I haven’t had much time for blogging over the past week or so, in fact even my reading has almost come to a standstill. Life has just got in the way of the more pleasant things in my life, as it sometimes does for us all.

I did get a chance to take a few photos out in the garden though, so here they are. The photo below is of a male blackbird, perched high in one of my trees. I wish you could have heard him singing. As you can see the tree he is sitting in is yet to start unfurling its leaves. It’s always a late starter but it must be at least a month behind where it normally is at this time of the year.

I know that everybody is getting very worried about the bee situation but so far it’s been a good year for bees in my garden, despite the terrible weather. This one was really quite drunk on rhododendron.

I think it was Anbolyn of Gudrun’s Tights who was wondering what apple blossom looks like, well here it is, but this tree is more ornamental than fruit bearing, in fact as this tree was in my garden when we moved in, I thought for a few years that it was a cherry blossom, because of its colour but it does have teeny wee apples on it which are even smaller than cherries. They would be fine for Borrowers! I can’t smell any scent from apple blossom at all, but that might just be because it doesn’t get warm enough here to bring it out.

This apple blossom is much more common, pink buds which open out to pale pink blossom. This tree does grow apples which you can eat, but they are quite small.

This is the table and chairs which I normally sit at when I read in the garden, unfortunately I’ve only managed to do it for about 30 minutes this week, despite the fact that we had some half decent weather for once.

And lastly here is a photo I took of a swan and her cygnets in Beveridge Park in Kirkcaldy. I gave the swans a bit of a slagging last year because they’ve only ever managed to bring up two cygnets each year in the past. This year they’ve surpassed themselves though. The first time I saw them they had seven cygnets, unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me that time. Two days later they were down to six cygnets, but a week later they still have all six of them, and I think they’ll manage to survive now. The parents spend their time pulling weed up from the bottom of the pond and dropping it on the surface, where the cygnets can easily pick it up.