Marigold petals, anyone?

No salad pix, but here's a good old Irish cabbage

The salad I got in the market is interspersed with bright orange marigold petals.
They are a joy to behold and a pleasure to eat.

No marigold petals either, but here are some carrots to conjure that glorious orange colour in your head

 It's lunchtime - after a walk in the woods.
I made the mistake though, of flicking on the radio. Not for long - it's a ducking out kind of day.
They are trying to save the euro.

I must say, with all life's ups and downs, it's good now and again when something makes you stop and laugh.
Even if it is hysterically.
It helps you realise just how uncomplicated your own life really is.
But the money-mayhem. I mean - where do you begin?
It's like some monstrous progeny of Medusa's head and the Titanic's iceberg.
And don't you think that when monetary problems hit billions and trillions, a kind of fiscal senility has kicked in? Maybe it's fiscal incontinence. Either way, it's incurable and if it was a person, you'd gently tuck it in a home.
If it was an animal, you'd gently put it down.

Don't put us down, it's not our fault. And we don't care, anyway - we're busy sleeping

You may have caught the barest whiff of the fact that I'm not an economist - but haven't any of these people in Brussels got kids? If they had they'd know that loans never get repaid!
It just isn't going to happen.
Their best option, really, would be to say to all these countries: 'Right lads, all bets are off. Tomorrow morning when we wake up, everyone's slate will be wiped clean and we'll start again. Meanwhile, no ice cream for the ones who messed up.'
(I haven't noticed the ice cream on hold in the corridors of power, I must say.
Precious little of it round these parts, however.)

Enough of that - before it drives me over the edge.

I didn't listen long enough to find out what lunchtime in Brussels has brought, but here it is very quiet. The divine duo are sleeping the sleep of the just.The only billions and trillions that lace their dreams are bonios - and not on loan to someone else, but snugly in a bonio-bank to which they have the only pin-number.
Their bellies have feasted, their feet have danced in the high places and consequently, all is forgiven.
For today, anyway.
(The generosity of dogs is unparallelled.)

Dinner guests in the Ramada Silver Robin

I'm not the only one having lunch, it seems.
The wiindow by my desk looks out onto the Ramada Silver Robin.
I am lucky enough that that isn't a hotel.
It's a restaurant. A bird table. And the first lunches of the season are in full swing now that the summer-smorgasbord is coming to an end. Doves, blue tits, great tits and chaffinches today. They can taste winter in the air. I have hung up a fat-ball and a lemon-net stuffed with stale bread.

I can taste winter in the air too. It is bright and sharp, the sun striking brilliant green off the mossy ash tree by the gate. In the woods this morning, the last leaves hung like ripe, golden pennies and the river rushed in clear, brown tea over the stones, but the undergrowth still froths, lush and green. It made me think of Dylan Thomas's poem -'Time held me green and dying, though I sang in my chains like the sea.'
The river was certainly singing, but not the young herons. They have got to know us now and when we approach they don't fly away, just warily swap banks. 'They're our woods,' they declare fiercely, whenever I stop to admire them.'Our woods, our river, and our salmon. So don't you forget it.'
I won't.

Top-Dog pretending to be asleep

I think the divine duo might have a thing or two to say though.