A dampness on the ground and in the air. The sky is, as always, unreadable to me with my lifetime of experience reading continental skies.
Off on my honeymoon to Eigg. Back on June 4.
A dampness on the ground and in the air. The sky is, as always, unreadable to me with my lifetime of experience reading continental skies.
Off on my honeymoon to Eigg. Back on June 4.
A brick lies in the dirt at the back of the garden, dislodged by the running of cats and foxes along the night-time labyrinth of walls.
From one direction, the whine of a saw. From another, planks being dropped into a pile. A block of terraced housing is never finished.
Somehow I’ve failed to notice till now that the small hydrangea next to the rosebush is also in bloom—one low, slightly absurd flower head.
It’s in the blackbird’s alarm call that one best hears its cousin-ship with the American robin: that tut tut. Which is also so British.
A jet roars overhead en route to Heathrow. The rattling call of a magpie. An American gray squirrel lopes along the top of the back wall.
A wren sings in the garden of our Iranian neighbor, whose wisteria infiltrates the elder tree so that it blooms two ways at once.
The clock says “early” but the sun says “late”. The distant cries of schoolchildren mingle with the birds.
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I’ve decided to re-name this blog The Morning Porch/Patio — a bit awkward, I know — so that I can continue posting during the summer here in London, where I expect to spend an increasing portion of each year from now on. My partner lives in a terraced house (what Americans call a townhouse or row house) in Kensal Rise, with a walled back garden and patio where I take my morning coffee… unless it’s raining, which is of course why American-style porches are an inspired architectural innovation.
The rose bush in the garden has unfolded its first set of sexual parts. I’m dueting with a dunnock via an audio recording on my phone.
A blue tit skulks around the bird feeder like a dapper, introverted chickadee. Nearly hidden in the elder, the blackbird turns on her nest.