Pink and white

While I was outside filling the hedgehog and bird feeders this morning, I looked across the lawn and saw a small white butterfly flitting around the lavender bushes. I ran inside to get my camera and managed to get this shot of it on a Japanese anemone. I’m disappointed because it’s not very sharp, so I shall have to practise more if I’m to achieve anything like the glorious close-up shots of some of the blippers I follow.

Today I’ve been doing a pre-emptive strike on moth warfare in The Traveller’s bedroom. It’s so hard to get at the places where the moths love to hide – under wardrobes or heavy bookcases. I’ve done my best to spray those places and hopefully all the other permanent deterrents I use – moth pheromone decoys and sticky traps – will finish the job for me.

Smithers and I were just preparing to go out for a walk this afternoon when the hail started and we decided that discretion was the better part of valour, as Shakespeare so aptly put it. 

As it happens, another of my favourite authors, the "C. Dickens" to whom the schoolboy Molesworth sometimes refers, has been much in our minds over the past few days. We used to have a DVD of the BBC’s 1998 mini series of Our Mutual Friend and I had a yearning to watch it again. However, we can no longer play DVDs on our television, so I bought the series on Apple TV for a very reasonable sum to enable us to stream it whenever we like. We’ve watched the four 1½ hour episodes over the past four nights, absolutely entranced by it, and spent each day looking forward to the next episode. It’s always a sign of a good production when you’re so immersed in the storyline that you keep talking about it together randomly throughout the day.