I've never seen so much active traffic along the canal - all I've ever seen before is the boat that does the dredging. Two weeks ago I saw a lovely yellow one moored down by the train station (called The Yellow Sub), which was going the next time I passed. And one day last week we saw this one going upstream.
Moorhen
This is the one I've shown the front of before, the non-chimney. It was a hot sunny day when we walked past and the doors were open - fun to see how they are painted on the inside too.
It most certainly doesn't feel like Easter - it's hard even to keep track of what day it is, and that's even though I am still working. But, according to the calendar, Easter it is - so here are my greetings, taken along the canal on Saturday morning. I believe we saw three different duckling families. Until the little ones are old enough to fly, we'll probably keep on finding them in the same place down near the lock. I'm not sure what the white egg is from - it was at the edge of the path under a tree absolutely wreathed in ivy. But I'm pretty sure it wasn't a duck egg, as it was along the stretch where the canal runs through a cutting and is a lot lower than the path.
I had a day off on Wednesday, and as it was a beautiful sunny morning, I walked down along the road to post a couple of cards, and back up along the canal.
The first treat was to see a mother duck and what looked like at least a dozen little furballs paddling along madly behind her. I want to walk back down to the lock tomorrow and see if I can find them again. We're lucky at the moment to have such a pleasant place to walk, almost on our doorstep. The "2 km radius from your home" that we are currently allowed for exercise will take us nicely up or down the canal to suitable points for walking back along the road if we prefer.
A bird of another feather, the chimney cowl on one of the houseboats moored alongside the train station.
And a magpie, taking a quick bath. He then flew up to a branch to sun himself. It was so warm that I could even smell that coconut aroma from the gorse growing along the bank.
And the rest of the photos are just wildflowers and trees. I spotted some early violets, too.
I walked over to the local post-box yesterday to mail a few cards. There's a little cluster of trees in the green area, and I spotted these Spring (and other) blues nestling in amongst them. Actually, I'm kicking myself for not having stocked up on gloves when I knew we were nearly out a month ago. I'm not fussed about wearing them for protection now, but I regularly use them for messy techniques, any time I'm using Tack it Over and Over glue, and jobs like changing the filter in the cooker extractor hood (needs doing) and taking bottles to the recycling. And C usually has a couple in his jacket pocket in case the chain comes off the bicycle.
The mixed media challenge on SCS yesterday was a faux blue-print. I took the blue literally (something I have never done with my actual blue-print style stamps. I hated covering up most of my background, but went ahead and did it anyway.
