The entire family descended on us today, so it was a pretty full-on day. Between the usual Saturday morning chores, and zooming around the entire garden on the ride-on mower to tidy it up a bit, I didn’t get any time for photography before the Cardiff crew arrived, but I did manage to fit in a very short bug hunt later in the day. Opilione hunt might be more accurate, because I mostly found Harvestmen, and in particular about a dozen variously-sized examples of Paroligolophus agrestis, but there were also a few beetles and bugs, of which the smartest was this Green Shieldbug. Every year I try to photograph at least one of these against an autumnal leaf, so having tapped this specimen out of a scrubby hazel tree I moved it onto a low-hanging leaf of the nearby Norway maple, stood back, and admired the effect. If it genuinely preferred the hazel, it will have had no difficulty getting back there after I left.
R and I had a lovely afternoon with all the family around us. Both the grandsons were especially happy when H turned up, but the Boy Wonder didn’t get to spend much time with his uncle because he was promptly commandeered by the Baby Brother, and spent virtually all afternoon being ordered around by him. “Ordered” isn’t maybe quite the right term – B minor is still only 21 months old, and doesn’t have all that many words yet (though he’s absolutely fantastic at mimicking the rhythms and inflections of speech, and chatters away to himself in a way that makes you certain he must be saying something intelligent and meaningful, if you could only work out what it is) – but between the words he does have, and a range of imperious hand gestures, he managed to let Uncle H know exactly what was required.
After the two of them had been in the garden for a while, I realised that the reason they were still out there was that the Tiny Tyrant was refusing to allow H to come back in the house, so I went out to join them, and had a great time watching them playing together. He’s my grandson, so obviously he’s a genius, but I do think the TT has unusually good coordination for such a small* child. One of the games he devised was “Jump!”, which involved us jumping two-footed, every time he told us to, from the lawn onto the drive, or from one patio step down to the next. His jumping technique, which is rather better than mine, starts with bent knees, moves through an arm swing that helps him get both feet off the ground simultaneously, and ends in an almost competition-standard two-footed landing, with his knees bent to absorb the shock. I was a bit anxious when all this was happening on some stone steps, but he only fell twice and barely reacted on either occasion, simply picking himself up and trying again. He also has an excellent throwing arm (“Foe!”) and a decent “Kick!”, and already looks destined to be sporty.
* Full disclosure: he’s not even slightly small.
