A new thread for the early birds... July! Half the year gone already! Eek!

Some tubs in my front garden - as if I didn't have enough to water at the back.

A pond in Northchapel, Sussex

We cannot begin July without a grass cicada resting on a gravel path between the Otipua Wetlands and the Pacific Ocean.

Of course we can't, Howie - why, when I logged on this morning and saw that I was so glad you'd shared that bug with me that I gave up my breakfast.

Making new friends in Sussex. The grey one was the friendliest.

Flats in Temple Fortune where one of my friends used to live.

Flopsy, just as well I do not have a photo of a giant weta.....

Anyway, these characters from my stroll along the beach today may be a little a little more accommodating - 2 variable oystercatchers and 1 South Island pied oystercatcher staring out at the Pacific Ocean.

This is the green wall on the North Circular in Golders Green. It replaced the banking which was sliding down and is made of panels which were slid in place ready planted last year, which I watched them put up while they worked overnights to save blocking the traffic.

How to take a photo in the dark... shine torch, point camera, hope.

This is the smallest of my visiting hedgehogs, taken just after it emerged from a circling, clicking, hissing war of, well, circling, clicking and hissing with another, slightly bigger hog. That spot is a favourite place for hog wars but it has quite a steep slope so I used to get very worried that one would curl up then get rolled over the retaining wall. Then I saw hogs of various sizes climb up the garden steps faster than I can so I stopped worrying quite as much.

Yesterday's sunrise

It seems like a good year for roses, it has rained a lot (and then some) and as my garden soil is heavy clay they're in their element. It's hard to get some things (a lot of things) to grow in such claggy soil but the roses keep on growing. This pink rose is doing particularly well:

Oh yes!
Mine are OK ... for one day. We have 33degrees at the moment(and thats at 7 am!) so no chance. Keep em coming please , thats a beauty

One of the parking machines at the hospital where I work - spot the error!

Is it that you can't use Amex?

No, try again.

They can't spell the word - "Receipt"......shame on those who forgot the old rule - I before E, except after C

Mommakat beat me to it. I tried to answer from my phone but that darn autocorrect wouldn't let me use reciept as a word!

Ahem I was MAKING A JOKE!!

Do we believe her ladies?

(Yes, of course we do!)

I before E except after C - how WEIRD!

Edited to add - this machine has been in place since around July 2014, from memory. Certainly long enough to have the mistake rectified. I know photos of it have been posted on Facebook for a laugh.

One of the last remaining working Routemasters which is currently residing in Holloway bus garage. It has been fully restored and is now mainly on show.

I am getting closer to the Jack's Point lighthouse (the small bit of white on the end of the land to the left), about half way from home. Then, of course, there is the stroll back home.....

Although this has been my local station since 1995 I don't think I've ever used it, mainly as before I lived here the bus went there but not my local train, and it's so expensive now and over a mile away I don't bother, but have used the ones past it as I could park there.

Sunset over the park at the end of my road

The village pond in Upton Grey, Hampshire