Down at the bottom of the garden, among the birds and the bees

Developments in the veggie patch:

• The salad leaves are rampant, thanks to the warm, wet weather, and growing faster than we can eat our way through the bounty
• The squash and courgette plants grow higher and higher, succulent Triffid-like monsters - embryo blossoms are starting to form, fingers crossed for some sunshine to coax them out
• The runner beans are a bit weedy but making concerted efforts to twirl themselves up the canes
• The strawberries are looking promising, more buds showing everyday - the cage was carefully constructed after an eye-witness saw a pesky squirrel making himself right at home in amongst the babies
• Peas (out of shot) are looking luscious, with six or seven fat little pods already
• And there's a veritable forest of broad beans

Here's hoping for a goodly harvest!

All construction efforts courtesy of The Boy: he has the necessary survival skills for a post-oil Apocalyptic world, for which today's transport strike has shown I am pitifully equipped.

He's coming with me - when the time comes, we'll head for the hills, and he can build us a raft ... and maybe a fort ... and maybe a wind-turbine.

Early Saturday morning

Early Saturday morning. Rain gently patters against the panes and the brick, leaving marigolds clustered with jewels. Drainpipes gush soothingly. Pink geraniums gently nod in the breeze. Silence: no cars, no children, no football, no neighbours TV. Two fat glossy pigeons with gleaming neck feathers sit amid ivy on the fence outside the backdoor: Mr and Mrs, facing each other. A squirrel, beady eyed and lithe, races nimbly, importantly, to and fro. Faint birdsong spirals from a lustrous blackbird in a far chestnut tree. The garden grows fatly. The clock ticks. Peace.