Household Stuff, Plus Birds

This is that weird little alcove by our front door that I spent time cleaning up recently. The bird's-foot cactus used to live on that windowsill, and the gigantic mutant ZZ plant was in front of the alcove so I could never get in there to clean. Now we've moved the cactus, discarded the misshapen ZZ, cleaned and dusted and brought in that very sculptural dracaena, which is perfect for that space. My next step is to tidy those wires on the floor behind the unicorn. When the ZZ plant was there we couldn't really see them, but now we can and they must be dealt with.

That dracaena, by the way, is the one I rescued from the lawyer's office.

Yesterday was very domestic. The most exciting thing I did was take our sheets and towels to the laundromat to be washed. (Maybe now that I'm home more I should do them myself -- the main problem is how to dry them, since we no longer have a clothesline and our dryer is too small for an entire king-sized sheet set, unless I want them to come out looking like wadded-up Saran wrap.)

I also mowed the lawn, which is why I took these photos.

Things are sprouting, like the Inula at lower left, even though we've had very little rain and the ground is dry as a bone. I planted my teasel seedlings yesterday and actually bent my spade trying to dig the hole! Once I wet the soil and added some compost it was easier to deal with.
 
You can see my wildlife cam to the right. I've been moving it around the garden trying to get the best perspective.

Here's the garden from the bench. The forget-me-nots and bluebells are blooming up a storm! And as you can see we have one teasel right smack in the middle of the lawn -- not the best place, but that's where it grew. Better than last year when we had about 15 of them out there.

I also got a delivery of some compost and topsoil from Wickes, and used it to repot the citrus tree, which wasn't as root-bound as I thought but still needed a new and bigger pot. I bought Miracle-Gro compost because I was so unhappy with the Wickes brand I bought last year. We'll see if this is any better.

Well, THIS is an exciting blog post, isn't it?!

Steve Reed · Robin & Wren

Yesterday morning I awoke early -- about 4:30 a.m. -- and went out to the dining room to take a look at what was happening on the street. Answer: nothing much. But then I heard this little bird singing away in the pre-dawn darkness, and I opened the window and made a recording. According to my Merlin app there are actually several birds there -- a robin and a wren most prominently, but also a great tit and a European blackbird somewhere in the background. (The birds start about four seconds into the clip.)