Tasty

Part of the reward for feeding our neighbours' chickens and watering tomatoes. I also picked raspberries, peas, french beans - and another egg, of course. I like this deal. 

The chickens love redcurrants too, also the mix of wheat and maize that I take them as a treat in the afternoon. Compared to these occasional morsels, they are indifferent to the specially-formulated, nutritionally-balanced feed to which they have almost ad lib access. They eat it, but without the relish or enthusiasm that is their immediate response to the more exotic fare. I wonder why. It's impossible to watch them and not start assigning to them ideas of 'preference' and 'taste' and 'plessure' - human concepts, based on human consciousness. I have no way to prove that a chicken is excited and seeking pleasure from its food, but I can't help believing it - a doorway to thinking about its individuality, its sense of self, its rights. Deep waters

At sundown, some huge, impressive thunder-head clouds approached from the west - a vast wall of swirling darkness like a scene from a apocalyptic movie. The extra only partly captures it - I didn't have a vantage point to show of its scale and menace. But it all came to nothing - not even rain, just a sense of anti-climax