The heatwave at the end of summer

TBH I’m only writing this as an excuse to lie in the hammock. It’s really hot.

Swallows, a summer time print I released quite a long time ago now but there’s still a few left to buy if you want one

I meant to show you this, when the swallows first fledged, so I could write about the one I found in the kitchen, who very graciously didn’t poo until I’d let him out the window. I didn’t get round to it, though, and now the second lot of swallows have fledged, and the third, and there are no more to fledge and they’ve all gone away.

In the early summer I watched  a garden full of adolescents; the scruffy magpies and moulting  green woodpeckers;  a young fox boldly out hunting rabbits in the twilight, unlike his parents who I hardly ever see despite them living in the hedge. I saw blue tits teaching their faded children to eat the soft needles at the tips of the pine tree, and greenfinches and a starling teaching theirs to forage amongst the long grass.

This is a journal page featuring two birds, one of which I saw close up, one of which I sadly didn’t.

We went to wales in search of seabirds and waves.

We saw friends and we walked 85 miles along the ridgeway from Ivinghoe beacon to Avebury. That’s probably a newsletter all itself, I saw Hugh Jackman from a great distance. Here’s a badge to prove it (the walk not the wolverine sighting)

Another journal page, this time with a ridgeway pinbadge resting on it my husband got me as a reward. To be honest, I saw the filming of deadpool on the first walk so everything after was disappointing and I deserve more for sticking with it another 78 miles or so.

Anyway, I haven’t written in a while, and I should change my description to ‘a newsletter devoted to apologising about forgetting to write my newsletter’ but that’s how it is with summer; I try not to drop the ball, but I’ve dropped all the balls I was juggling, and they’re rolling in different directions and two are  disappearing into the shrubbery and the neighbours dog is running off with the others. It’s possible I might not get all the balls back to be honest, and I’ve only got this far because it’s too hot to work inside. See you next week though.