This was the one and only plumpie out in the garden today, and he spent most of the time I was watching him sitting on a leaf, with his back turned to the sun that could just be seen and felt through a layer of cloud, trying and mainly failing to warm up to zooming speed. Eventually he managed to get airborne again, whisked round the pulmonaria patch, alighted briefly on a clematis seed head, and then disappeared, never to be seen again. I was lucky to catch him at fairly close quarters in the act of slurping some nectar, because he’s still very new and it takes the boys a little while to realise that while I may be annoying, I’m not an actual threat.
I spent six hours this afternoon and evening working on a deadline project I’d estimated would take two. This has not left me in a sunny mood, but I’m going to cheer myself up now by sending this photo to the Boy Wonder, and telling him that his favourite yellow-faced bees have arrived back in the garden.
On the subject of cheerfulness, Lev Parikian’s Six Things is worth a look – I liked the Oscar Best Films reimagined as Muppet movies, and the bird song phone, but the tap dancing sequence was 2 minutes 45 seconds of sheer delight.