I found him outside an hour ago, looking for shade under my car. I took him into the kitchen where he sprawled out on the slate floor

Inside the house the blinds on the south facing windows are pulled down. Outside the animals all have shade and water. We moved Mother hen and her five chicks to a shady hen house next to the chicken run.

I just picked 2 kilos of apricots – thinking that it will be cooler indoors making jam today than outside in the glare of the sun

I’m off to weed the leek bed but I will wear a bee suit as the patch is near the very active hives and the bees are flying.

Pickling chilli and sweet peppers, cucumbers and shallots

It’s actually a Gatekeeper Butterfly (as noted by my friend Kate – a “proper” countrywoman). Wiki says as follows

It is a member of the subfamily Satyrinae in the family Nymphalidae. A similar species is the meadow brown; the two species can be difficult to distinguish with closed wings, since the underwing markings are very similar. However, the gatekeeper tends to rest with its wings open, whereas the meadow brown usually rests with its wings closed. The gatekeeper is also smaller and more orange than the meadow brown and has double pupils on its eyespots.^[2]

Click below

Chores done, weeding the leeks (until the bees decided I was too near their hive) and more watering. The butterflies are already flitting around the flowering herbs

Oak apple or oak gall is the common name for a large, round, vaguely apple-like gall commonly found on many species of oak. Oak apples range in size from 2 to 4 centimetres (1 to 2 in) in diameter and are caused by chemicals injected by the larva of certain kinds of gall wasp in the family Cynipidae. (Courtesy Wikipedia)