bunn

I have bought a Tile for Theo. It's a Bluetooth device that hangs from his collar and allows me to use an app to track him by showing him on a map. In theory, it's also supposed to send me an alert if he goes too far from the phone, but so far the only time this has happened has been the time I went out in the car without him. It seems that the range of the alerts is several miles, which is annoying, because it clearly shows on the phone when he's out of Bluetooth connection range. But you have to be looking at it to see that.

Still, it has allowed me to keep an eye on him in the garden while not standing right over him, and I think my ability to suddenly pop out and call him back just as he was making the decision to leave is having some impact.

VE day yesterday, and coincidentally, also my mother's birthday. I popped over for the first time in almost 2 months to take a card & present (at a suitable distance). As an official Old Person Of The Village, she had been given a VE day cupcake, a drawing of a rainbow to show in her window, and a VE day button. This seemed to amuse her.

In our village, I don't think we had cupcakes for the elderly, but we did have a scarecrow competition. This was slightly eyebrow-raising, since it was impromptu, and everyone had to use stuff already in their house. Several people chose to make soldiers, but since they had no uniform, the effect was often somewhat... terroristic. But other people did more peaceful scarecrows, like the one of a woman welcoming her lover home, and the pub (closed, of course), which rather mysteriously decided to put up an effigy of the landlord celebrating VE day, which of course he was not.

We wandered up to have a look at the efforts late in the evening, and while we were doing that, someone let off what was apparently a genuine WWII air raid siren. It made a very strange and eery sound echoing up the river valley, with almost no other sound to be heard and the scent of blossom on the air, and almost no moving people, but still scarecrows all around. Then, even more surreal, it segued into the oddly-familiar crackly sound of Vera Lynn singing 'We'll meet again'. What a strange time this is.

To go to London by train from Cornwall, I had to drive to Tiverton Parkway station, because our railway fell into the sea :-( You can just about do London and back in a day on an off-peak ticket that way.
I was glad to get back to Tiverton today, and see the blossom around the station as the sun went down.

Everything has just come into flower at once.  Primroses, vinca, camellias, azaleas.  The late daffodils are still holding on, but the bluebells are coming out too!  My big cherry tree is already opening up delicate pale flowers, while the little nectarine tree is still covered in deep-pink flowers.    In the woody bit at the top, there are gangs of wood anemones, wild garlic and bluebells, all pretending not to notice one another.  And there are even red campions coming into flower too!

The top of the garden is starting to look a bit disshevelled already as everything leaps for the sky - but let us ignore that, and admire the cowslips (with the rhubarb towering magnificently behind them).

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- Snowdrops are out in the sunnier spots, and budding in the shady ones

- The odd primrose is trying on a flower

- I had to wait in the lane as I drove home last night for two blackbirds that were conducting a savage life or death struggle to finish and get out of the way. (I entertained myself by humming the Captain Kirk Duelling In Cage With Giant Forks music. You know the bit I mean...)

- I found a newt outside our back door last night. (I think he was just hanging out in a newty manner, rather than waiting to burgle the place)

I hope all of this activity will not be rudely cut short. I know it's been cold, beasties, but it's only the start of Feb, we could have weeks of freeze to come yet!