Monday 14th September 2020 Day 174

7.15    Worry has appeared to wake me.  She has taken to sleeping downstairs quite often now and I must say I am sleeping better for not having a cat padding about all night but she is ready for the day and is telling me to get up too.

I wander bleary eyed into the bathroom and when I look out of the window, there is the blessed heron waiting for any unsuspecting fish that might be in the little connecting stream between the ponds. He doesn’t usually arrive till much later than this in the year when there is scant food in the rivers. He was there yesterday too and because the ponds are netted, he has managed to spear a fish to death but was unable to get hold of it, so it didn’t even make for a heron breakfast. A little while later I find another dead fish on the lawn. I have covered the stream but he will be back for sure tomorrow morning.  Such a magnificent and prehistoric looking bird at close quarters and once the winter sets in he’ll get thinner and thinner until I almost feel sorry for him……almost.

9.30  I go to inspect the pond, partly to make sure there have been no more heron casualties and partly to see how bad the regrowth of duck weed might be.  Yesterday Janet kindly came round with nets and pond gloves and wellies to help me to try to get rid of the persistent weed once and for all. We did a good job with one shushing it across the pond with the hose and the other sucking it up with the pond hoover but it is next to impossible to remove all of it and this morning the few bits left around the edges have multiplied up again.  It seems it is going to be impossible but I’ll keep at it.  No sign of heron carnage this morning, the extra netting seems to have worked for now but they are wily birds, he will find a way to catch a fish eventually.

So today marks the start of new Covid measures and groups only of six allowed to meet up.  To be honest I am getting so confused with how many households can meet within the permitted six, as I gather are several other people, when I spoke with friends today, everyone seemed to have a different idea.  So the new adage will be ‘six is company seven a crowd’ at least for a few days when we are told it will be something else.

Over the weekend I went on yet another new walk and didn’t get lost by the way.  On the signpost was a circular blue sign with the title ‘Paths of Prosperity’.  On checking it out when I got home I read that there are forty seven of these walks varying in difficulty and length in the varied East Sussex countryside promoted by East Sussex County Council.  I still don’t understand why they are titled such, perhaps I should walk them and see if I prosper.