Comings and Goings

With every walk there are now new wild flowers popping up everywhere. It is becoming hard to walk in the pony field as there are so many Orchids coming up, including a group of the very attractive Bee Orchids. They are growing quite close to the water trough so I wonder how long it will be before eight big hooves manage to squash them. We have tried to protect them by covering them with a tripod made of sticks but Tavey seemed to think we had put it there for him to scratch himself on:-)

Another of the 'comings' are the butterflies and moths. Now when we walk through the long grass and wild flowers in the field behind us, masses of Cinnabar Moths, Small Skippers, Blues and some others that I have yet to identify, fly up chasing each other around. Magical. There seem to be far more than in previous years which is surprising when we had such a long cold winter.

Something that worryingly seems to have gone though, are the Bees. We had loads in the early spring when all the Crocuses were 'a buzz' with them but I haven't seen any for several weeks.

Lastly and very sadly another thing that has gone is our lovely old cat, Lizzy, who had to be put to sleep yesterday. She was rather a 'one person cat' and I was that person. Right from being a kitten she would follow me around and sit with me so I will miss her such a lot. However, she was nearly twenty and, apart from losing her tail when a car ran over it, she has had had a really good long life and was loved very much, which is great considering she was born to a young stray and spent her first few weeks of life living under a bush in an old ladies garden. Now she is at rest with her brother and sister in our back garden where she loved to watch the world go by whilst basking in the sunshine.