Summer abundance

I woke up at seven and posted today's YouTube link to Morning Prayer on WhatsApp, and listened to the news and Thought for the Day, before getting up, emptying the dishwasher and making breakfast. Cloudy again, but warmer, occasionally sunshine 22C. There were six of us for the Eucharist at St Catherine's, at coffee afterwards, courgettes from the church garden, tiny plums harvested by green fingered Keith from abandoned but fruitful allotments he helps to look after and a handful of ripe green figs. Only yesterday Jasmine was asking if fresh figs were available locally, so I bought them to take home. 

I collected this week's veggie bag from Chapter which contained a huge aubergine in addition to courgettes, chard lettuce, carrots and broad beans, almost twice as heavy as last week's bag. Beans and tomatoes in Clare's garden are growing healthily too. Despite the variable weather, it's already a fruitful summer.

Clare went with a friend to visit our old friend Jackie and have lunch with her in Stroud where she now lives. I steamed some veg to eat with a piece of cooked chicken and mayonnaise. Jasmine and Louie went off to visit the National Museum, so I didn't need to cook for them. I started advance preparation on a text for Morning Prayer the week after next, and then went to Thompson's Park to check on the moorhens. 

All four chicks were swimming around in the dense cover of pond weed. One of the chicks is noticeably larger than the others, a sole survivor from an earlier brood or the only male with three female siblings? It's hard to tell. One parent swims around with them, while the other sits on the nest in the middle of the pond. The water level has gone down several inches in the past few weeks, exposing the piled up heap of sticks and twigs on which the nest sits.

Clare arrived home just as I was arriving home, and we had supper together. I watched another episode of 'The Sommerdahl Murders' and continued with a second one until it was time for bed.