Red

He was so perfectly camouflaged against the Clematis montana that if I hadn't seen him drift in and land, I don't think I'd have spotted him at all. He'd come down to eliminate the indigestible bits of someone he'd eaten, but I decided to spare you that sight. You're welcome.

A pooing Large Red Damselfly was the absolute highlight of my day. The rest of it involved six hours of heavy gardening, clearing the edges of the borders around the top lawn, during which I managed to break the strimmer. In principle I'm anti-strimming - the sight of people sweeping indiscriminately across verges with big petrol-powered machines makes me flinch for the destruction they're causing - but this was a small corded strimmer, which I was using to cut through the long, dense grass and weeds at the edges of the borders once I'd pulled it all out onto the lawn and checked that there was no-one living in it. This was saving my wrists from the repeated percussive shock of using large shears, so I wasn't happy when it died. To be fair, it was probably twenty years old - it's had so little use that I can't actually remember when I bought it - so we were probably due for an upgrade by now, but at the point when I realised I couldn't fix it, I was way beyond that level of philosophy.

Having gritted my teeth and finished the edging by hand, I awarded myself the gift of forty minutes on the tractor, doing a second top cut in the wild garden, taking the main lawn down a notch, and cutting a few more swathes through the jungle at the front of the house. After which I moved the garden bench into the shade of one of the apple trees, sat down with a drink, and admired what I'd achieved. It didn't quite compensate for the utter exhaustion, but I'd challenge anyone to say that they couldn't see what I'd been up to.

I. Am. So. Very. Tired.

R: C2, D18.