June 25 2001

Well, here we go again. Yet another cause for celebration. We have a new robin holding court in the garage. I went into the garage the other day looking for something and turned around to search on the shelf, and there he was, not 12 inches from me looking me straight in the eye. Not a move out of him. The cheekieness of the robin is in his nature because this fellow is not old enough to know by experience that he can be cheeky. He just is. He hops around to different parts of the garage and is able to fly but not very good. But he has actually flown out of the garage, whereupon I thought I would never see him again. But wonders will never cease. He found his way back again in about ten minutes, just in time for another food delivery from one of the parent birds. So it seems as though he really feels at home there on the shelf...

We went to Lough Ennel at the weekend for a picnic and to see the swans. We thought we'd picnic at Lillyput but there was a sports day on there so we moved on to Tudenham where we did have our picnic only because we didn't want the bother of moving again. But we might as well have been at Mondello or at the Indianapolis 500 for the noise that was there. Compliments of the many waterbikes and speed boats that were flying around at great speed. So that wasn't great. Finished the picnic and cleaned up and went then to where the swans are. It was fine when we went there in the cold weather but now that the weather has warmed up the algae has taken over and the smell is less than inviting. When one sees algae like that the thought that usually comes to mind is of loads of effluent of all sorts coming from the town. But apparently the Council there has done quite a lot to improve matters and it could be much worse than it is. And when you look closer at it the algae is quite localised and will probably disperse as quickly as it came when the weather changes. Let's hope so.