Peter’s Hospital Diary

It is a glorious sunny day here, the conservatory has all its windows open, there is the gentle hum of lawn-mowers from the neighbours (I ought to test my strength and do ours) and the birds are singing!

I get great pleasure watching the variety of birds in the garden, particularly on ‘weak’ days when I can sit and watch the bird feeders for an hour or so. Apart from the sparrowhawk that I mentioned last week, we get blue and great tits, nutches, goldfinches and yesterday we had a bullfinch at the feeder.

Which brings me on to the main point of this post… feeding the birds is all very well, but you need a good source of high quality (and relatively inexpensive!) bird food. I can thoroughly recommend The Really Wild Bird Seed Co as an excellent source of bird food in quantity. Apart from the bird seed (much of which is grown on the farm) they also sell a wide variety of feeders – and to cap it all, they are really nice people! The only catch (you might think) is that the post and packing would be expensive. Not so – it is all included – what you see is what you pay! So have a look at their site and see what you think. (I have also included a link in the sidebar under ‘other web sites’).

While on the subject of food, I have been living with this impaired sense of taste and smell for a while, but last night it really got to me! I was watching (unusually) the hairy Bikers programme, where the two intrepid motor cyclists were in Argentina, cooking really thick steaks and the most wonderful looking salads. I have never been to Argentina, but I did spend a few days in Chile some years ago, where I sampled some of the delicious South American beef. Looking at last night’s program reminded me how good it was – but also brought home the fact that if I was presented with it now, I couldn’t eat it (sore mouth) and with my sense of smell as it is, I wouldn’t enjoy it as much even if I could! It really got to me! However today it seems a petty thing to whinge about – I just look forward to the day when I will be able to enjoy such things! Now, where’s the Scandishake…?

So while the birds are munching their way through the feeder mix, I shall look at the not-so-delicious scandishake, and contemplate the lawn mowing!

Onwards and upwards! (Particularly the birds!)