Zinnias

I  managed to get the last three species Gladiolus Ruby bulbs from Avon bulbs this morning which was cheering. This is a fabulous gladiolus and used by Norrie and Sandra Pope in the garden they once created at Hadspen. It's a fantastic colour with beautiful cup shaped flowers. 

 I have great hopes for the bulbs and also the zinnia seedlings which I think I promised to put pictures up of though clearly these are not snaps of them as babies but full grown in your face flowering sensations.

Gladiolus Ruby

The horses meanwhile are shedding their coats left right and centre and a cloud of black and white hair flies off into the air to be used, I hope, as comfy horsehair mattresses in all the local birds' nests.
As I was grooming them in the stable I glanced up at last year's swallows' nests and am hoping they'll return. We produced two batches of fledglings last year which entertained us by doing aerial acrobatics in the yard, catching the early evening flies and wobbling precariously on the telegraph wires. I believe that swallows return to the same nests each year and wonder how they must feel to find that after flying all that way someone has shut the stable door and they can't get in. Or worse, have turned their nesting site into a barn conversion.

Zinnia Lime Green

Zinnia giant orange

There is a great poem, with birds heading home in mind, by Mary Oliver

     Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clear blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Zinnia giant wine

Unfortunately birds and cats do not sit happily together and our fierce cat Pocket (quarter Bengal) is very adept at catching them. Fortunately he is asleep at the moment and the word's round the block that they can all have a go on the bird feeder without being pounced on right now.

the very fierce Pocket(quarter Bengal)