SPUR OF the moment decisions are often the best ones. Last Sunday seemed to herald in summer properly, at last, so the Doyenne and I bundled the dogs into the car and set off to find new places to walk.
LAST SUNDAY morning I gave the Doyenne a wee treat. The wild strawberries which grow in the two troughs at the front of the house had been getting riper and riper and my fulsome assurances that I would pick them “this evening” were met with patient forbearance.
OUR SQUIRRELS are back after goodness knows how many months' absence. We'd seen a very occasional one coming to the peanut feeders but it was the Doyenne, at the start of the week, going downstairs to make an early cup of tea, who saw one on each of the two feeders outside the kitchen window.
“BELLOWING LIKE the bulls of Baal” is an expression to describe extreme, intemperate noise – a “beastly” noise, you might say. Baal was one of the ancient Egyptians' most important gods, rider of the clouds and god of fertility, who presided over not just the earth but the animals too. The bull was Baal's cult animal and symbol of the god's power.