I’m sitting in the garden in the evening sunshine, after a pretty mental week at work. There’s a red spider mite running around on the table; for a while it looked as though it was on an endless circuit around the rim, but after three or four laps it discovered my beer.

They move pretty quickly, so you’ll have to look hard to spot the pinky blur in the picture.

It now seems to be running around the edge of the table again, in the opposite direction. Unless it has a twin of course.

A ginger bee in the garden. One of several.

I’ve never really been much of a gardener; when I was selling my old house, I was even looking for one without a garden. But one of the main reasons for buying this house was that it has a cool little (somewhat neglected) garden.

Around four years ago, I started to take more of an interest in the garden and it’s actually looking pretty good right now.

Last summer’s dreadful weather meant that I didn’t spend any time out there, but this year’s sunshine has pretty much given us another room. There’s still work to do, but I’m content with our little garden. It’s a nice place to be.

I’ve finished my replacement wall too. I should really have taken a before picture.

While on the subject of gardens, we have lots of strawberries.

After only nine years of pondering, I finally made a start on a replacement garden wall today.