Before it got too hot, I took the dogs out for a walk around the newly mown meadows. Yesterday our walk was curtailed because Trixie followed us and a cat in a field is fair game as far as dogs are concerned. The day before we had to double back because of rabbits, the day before that the marsh beaver family was out by the pond and they send Redmond berserk. Bix doesn’t like them much either. I had great difficulty controlling Redmond who yelled his head off and had to be thumped.

Today, before it got hot, and after Trixie had come back in from seeing Imelda off, and I had checked that the marsh beavers weren’t in sight, we set off. Sniffed two dead snakes, juveniles. One at the edge of the meadow, sliced in half by the mower, the other beneath the trees, half-eaten.

Deeper beneath the…