Nice and sunny this morning, but a little rain later in the afternoon. Luckily, Gaby took Emma to the cinema, so the rain hardly inconvenienced us.

The highlight of my day was probably a trip to the dump in the morning - and seeing a family of four blackbirds feeding on the lawn this afternoon. All the swifts have now flown and I've not seen the swallows for a few days now. We have had a couple of long-tailed tits in one of our trees today, which is not usually something I see until the winter.

Half the magnolia tree is in bloom again and the passiflora has loads of buds and just a few blooms like these.