Beardy

This morning R and I decided to clean the windows. It took us most of the day...

In fact there's still one left to be done tomorrow, which is the one closest to my desk. Because of its position above the porch it's not easily accessible from outside, except by someone foolhardy enough to climb up the porch roof (our old window cleaner was; R isn't), and has to be done from inside. It's a huge replacement sash affair, which is designed to open in a number of different planes including tilting inwards, and the last time I cleaned it (well over a year ago), I worked out a sequence of slides and tilts that allowed me to access all the panes by standing on my desk and leaning out through the aperture.

Did I mention that I have a slight tendency towards vertigo?

If you don't hear from me again, it's been a blast.

No, really - it'll be fine. I'll get R to go and stand in the garden, so that if I overbalance he can break my fall....

I'll worry about it in the morning.

This is the first of my irises to open this spring - well, almost open - and this shot is R's favourite of the photos I took today. The two things that surprise me about it are, firstly that there appears to have been some light on the subject, it the midst of what was essentially a dark and dreary day; and secondly that despite the howling wind that was whipping the stem around, I managed to get it in focus. I love this rich purple, and I'm very pleased to see it reappear: two years ago we dug out a vast clump of corms, which had become largely unproductive save for a few straggly pale lilac blooms; I threw out the bulk of the clump, and cleaned and replanted the corms that looked viable - and was very surprised last year when some of them came up purple. I'm taking the fact that they're still this colour as an indicator that I don't need to lift and split them again just yet - but after they finish flowering I might just give them a snack to keep them going.

I notice that Blip's compression hasn't improved this image - please do look full-screen, if you have the time.