High summer in the garden

Swallows. Weasels. Tiny printers

The phone line is covered in swallows, that have recently fledged. When they catch insects, the adult swallows dip low, swooping down around past my legs, so low even where the grass is so short it is barely there, I can hear it rustle, moved by the breath of their wings, perhaps, or their stomach skimming past. They are so agile, and so, so close, so confident in their flying skills. They know that they can avoid a such a lumbering idiot, earth bound and slow. I am not a concern to them. They have the next lot of babies to feed.

I lie in the hammock and become gradually covered in tiny little black bugs, which become glued to me with a mix sweat and dissolving sunscreen. I have a feeling that they live in the clouds and come down to earth inthe rain, and another feeling that I just made that up. I think they are just some kind of thrip, crawling around making me itch. One waves its tail and flies off. I could forgive them if they came from the clouds. My brain is too hot to work properly and to be honest, it doesn’t do a great job at optimum temperature. My son didn’t get past 10am before claiming it was too hot, and he was right; by 2.30 it is only possible to lie in the hammock and swelter and attract little tiny bugs your skin. It doesn’t take 30 minutes to dry a load of laundry, and watering the garden raises the heart rate so much it counts as cardiovascular exercise. The garden is desperate for water. The mole hills crumble like dried out sandcastles, become dust and blow about the place. Midsummer. Not much moisture in the morning dew to sustain a plant.

The grass is patchy from this lack of water, not as thick as usual, which has finally allowed me to catch a glimpse of the grass-tremors-worm-beast at last, a sinusoidal russet wave on a mission, a too brief glimpse of wild ferocity undulating through the lawn. A weasel. Of course, I assumed it was a weasel. I have seen weasels in the back field, though people assumed this was some sort of hallucination on my part, and while the invisible tremor worm was the right sort of size to be something innocent like a squirrel, it seemed far too aggressive, and far to interested in staying invisible and hunting down bank voles.

Midsummer, the solstice. The sun that hangs stationary in the sky. Solving a weasel mystery seems enough work for the day. I hang stationary in the hammock.

Workings

Amusingly, if you did read that post from last year you will note that I had just finished a print and was busily ignoring listing it. I have finished this one now, in fact, it’s been done a while, and have made no attempt to sell it at all, which seems to be a habit of mine; the printing is much more interesting than the admin. I will list it soon, but am happy to offer mates rates to regulars if they buy direct- several prints on the white washi paper have survived as well as all 12 on the good paper, a frankly unheard of victory. Feel free to hassle me if you want one.

Findings.

You might remember my recent happiness on purchasing a thermal printer so that I can avoid the black pit of despair that is my regular printer while journaling. I still love my thermal printer, but it has some massive drawbacks (the longevity of the printouts, and the only being black and white) so I now also have this:

Sadly this one doesn’t cost a bit more than £14 but it does produce tiny four colour prints that are supposed to be as durable as the ones from the print shop. If nothing else it’s great entertainment to watch the photo being printed in yellow, then being sucked in and over printed with magenta and cyan. Frankly I think the secret to happiness is owning a variety of tiny printers but it might be that the near endless amount of daylight has fevered my brain somewhat. I haven’t done a lot of sleeping recently.

I also went to the cinema to see ‘The Salt Path’ recently. Raynor Winn’s husband was given a terminal diagnosis, and they lost their home due to a bad buisness deal, but she went for a walk around the south coast and wrote a book about it and now she’s Gillian Anderson which seems like a massive win, so I’m glad her fortunes changed. I think my husband just wanted to go so that he could look at cinematography of places he likes in Cornwall. I found the use of non native rabbits slightly upsetting, not because they used rabbits. Because they used the wrong ones, unless Cornwall is overrun by domestic rabbits. Maybe it is, I haven’t read the book.