I left my brain in San Francisco...

Another week passed with no allotment trip! This week I have been suffering from a heavy cold. I was still ill at the weekend, and by this time absolutely frantic that my feathered friends were expiring in their thousands just outside my window...I tried to put this across gently to H, who said I was being absurd. I insisted he pay a visit to the garden centre and gave him an extensive list of the modern wild bird's nutritional needs, which (thanks to recent e-mail activity with a keen ornithologist) I now realise includes a ready supply of Niger Seeds. He said he would return with a set of the cheapest fat balls. If these were good enough for the wild birds in southern France he said, they were good enough for here. He returned about an hour later, somewhat discheveled (it was Mother's Day, and things had evidently been frantic in the garden centre...by the way, any advise on spelling 'discheveled' will be gratefully received), carrying a pack of coconut shells and two enormous bell-shaped objects, like the things you put in budgie cages but about 1000 times bigger. I commented that this seemed a very different purchase to the one he'd suggested, and, typically, he then tried to pretend that he hadn't gone completely mad in the shop, but had retained his Left Brain Logicality at all times. The bells, he explained would attract a Completely Different Sort Of Bird to the garden. Well, he's hung them up and I'm waiting for CDSOB to turn up. I just hope I don't get done for growing marijuana plants which is what happened the last time I put up 'interesting' wild bird food (I kid you not!). This morning, trying to preempt the snow which is evidently going to bring the entire country to a halt later in the day, I went out and planted some Lily bulbs. Evidently these can be planted in shady places as long as their flowers get some sun, so I'm hoping they do ok in a rather dark corner I have next to a clematis which has similar needs. They are in keeping with my theme of having very light flowers round the outside of the garden to make the place look a bit bigger. They are also supposed to be highly scented. Ohh, I can't wait..what with this and the marijuana, this promises to be a summer of lu-uv!