Granny and Emily were looking out of the window and Emily saw a bird. It was very big. It landed next to the pond. It was a heron. Granny had never seen a heron in her garden before. Then it flew away. 

picture fromrspb bird-and-wildlife-guides
Next we watched a blackbird having a bath in the pond. It splashed and splashed.

A soggy afternoon

Granny and Tom tried to clean out the pond today.

We raked out some grass, leaves, moss, green slime, and Tom pulled out some roots of the reed mace. No-one planted the reed-mace, it just came by itself - one plant at first but now it is all round the pond.

Tom pulled some of the furry seed heads off and looked at all the seeds inside. He sprinkled them on the pond, so there might be even more next year. Some people call them bullrushes.

Granny managed to stay dry - until Tom needed help pulling off his boots and emptying the water out, then got splashed.. But we couldn't finish the job - Granny's wellies were not tall enough

3 pheasants

We saw three pheasants in the garden.Two had  white collars.

                                                                                                                                                                          Like this one Photo: Jim Urbach/Audubon Photography Awards

                               http://www.audubon.org/news/ring-necked-pheasant-strutting-its-stuff                                                                                                                                                                             

The other had no white and it's wing was less speckled

                   https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/pheasant-195973.jpg                                         

we picked plums ,strawberries ,brambles and we ate some . We needed some peas for tea.  tom saw a dragon fly that was yellow and brown. Maybe it was a Black-tailed Skimmer female .    

we were picking bad greengages today we found 5 bad ones and 40 ripe ones.

 tom tasted one and it was nice, because it was juicy.

There were lots of butterflies on the sunny Buddleia plants. 4 Peacocks, 3 Red Admirals, lots of Cabbage Whites and 2 SpeckledWoods.
Tom helped finish digging up the potatoes, and picking plums. We found some ripe plums and took the bad ones off the trees. Granny used the step-ladder, but Tom climbed the tree.

We were picking plums today and Tom found a ripe czar plum and they ate it.

We looked for butterflies and counted 10 on the buddleia.
4 large white ,
1 speckled wood
1 gate keeper
4 peacock


We had a message about the butterfly count 2016.

big butterfly count 2016 Dear Mo, Thank you for taking part in big butterfly count 2016. You’ve done something really important today by sending us your sightings of 10 butterflies of 4 different species. You will help us identify changes in butterfly numbers as well as tracking migration and monitoring the impact of climate change on these delicate creatures. Here’s a certificate to show that you’ve taken part. We have some amazing butterflies and moths in the UK but many are suffering dramatic declines with some even facing extinction. Butterfly Conservation is the only specialist UK charity successfully taking action to save them. With your help we are working hard to secure a future for butterflies by protecting the habitats they rely on

Granny found the skin of a dragonfly.
Tom found a toad in our garden and we tried to keep it,so we could  show it to granny. But he showed her the photo instead. Granny found a baby frog trying to get out of a bucket of water, she helped it out and it hopped away..
Last week Emily helped granny pick raspberries and strawberries.
today we found some mushrooms.
Granny found an ants nest under a pile grass but when she moved the grass again today to show it to Tom he thought it was underground, there were adult ants everywhere, but no larvae or ants with  wings.

flowers

We walked round the garden and saw
periwinkle
snowdrops
primrose
crocus
winter jasmine
daisy
daffodils (mostly just buds but one with yellow showing)
keria
and a white flower that Tom thought might be the flower you make wine out of - but Granny didn't think it was because elder doesn't have shiny green leaves in winter. Maybe a skimmia.

Then Tom found a pile of sticks and built a den. One stick was so long that it reached higher than the apex of the shed roof.

Then we came inside and typed this - there were some very funny spellings before it was edited.