A bit of waffle - 4/5/26

Well the A-Z challenge is over for another year (apart from the reflections posts and the road trip) so time to get back into the normal rhythm of blogging.

That didn't go too well yesterday when I didn't do a photo post.  Hadn't taken many photos, again! But here are a few that didn't make it to my posts during last week:

Not the best photo but you can just about see the baby coots. There are several coots nesting around the lake and the parents of these were being very territorial and chasing ducks away.

Egyptian geese.

The resident heron.

Some of the trees around the lake are very old and I love picking out the unusual shaped ones.

I'm not sure how long these tree remains have been in the lake - I hadn't walked down there for a little while

But this shows where the tree has gone over into the lake.

Nesting coot.

And I couldn't resist posting this screen shot.  Part of my morning routine is to do the New York Times set of puzzles - Wordle, Connections etc and of course the Spelling Bee.  I usually try to get to at least the Amazing level and I do occasionally reach the Genius level but I had never managed a Queen Bee where you find all the possible words, until last Monday.  And it was quite a tricky selection of letters so I was feeling very pleased with myself.

Today has been a Bank Holiday in the UK although of course it doesn't make a lot of difference when you're retired.  But it did affect the timing of charity collections at the supermarkets for the Foodbank as the supermarkets were mostly closing early.  I ended up having to do a collection from our local Tesco at 5 pm as we're a bit short of drivers at the moment, one has moved on to train to be a Fire fighter and a couple were away on holiday.  But thankfully we were all finished with sorting out the donations just before 7 pm so a nice early night for me and time to blog.

I'm about half way through Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café by Fannie Flagg but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to work it into the 52 Book Club Challenge.  I've also downloaded Penitence by Kristin Koval which was a magazine recommendation and I've reserved Welcome to the Neighbourhood by Jane Fallon which will tick the "Published in 2026" box.

I need to get back into the habit of reading before I go to sleep, I've been a bit lax lately.  There really aren't enough hours in the day, especially when you get caught up in waffle!