Hydrangeas

It felt so quiet to have an empty house again this morning, and when they arrived to take down the marquee I felt so sad that it was all over. All the planning and excitement of the party and it is over in a flash. I also felt sad as I was remembering when the boys were young we used to leave about now to go to the Swiss Alps for about 6 weeks every summer, Gavin would not be there for that long as he was working, but the boys and I used to have such fun, hiking and swimming. Those days are long over now and I do miss them.

I went for an early morning run in the woods near our house with Xena. During the winter you cannot walk there as it is so muddy and boggy, now the ground is so hard and dry, it is even cracked in places. There have been a few reports of a large bird of prey attacking runners in our woods, one neighbour was running yesterday and was struck on the head drawing blood and was also knocked to the ground by the bird – it obviously has a nest nearby. So I did keep a wary eye out for it! We were back home by 8.30am before it got too hot as today is another scorcher at 31C. Xena is pacing around trying to find a cool spot in the house. After my run I was eating my breakfast when I heard a thud and saw that a poor juvenile blackbird had flown into the glass door and died, poor thing.

I waited in for DPD to come fetch the Silent Disco headphones, and next thing I received a text from them saying 'sorry to have missed you because you were not in, we could not collect the delivery'. So annoying….they are useless, they are always doing this with expected deliveries.

We had planned to drive to Switzerland on Saturday, but as the weather is so hot here we have decided to first go to Norfolk for a few days to enjoy the beaches before driving to Switzerland as we will not get another chance to go there until mid September. Gavin booked the Eurotunnel today and the cost has tripled, it is so expensive now.

It was too hot to go out again, so I took some photos of my lovely Annabelle hydrangeas, they are the star of the show during the summer. I did go out for a short walk around the neighbourhood with Xena at about 6pm, and it was still so hot.