First off the blocks

Yesterday evening the heatwave broke and it started to rain. I lay in bed listening to the grass growing outside, and reflecting on the fact that having recently bought just about every mower and grass trimmer available to man, it wasn't going to be easy for me to find an excuse for not doing something about it. 

Sigh...

(The next house we buy will categorically not have three quarters of an acre of garden. Or if it does, most of it will be excavated in short order, to create ponds.)

Today the rain continued all morning - that soft, fine drizzle that you hardly see or hear, but which absolutely soaks you. I think the Scots call it 'smirr', and in some parts of England it's 'smur'. I read somewhere that in Ireland it's called 'wet rain', though I don't know if that's true - if not, it definitely should be. Anyway, R and I had to be out and about in the smur in Stratford this morning, which wasn't ideal, and we ended up pretty damp.

Just after we arrived home it stopped raining, and I grabbed the macro and squelched out in search of wet flowers to photograph. I was concentrating on the perennial pea, because it was the most photogenic of the plants on offer, when I heard buzzing, and went to see who'd been the first pollinator to brave the wet and venture out of their shelter. Knowing how hard they work, in almost all weathers, I wasn't surprised to discover that it was a Common Carder - though I suspect that this very fresh specimen may actually be a male, rather than a worker. In any event, I think the drenched pea flower looks better for the addition of a bumblebee.

R: C4, D14.