It’s not a picture of wizened grapes covered in spiders, but it would be an easy mistake to make. It’s a cactus that has lived with us for several years and it seems happy enough, though like all the plants it looks a bit lacklustre at this time of year.

…

Inexplicably too heavy and too light.

I’m not sure if this was a European or a Eurasian eagle owl. I think it was the former, which I believe is a subspecies of the latter, but eagle owls are not my territory and I’m happy to be corrected by any experts who come by.

The most surprising…

No spectral presence — it’s a cat.

This is Abra. She lived with a friend who shared her life with cats for many years. When our friend was diagnosed with MND/ALS a year ago, she had just three cats — an elderly mother and two daughters. Abra is one of the daughters.

The various cats we’ve known…

Two kestrels. Three herons. No photos.

Over two days this week, we saw two kestrels hunting, and three herons. The latter could have been one heron spotted on three separate occasions, but the kestrels were each in separate territory doing their magical hover manoeuvre before arrowing downwards on to unsuspecting rodents. …

Minus 5 degrees. They’ll never ripen.

Strawberry plants are renowned for being hardy, but we’ve never known them like this before. We’ve watched with interest since just after Christmas, through gale-force winds, torrential rain and hail, snow, and ice. Nothing daunts this plant. Its lone rogue fruit became half a dozen, and it has more flowers…

I do — or rather did — have a go-to brand of hair conditioner. I could only buy it from a salon. It came in expensive small red bottles but lasted forever. …

The moon is up and shining as brightly as it can while the sun is still above the horizon.