This evening, the BBC's Countryfile is promising to show the removal of the sails from the windmill. I shall be interested to see that.

Nice things continue to flourish. Yellow Loosestrife. My Mother had a clump in her little back yard garden, and it pleased her as it did me. It  is a very accomodating plant - it just comes up every year and flowers, needing no real attention.  I was delighted, in our first season in this house, that there was a well established dollop of colour in that fairly shady corner. Smells nice too.

There was no way I could have shown the breadth of the smile OH was wearing when he came home from walking the dog this morning. He had heard, and seen, a pair of Turtle Doves!!!! So we may have a huge number of Eastern Europeans living and working here, but it would appear that we don't have any Maltese.

Our local windmill has eight sails and is said to be the only one surviving in the world with that many sails. At the moment it has precisely none - they have been removed awaiting the arrival of new ones. The mill has not been able to work since before we moved to the area, but will soon be back to grinding corn when the new sails are fitted. It does look a bit odd with its naked top - it took me a while to work out what was wrong since it is a landmark visible from miles away, and it nagged at me to "spot the difference"!

 

We had two visitors yesterday - two Swifts, either a mated pair or two youngsters, who were swooping low and going right up to the House Martin nests under the eaves. We watched for quite a while, until they seemed to lose interest, but are none the wiser as to what they were up to. We half wondered if they might be trying to usurp the nests, but don't know if that is a likely explanation. Maybe it was just juvenile curiosity.

Good things are going on in the garden. The Astilbes are looking luscious

 and even more so close up.

 We have got a very nicely veined Mallow, and the Hydrangeas always make me nostalgic. Where I grew up, in West Cornwall, they grow like weeds, and when it was time for the Carnival, the float that the Carnival Queen rode on was wrapped with wire netting, and that had Hydrangea heads pushed in so that they formed a complete mass of flowers.

And I do do some handwork still! I found some lovely drapey viscose and made a blouse. I found the perfect buttons in the button tin, and the ties at the neck are a good excuse to get out some of the various brooches I have acquired/inherited.

Seventy years ago

When D-Day came, my Father was training flight mechanics in the RAF, and was stationed at RAF Locking, in north Somerset. My Mother was with him, and working as a dispenser in Boots, the chemists. Some years ago, he wrote an account of what he did, for his grandchildren.

"We were able to find furnished accommodation in Weston-Super-Mare, and I was at home each night, except for the times I had to do guard duty or orderly corporal, etc. This was a very pleasant existence and lasted till after D-Day.

The night of the invasion of Europe Mary and I could hardly sleep because of the noise of aircraft flying overhead and we were aware that something out of the ordinary was happening as, when we looked out to see the planes, they all had lights on; a thing unheard of during the war.

The flight engineers we had been training were very much involved in the invasion of the continent and on the day of the invasion I had a class of Free French Volunteeers, and they were so excited at the news, which was being relayed over the public address system, that it was impossible to get them to concentrate on their work, and who could blame them?"