Simon says

No, I don't mean Simon is lovely in a gushing way, just it's hard not be enthused by the company of someone so in love with the natural world around him. Every slight flutter, short trill, hum or buzz has meaning to him. I'm quite often wrapped up in my daydreaming world, so it was wonderful to have another layer opened up to me. I can now recognise the dunnock and its slow, sweet warble. Though I still find it a little hard to distinguish it from the robin. The loud, fast pass of the wren, the flute like trill of the blackcap. I love the chaffinch's repetitive chip, chip, chooee, chooee, cheeoo song. It is taking me a while and a lot of thumbing through a bird guide but I think I'm finally making sense of this fluttering world.

I learnt how to use binoculas and saw a kestrel so clear and close on his distance perch. And then a different world as we watch the stoneflies wriggle from their watery world, struggle into ours and then off on the wing. Between this and that we kept and then lost tabs on newts (smooth and great crested) coming up for air.

We differ of course on the world around us. He sees leapord slugs as sexy. I see them sqaushed. He wondered why I turned my nose up at the suggestion of mare's tail around the pond. And why I wanted to cut down the creeping thistle when it's home to thistle tortoise beetle whose larva lives on the underside of the leaves and carries its excreta on its back as a defense. Apparently the birds get a mouthful of crud instead of bug that way. His world is wild. Mine is managed. He loves all and I love some creatures great and small (I think I probably eat more salad than he does though!).

On a different note, the weeds, the slugs! The garden is growing and being eaten a pace at the moment. The forget-me-nots will need to be pulled or they'll smoother all and sundry. There's that inevitable tussle between needing to get things into the ground and the variable weather. The pond is settling now that the ducks aren't wrestling with its margins, though it's a long way from being clear.The meadows are glorious, all full of lady's smock, Good Friday grass and meadow buttercups and the apple blossom is coating the lawn with petals. Lovely.