake enough. I picked it up and it sat quite happily on my finger. I thought it would fly off without looking back, but no, it just sat on my finger looking around.



I popped it back in the shoe box , took it out to the orchard and placed it in a sunny spot.
I was hoping it would find the energy to fly off but it didn't survive, seems a night out in the open was enough to do the little fella in.

The Irises are starting to flower and the first is "Designer Gown" which my mum bought many years ago. She loved it and so when she passed away, it came to live in my garden. It's like a beautiful , flowing, ball gown and something I have only just discovered........ it has a very subtle perfume.

I never knew that Irises are perfumed, so I have learnt something thanks to Janet at The Empty Nest. She has over 400 Irises in her garden, they must be quite spectacular when in bloom, but I don't fancy the job of digging them up and dividing them!

Well, that's just a taste of what I have been up to this week. The garden is looking a picture thanks to a few hours spent, weeding, digging, mowing etc. There are still plenty of weeds to pull up and the grass could do with another mow, it just grows so fast at this time of year.

There may be a drop of rain on the way but nothing like last weeks, 4 inches.

A rather large life lesson has been learnt here this week and that is to never take anything for granted, whether it be your family, your health or your surroundings, job, home, etc.

Appreciate what you have, slow down enough to see how blessed you really are.

I would love to hear from you if you have time to spare, thank you one and all for dropping by.

I hope you all have a fantastic weekend and find that once you start counting, the blessings start adding up and you may need to take your socks off !!

Till next time,

Claire X