This week was very wet. This short film captures the vibe.

So this week’s six was snapped on a soggy morning, with roses, grapes and wet things being the general gist of it all…

Let’s start with the standard rose. Yes I featured this last week, but I don’t care because it’s so eye-catching it would be silly to exclude it.

Next grapes! We have some black grapes ripening on the pergola. They are already quite sweet and tasty. We presume that to produce this much fruit the roots must have found their way out of the pot and into the ground somehow.

More roses! These ones are by the front door. Google photos once suggested it might be rosa ballerina, but I’m not really sure what variety they are, I can only tell you that they’ve been here for years and they make me smile.

The contemplation chair and hosepipe. Any chair on its own looks a little sad, or at least contemplative, I reckon. Unlike much of the country, we didn’t get a hosepipe ban in our town. For reasons I can’t fathom we have one water company supplying the water to our house, and another taking the ‘waste’ water away, and the one that supplies our water didn’t do a hosepipe ban until the rain began a couple days ago. Doesn’t matter right now, the garden is properly soaked.

These green shoots in the formerly parched lawn, and these snaps of soggy chairs and a great big butt full of water demonstrate the amount of rain that’s recently arrived.

So that’s six garden things. In other news, last weekend we had a stroll round some woodland, and heard a nuthatch, goldcrest, and if the Merlin Bird ID is to be believed, a spotted flycatcher and a marsh tit.

I’m still tinkering with and developing my birdsong and biodiversity game, and over 500 players from more than ten different countries have tried the latest version. 🙂 There’s now a level set in Aberdeen, and I’m working on one for Cardiff. I first make the game at Bath Digital Festival, to explore the idea of how the dawn chorus has changed since my childhood. Over the last 50 ish years the UK has decimated it’s birdlife, and that’s extremely sad. But we could get to know them better and encourage them to return.

I’ve made games exploring bird song in Aberdeen and Bath, with Cardiff to come… I’m not sure I could do the whole alphabet? I’m still keeping an eye on the carbon cost, which has increased to roughly equivalent to a 20 mile drive, as well as the actual cost of game building tools. But overall I’m really enjoying this pastime, and will continue to do it for as long as it feels fun.

You could give it a go at https://bird-times.lovable.app/

So, that’s my six for a very soggy Saturday. See more garden ruminations at Jim’s amazing blog.

Have a lovely week,

Jen xx