Festive

This is a late end to a slightly crazy but ultimately satisfying day.

We had the tree surgeon here for nine hours, cutting back the huge laurel in the centre of the top garden which has been making a stealthy bid for world domination over the past couple of years. It's feeling pretty sorry for itself right now, I can tell you, so maybe it'll learn a lesson and think harder about its behaviour in future. All else being equal, I'd now be worrying whether there was enough of it left to provide shelter and roosts for our small garden birds, but their numbers plummeted tragically during the summer's heatwave and drought, and accommodating the few survivors is unlikely to be a problem.

At the same time as mayhem was occurring in the garden R and I were preparing for H and S to arrive for an overnight stay, which entailed trying to make the house look less disreputable than normal so that H wouldn't feel he had to phone his sister and alert her to the possibility that the Oldies might not be coping, and that an intervention might therefore need to be made. To be fair R did far more in this regard than I did, and to be fairer still that's situation normal in this house these days, but I wish it to be known that I did do dusting. I'd be grateful if someone would mark this notable event on a calendar, and remind me in twelve months or so that it probably needs doing again.

Given that dusting and the noise of power tools are two of my very least favourite things, you can probably imagine how much I enjoyed doing dusting this morning to the relentless accompaniment of power saws (various) and a huge chipper-shredder. By lunch time I felt as though I was coming unglued, and a (mercifully brief) bug safari around the garden proved to be not so much finding solace in nature as descending into the next Circle of Hell. Nonetheless, I was pleased with this green shieldbug, even if the feeling wasn't reciprocated, and I like the way it displayed on a fallen Norway maple leaf - I'd even go so far as to say that it looks quite festive, if that didn't break my rule against referencing Christmas before the beginning of December. So I won't say that, but I will place my thanks to the shieldbug on record here, because it almost certainly couldn't hear the ones I bellowed at it over the noise of the chipper-shredder, as I was returning it to the tree on which I'd found it.

H and S arrived towards the end of the afternoon, and the four of us went out for dinner in Stratford, and then on to Warwick Arts Centre to see the great Chris Thile inimitably performing an ark through folk, country, jazz and classical music. I've done embarrassing elderly fan-girl raving about Mr Thile on other occasions, so I'll confine myself to reposting Another New World, which he performed as one of his encores. He was supported by Sam Amidon, who was also very good. If you get the chance to catch the tour, I recommend it.