Good afternoon everyone.
How are you all doing?
I’m in our garden as I write this, enjoying the sunshine in between random bouts of pottering, weeding and generally keeping the place tidy.
We had a lovely afternoon on VE Day with our own private celebration of afternoon tea complete with bunting.

Since then, we have often had lunch or drinks in the garden, imagining which National Trust property we have visited that day.

It’s lovely to have the time to keep on top of jobs and enjoy the space we have.

It would be lovely to see what everyone else has been up to during recent times.
I hope you are all keeping well and staying safe.

We've had some new visitors to the garden this year including a pair of grey wagtails and a pair of blackcaps.
The video is of one of the wagtails taken a couple of weeks ago.
A pair of great tits have nested and are very busy zooming in and out of the bird box feeding their chicks.
Other residents/visitors (in order of arrival one day) include: Goldfinches, Wood pigeons, Collared doves, Blackbirds, Starlings, Robins, Wrens, Jackdaws, Pigeons, Blue tits, House sparrows, Dunnocks, Crows, Magpies, Chaffinches, Greenfinches.

They are lovely and the bird song is beautiful - but they leave so much poop!

We've a duck in our garden!!! Strange times indeed.

A personal experience of a lovely garden.  A number of years ago I went to visit friends in North Wales.  When I arrived my hosts said we would be visiting a garden the following day – it wasn’t too far.
The day dawned, the sun shone and my friends and I walked across the road, to another house and went round to the back garden. The hosts were taking part in the Open Gardens scheme and opening up their garden, making a charge, and sending the money to charity.  There was also tea and cakes on sale.

However the garden was magical.  It was on the side of a hill, so it was in many layers.  Little paths wended their way around flower beds, bushes and vegetable patches (Yes more than one).  There were a number of natural springs in the garden, and they had been incorporated into the design.  Of course the weather made all the difference, so the afternoon was a lovely experience.
 
Eventually I made my way up to the top layer of the garden, which overlooked the bedroom windows, and what was there?  A chicken run, with lots of chickens – actually rescue hens from a Battery Farm. They were not free range, but had lots of space to peck around in, and seemed quite content with their life.
 
It was such a treat.

Hi some photos from our garden, hope every one is keeping OK  stay safe.