I love the smell of Tiger Balm in the morning OR The JOYS OF SUMMER

I am so frustrated here in Brighton it seems to have been raining for days and so cold my poor garden is just looking so cheesed off and nothing is growing - feel sorry for the new baby birds too their parents must be finding it difficult looking for food for them like insects caterpillars and stuff

Everything is growing in my garden, but specially weeds. Every time I try to go down the garden it starts to rain and there's a big shrub rose that is in dire need of pruning - yet again. But the foliage is magnificent at the moment in its first flush. The red blossom on the malus trees blends with the bronze leaves; the two maples, one red and upright, one green and weeping are a lovely contrast; and then there's the golden philadelphus. With all that, who needs flowers? Oh well, they are to come.

I wish you'd all told me about Tiger Balm before I went to New Zealand. I have a nasty reaction to sand fly bites. This time, my left foot was badly bitten almost the day I arrived and the swelling extended from my toes to my knee. Naturally, I tried not to scratch but inevitably did so during the night when asleep (and sometimes when awake as the itching was intolerable). A $100 visit to the doctor resulted in a diagnosis of cellulitis, a massive dose of antibiotics, antihistamines and something else that I've now forgotten and the threat of hospitalisation if the swelling didn't start to decrease within 24 hours. The whole thing took a fortnight to clear up.

The doctor reckons that when I move to NZ, my body will get used to sand fly bites and I will have steadily less alarming responses. It is not a process that I anticipate with pleasure. However, I shall stock up on Tiger Balm.

Oh, that's not much fun B! Still, all that green must be lovely to look at.

Bags Bless you! Nose bleeds are horrid. Take it easy and no sneezing for a while

absent - how horrid for you. I have heard about those sand flies though have never encountered them personally. They must have heard I was coming and decided I was likely to be toxic. I think my sister is still quite sensitive to the bites. I don't know if there is an insect repellent that works against them. Let's hope someone invents one quickly.

absent - Nasty little blighters, those sand flies! Is your leg better now? Do hope so.

Rounded, brown velvet bodies
With sculpted pink-lilac wings
Three Bee Orchids have decided to grow
In a patch of grass
Left un-mown for just such a treat.
I swear they weren't there yesterday
When the sun shone all day
Nor during this morning's constant warm drizzle
But there they are this afternoon, a little leggy
Amongst the tall grass.
It struck me they were being a little impertinent!

Lucky, lucky you, butty! How lovely!

I'm loving a Lady's Smock sprung up out of a crack just be the back door, and the bluebells and pignut beginning to flower all over the place.

by, that should be. hey ho.

Butter how lovely for you

B -

Hearing cuckoos all day
From up the hill,
Half-way over the field,
And even from across the loch.
Hearing the wild call of buzzards
Wheeling, sometimes within sight,
Sometimes over Umphra's Know,
The hill brow.
Seeing flowers erupting
Wherever I walk.
Some are so little that you'd miss them
If you didn't look.
Finding an old pile of logs
I cut five years ago
Covered in moss.
Scraping moss off logs
And piling them in the wood shed
For a lovely fire
On a cool evening.
Listening to blackbirds now.
Good things in my life today.
I am content.

We don"t get cuckoos here in suffolk

Check out the RSPB Lakenheath Fen Nature Reserve, nonu! They have cuckoos.

I WANT cuckoos! I had two jays fighting with a pair of blackbirds while I was getting dressed this morning! What a row?

when I was a child - living on the edge of a Brighton suburb I heard cuckoos regularly, and owls all night and foxes and smelt grass and herbs when I had the window open at night. Now even though I live in the same area that has all Gone Also does anyone remember the huge amount of flies that died on the car windscreen when going on a long journey Now nothing no wonder the birds find life so difficult

Are you still on the edge, whitewave? or has there been more building around you?

well I am on the edge of the South Downs there has been a road built but still relatively the same.

Smiling, B. Simple pleasures.

When we lived near King's Lynn, a cuckoo, annually resident on the common, made its presence felt every morning in spring - along with the permanently resident donkey. What a duet! We also had the thrill of visiting a fen where nightingales sang at dusk at about this time of year.

Anno -I first heard a nightingale a couple of years ago, about 10.30 at night - the sky was a deep violet. I remember stopping and saying, "what's that?". Magical.

The cuckoo migration websites are reporting cuckoos arriving back in the UK during the last few days, mainly in the south and Norfok Broads, where some cuckoos were tagged last year. Seems the population has dropped by half in recent years. I would love to hear a cuckoo, but it's years since the last time I heard one when on holiday in Normandy.

Heard our first cuckoo on 27 April this year. See one most days too. My sister in Norfolk didn't hear one until a week after that. Odd really, since we are further north (and west), but we had the better weather in April so that might explain it.

There are also lots of dunnocks around here. Dunnocks' nests are one of the favoured kind in which cuckoos deposit their eggs.