avenueyew

 I feel too tired to function, so this is likely to be .. incoherent.  I've been trying to actually just put words on screen all week though, and tiredness or work has mostly been my reason not to, so I should just get on with saying something, to show willing like.  Today was a lovely day, garden centre in Birr with gytha_uib, good sandwiches, great chat, and unrushed wandering around admiring plants and trying to resist buying All The Things. 

I made a decision this year to attempt to be Bee/Butterfly positive with my scrappy squares of mostly builders rubble, and to be nice to whatever birds were willing to adopt me.  I had been reading with some concern about the decline of sparrows (https://www.irishtimes.com/news/the-sad-decline-of-the-street-wise-sparrow-1.291870) and I'd always enjoyed their chittering, argumentative mobile parties when I was in school.  I had definitely noticed I hadn't been observing them in the last few years.  I've been thrilled to contribute seeds and water during drought to my own neighbourhood host/quarrel/ubiquityof sparrows, I can see them through my window while I work and it's been hours of entertainment.  Gardening has released a particularly savoury array of slugs and snails, and my back garden path (tarmac with a cement edging)  is proving very popular with some young thrushes.  A robin in my front garden birch tree actively encourages me to leave them to whatever my spade has uncovered.  The ants are not pleased with me, at all.   After the trip I was planting a big open daisy down behind my lavender which is constantly buzzing with armadas of bubblebees and I reached over to a spot behind a rock where there was some compost to spare and was ..surprised.. to have it squeak at me.  A small mouse(?) legged it under the box hedging as fast as its tiny feet could carry it and the panicstriken squeak, I would swear, promptly turned to righteous indignation and horrified disgust.  Trust me to upend the Karen of the the small rodent world. 

I laughed, a kid playing ball up the road a little went "what she laughing at" and was responded to with "I don't know, I hate her"  Wow, what a charmer you are, small boy I have never set eyes on in my life. (absolutely and supremely unconcerned about my own personal hater, just to be clear)  The boys, of which there were three, then went on to attempt to play some weird game of football under the van in next door's drive.  I don't know if next door know those kids any better than I do.  The entire time kid two kept telling the other two he hated them.  So not just me then.  Kids are weird.  

I ran out of steam astonishingly early, but I hope to get some more planting and clearing sorted tomorrow.   The idea is to have so many butterflies and bees about the place I can figure out ways to have them form into my own personal army   graciously allow me to take lots of cool photographs.  The ones in Blackwood rarely acquiesce to being my models.  *staples hand to forehead and sighs, dramatically*