~of rain~

be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
thy fate is the common fate of all,Into each life some rain must fall,
some days must be dark and dreary.

from h.w.longfellow 'the rainy day'


good grief, it only started raining in the night, and my oh my did it come down!
swampy got up in the night to check things and found water creeping in the back door, an old towel was laid down until this morning when he checked and cleared the gutters.
i was dreading getting up to see what it had done to our plants but they seem to have stood up to the downpour well and the grass looks much better for the soaking.

it has rained hard all day, well tell a lie, most of the day.
it was clear enough for me to hang out the blankets i have over the sofa and armchairs to give them a good airing, then it started to pour down again and it has not stopped since.

it seems that just a day of cloud dampens my mood~strange since i am such an autumn/winter lover, i guess this last winter i must have depleated my stocks of sunshine and i really need some now.

we have been busy watching our blue tit family~despite leaving their nest they still hang around our garden, being fed and practicing feeding themselves. and toay we had a new visitor~a squirrel, the first we have seen in our garden since moving here.

we also think we have either a fox or hedgehog come to attack the rubish bag, which we tuck, hdden, around the corner by our back gate~i guess we cannot put off buying a proper dustbin any longer! the other night while in bed i heard a sound of something jumping our fence, which is about 6 1/2 foot high~do foxes jump fences i wonder? i dont think its a cat as we have not seen a single one since moving here.




still with the nature that surrounds us~two weeks ago our neighbour found an egg, carefully 'planted', in one of her flowerbeds and she was convinced it was swampy and her son playing a trick on her. then last week swampy found one in the flowerbeds that run along the side of our house...we soon discovered that foxes prefer rotten eggs to fresh and our local one has been stealing the eggs of our friend, owen's, chickens and carefully hiding them in the surrounding gardens to come back to later! apparantly the cubs have been seen around so i will have to keep an eye open for them~with my camera at the ready.

i am grateful to the rain for one thing, and that is i have been tucked up at my table, surrounded by books and papers getting the work done for my next essay~as we are off camping in two weeks time i really want to get well ahead with my work, so i can have five whole days to enjoy myself. we are actually only going a grand total of five miles down the road to milford on sea, but the main aim is to meet up with good friends we have not seen since september. it is also cycling distance (for me!) to the sea so i will be loading evangeline and swampys mountain bike into pippin, as fingers crossed it will be glorious weather and i can go in the sea.

and now...time for a cup of tea and sit on the sofa with this...



i finished 'the darling buds of may' last night and just couldnt wait to start this again!

*~*i hope wherever you are your weekend has been a good one*~*