Wind flowers

Coming round the side of the house over the weekend I found we had quite a few of these flowers sheltering under the hedge and the buddleia tree in an area we have been gradually cutting back and reclaiming from moldering overgrown shrubs.

Grecian anemones apparently. Someone, many years ago who lived here, must have been a good gardener as various little treats keep popping up when we clear out the overgrown corners.

Very appropriate flower this week as Storm Imogen raged through. It was dry but very windy, probable no more than other storms, but I think we have had enough windy weather now and I found myself looking skyward and muttering "Come on now, you have got to be joking, give it a rest please!".  Today we have a bright blue skies and hardly a breeze so perhaps someone was listening after all. In fact it was a strange day for things flying by - a couple of hundred noisy Brent geese heading inland first thing, a couple of nosier RAF Harriers mid day and then late afternoon a silent barn owl swooped past the house along the line of an overgrown field ditch opposite.

Started to read a library book whose back cover introduction to the hero detective starts "He's fallen from grace in Cardiff and exiled to be the catch-all detective in the big bit in the middle that God gave to the sheep". Having once lived in that bit, in fact on the furthest edge of that bit, which my children always described as "where the map says beyond here be dragons"; I was bemused and amused.  Its turning out to be quite comic and a good cheerful read and not too much like the dark stories of Hinterland (BBC4/S4C).. Author Ewart Hutton "Good People".