Creepy-Crawlies

As you may remember, Dave and I applied for our British citizenship about a month ago. We haven't heard anything back, which isn't unusual -- we were told the Home Office might take six months to respond to our application. But I was dismayed to see a story in The Guardian the other day saying that record numbers of Americans have applied within the past year for either citizenship or indefinite leave to remain (which is what Dave and I have now, permanent residency that stops short of citizenship). Many of those applications occurred in the first three months of this year, right after Donald Trump took office.

So basically, Dave and I picked a busy time to apply. We're standing in a long queue of our fellow countrymen, even though we've been here 14 years! I suppose we should have motivated ourselves to do this earlier, but oh well. It's all just a matter of waiting.

I got out in the garden yesterday and did some maintenance, like cutting back some of the alkanet and mowing the lawn. I filled a yard waste bag with trimmings and also did all our weekly houseplant care. I've moved a few plants outside for the summer. I'm hoping that exposure to rain and nature will help control any pests and also give them a growth boost.

I found these little beasts on our teasels. They're ladybird (ladybug) larvae, so they're good -- they eat aphids and other pests. This is part of why I hope moving houseplants outside will be a benefit. There are predators!

Here's a closeup view. Nature is so weird. Nothing about that creepy-crawly suggests that it will eventually become a ladybug, and yet, that's what happens.

I took a big bag of wire clothes hangers up to the cleaners on the high street. We've accumulated them over years and years of taking shirts there to be cleaned and pressed, and finally I've returned them to the source. We don't clean our shirts like that very frequently anymore. These days I mostly just wash them. We're becoming old men and we're letting ourselves go.

Here's the newest compilation of wildlife footage from our garden cam. You'll see:

1. Fox in distance and then closer
2. Neighborhood cat hunting a moth
3. Another fox, possibly different?
4. Me dumping old soil from two flowerpots
5. A robin and its newly fledged chick
6. Two dunnocks, looking like identical twins
7. Robin and chick again
8. A different neighborhood cat (at least this one wears a bell)
9. Fox

I might put the camera back out again but I'd like to find another perspective. The problem is, everywhere else in the garden is likely to include footage of us and/or the dog. Of course, I can cut all that out, but it clogs up the video card!