Craning out of the kitchen window

while eight whooper swans made a low double pass over the house.

The final flush of dog-violet...

Heath milkwort, starry squill, the new blue...

Sun-addled

I went straight from bed to the garden this morning, taking the mexican blanket with me to finish off my lie-in outside; dogroses hectic with bees and flies, feet bare to sun my single chilblain. Every so often Owl would stagger out from the ribena bushes with buckling legs and fall over on the blanket next to me, and when we both got too hot, he'd stagger back into the shade, and I staggered up to the wall to get the sea-breeze on my face. Yep, summer. Yachts from Brittany and Trondheim in Lerwick Harbour, snipe drumming last night under the finest skelf of a moon, tiny little flowers coming out on the moor and sassy grasses, and the broken blue eggshells of starlings everywhere. I met a cormorant (let's plump for a cormorant and not make a meal of it) sitting by the second of the three lochans, quite distant from the sea. He had his wings out limply and looked about as addled as I feel now.

Knitting...

as the votes come in...