Is this autumn or summer?

It wasn't obvious yesterday. Sunny, with almost clear blue skies and warm enough to sit outside to eat our lunch.

We have a "sitting out area" across from where we park the cars. We used to have a small one and a garden shed, but when we had the garden landscaped (having finally admitted that the 5, er 10 year plan to do it ourselves was not going to ever happen) the chap suggested that we took it down and enlarged the aforementioned. We have a deep-rooted objection to the word "patio", just too suburban, and can't you just hear Niles and Frasier saying that, then!

Anyhow, after discovering the site of the former privy, ie there was a dam' great hole in the ground and the line of the old whitewash on the wall that we hadn't noticed, it was flagstoned and pergola'ed and we rarely use it in the summer because it can get too hot. But spring and autumn, it is warm, sheltered and lovely.

I propped my feet up on the step and unfocussed the eyes, and then realised that there were hundreds and hundreds of insects buzzing all over the ivy that grows all over the wall. Including a cluster of red admirals, their colour absolutely flaming in the sun and against the blue. The ivy is flowering, that's why. More profusely than I have ever seen it do so before.

So, if it berries, which it almost certainly will, and if the berries get to ripen, which is less likely as the birds will think that they have died and gone to heaven and absolutely gorge themselves, then I intend to dye with them.

OK, so I will only get yellow! But I still enjoy trying out the different well-known dye stuffs, just once to say that I have done it.

And this is all displacement activity. I am sitting waiting for the vet to ring me back - she was busy when I rang her. Neelix is ill, and I left him at the surgery this morning for tests and possibly rehydration. So me and Max don't quite know what to do with ourselves.....