Could someone please pick, Flopsy up? I'm sure she's fainted that I've done something ...

Post your photos for May here

I've been mucking about with chalk drawing again ..

Of course it was left to me to make it sticky, sigh... honestly, these days you just can't get the staff...

*runs away laughing*

yeah, sorry about that

Another view of last weekend's rainbow, actually a faint double rainbow seen over a bay that I am unsure of the name though I call it Smithfield Bay.

Very pretty.

We have two pet goats that just hang around. They aren't caged or tethered but don't wander away. That means they get the occasional visitor. So, that is Pint on the left and her new boyfriend on the right. Expect a birth announcement in about five months

Love the double rainbow, Howie, and looking forward to some cute kid photos over the next winter, copago!

I have a rather scrawny and straggly rhododendron which I inherited in the garden when we purchased our house. The first few years it did nothing at all and I threatened to remove it permanently if it didn't flower. The following May it gave me one single but magnificent red bloom, and has continued to give me fantastic flowers every year. I can't go back on my word, so I keep the plant, despite it being the most miserable-looking thing for the other 11 months of the year.

It's about to come into its own for 2016 any day now:

That's gorgeous,Toni. Keep threatening.

As it's now "tomorrow", I can also show you our plums-to-be (if the usual mad winds don't come and blow them off the branches before they ripen) :



Can you guess I've been busy in the garden recently, or that I'm testing out our new camera?

Jill, do you freehand the chalk drawings? How do you keep your lines so straight, I think I'd be sloping up or down the further I moved to the side! Fun drawing in any case, it made me smile.

Interrupting here. There have been such gorgeous photos lately,and I love jigsaws. (I know, get a life). This site is so easy to use for turning photos into jigsaws.
http://www.jigsawplanet.com/. Sorry Flopsy,Jill , but I think it is relevant. If not you can take it off.No problems

I'm ignoring that jigsaw link so much that I made a jigsaw earlier from one of my Hungary pictures and am ignoring the fact that it turned out brilliantly. Ignore me, I'm wittering - I don't have a problem with it.

My problem is that if you put food out for hedgehogs, the local cats eat it and what they don't eat... It rained here today and the only birds that were out and about were pigeons, they ate everything. When the rain stopped and Mrs Blackbird appeared there was no food left. I swear that she stomped her foot. Anyway, she disappeared into the hedgehog cafe and came out with a few banana chips which she tossed on to the ground as they were too large/brittle/sharp for her babies. She gave me the evil eye so I hastily grated a bit of cheese, doled out some more birdseed, and added a few mealworms I was soaking for the robins. She dashed back and forth to her nest with beakfuls of the stuff - and then it rained again. When it stopped I went back to see if the pigeons had returned but found this greedy pig instead:

Wandering through the Koneprusy Caves near Beroun in the Czech Republic.

Our local Tesco in Finchley

Other supermarkets are available...

Meanwhile, this wallflower is a seedling from who knows where which appeared last autumn; I let it grow because who needs to pay for a plant when the birds/winds bring them for free? And now it's a monster - at least three feet high and four feet across (nearly 1m x 1.2m) - it completely dwarfs the wallflowers I actually paid for!

Meet Tane Mahuta (Lord of the Forest) in the Waipoua Forest. Standing at around 52 metres high it is the tallest kauri tree in New Zealand possibly but not the biggest girth, also estimated to be about 2000 years old but no one knows just how old. Just a few minute stroll from the road so easily viewed.

Standing at around 52 metres high.
Bit bigger than the wallflower then Caroline.

Just a bit. Imagine what my garden would look like if one of those things seeded itself in a border... "Come round the back to see my garden tree trunk."

The Travelodge in the centre of Maidenhead

As mentioned in last month's thread, I spent the last weekend of April at a scrapbooking retreat. It was held on a farm. In addition to the farm being a working sheep and wheat farm, it also has a scrapbooking shop with chalets for people who go up there for retreats. There is a bathroom and toilet under the main roof next to the chalets, but in addition, we had an extra outside facility (commonly referred to as the thunder-box or the dunny) which has magnificent views (which I will post tomorrow).

Opunake Lake in Taranaki through the tree branches.

A real life dunny! When I went to Oz I came back with a book about dunnies, with lots of pictures of them in weird colours, in weird places, and no doubt with weird plumbing. When one of my nieces went to Oz she brought me back a handcrafted pottery dunny that sits on my bookcase. And now there's another one, looking smart. Can't wait for the view.

As promised, the view from the loo at sunrise.

Flopsy, I have three pottery dunnies on the window sill in my loo!

I've just planted a new crop of wallflowers to replace the ones that vanished. No photos till they are meant to flower next year.

Henley on Thames.

Lovely photo, MotherGoose! As a natural townie, I've always had fond memories of the two-mile view across rooftops from the loo in my first London lodgings, culminating in the bulk of Battersea Power Station. But I must admit that the view from your retreat is wonderful.

It is a lovely view, MotherGoose! I'm glad I'm not the only one with a pottery dunny, although I might be the only one in the UK...