'You ought to write a blog'

Thanks to my young relation listening to my stories around the kitchen table who suggested I write a blog. 'I do,' I said and immediately felt guilty. It has been a while since I've visited here. Her comment and my friend's blog (http://www.ganseys.com),which he described as a 'walled garden of niceness', prompted me to revisit my own little walled garden.

It's the first full day of 2018. It's 8:20 and the sun is just getting up. This is progress. It used to lag sleeping below the horizon til 9am. I nipped outside to take a photo  of it both because I like talking with my hands and in a blog a photo is roughly equivalent to that and because, like many latecomers, the winter sunrises try to make up for their lateness by being especially charming. It began like this--a kind of sheepish sidewise grin-- and now that shy good humour is glimmering off the clouds overhead.

I might have lingered for more photos but a grouse complained to me from the cover of the rosa rugosa that dawn meant a dawn chorus and where was the breakfast?

If you've ever heard a grouse, then you understand why someone complaining is said to be grousing. But I dont begrudge him his seeds or his croak among the dawn chorus.