Here I am, back at work, the cat hanging out on the desk (over my arm, of course), and me catching up. Not quite at a snail's pace - but then, they actually are not that slow when they want to get somewhere. 

We have quite a lot of grapevine snails in the garden, to our delight. I'm not so fond of the slugs, but the snails are all welcome. (It probably helps that we don't have a lot of things growing that are attractive to snails and slugs, and/or so delicate they will get eaten up.)

This one here is clearly on the way somewhere. Maybe to some snail meetup - a few days ago, there was a group of three of them very close to each other...

We have a red and a red-grey squirrel in our area, with both of them rather frequently seen on the trees in the surrounding gardens... and the red-grey squirrel also in our garden. It not only tries to hide nuts there in the autumn, it also sometimes visits the compost heap, as you can see in this slightly blurry and also not very good photo: 

The reason for this is an old, bleached bone lying on top of the heap. The squirrel goes there to gnaw on the bone (you can clearly see the tooth marks) - we think it might be for the calcium. We had a bone on top of the heap a while ago, by chance, and realised that it was a squirrel snack, so when one re-appeared in the compost (after being buried for a bit) I pulled it out and moved it up top. 

Where it was almost instantly appreciated.

So... we did manage to get a wildlife camera (my aunt had one that she could borrow), but whoever lives in our compost heap cunningly chose a time of night that was very foggy to appear. So yes, someone is there. No, we don't know yet what kind of animal it is (though it might be just plain, boring... rats).

We'll keep our eyes open. And the camera trained on the place! 

...in our compost bin.

It was covered by a little bit of dried grasses and such, but now we know why there's so much soil and compost heaped on the side of the compost bin!

As it's about one metre above ground, we suspect it's not a hedgehog (unless we have a climbing hedgehog in our garden). 

Any guesses on who might have gone on a digging spree here? 

It's springtime(ish) again, which means the bees are out and about - and this is the season where they are in need of water. (In summer, too, but it's important in spring as well - they need water to be able to digest the pollen.)

Unfortunately, bees cannot swim, so the bee bar should be safe for them. I've found drowned bees in the saucers under pots where there was water standing after the rain. That's sad to see. 

Over the years, I've tried different things, and the current iteration looks like this:

It's a piece of coarse fabric wrapped around a mix of wood shavings and wool. That's set into a pot filled with water, and to prevent accidental drownings next to the fabric roll, I've stuffed in some more wool to keep the surface covered. It took the girls from the neighbourhood a few days to get it, but now they seem to appreciate their new bar! 

It's gotten pretty warm outside - not proper real spring-warm, but also not wintery cool or cold anymore. The snowdrops and crocuses are blooming, and the irises as well. It's a little early for all of them, if you ask me, but with the generally warm weather, I guess it's something we will all have to get used to.

At least they look pretty no matter when! See for yourselves:

The willow fence is almost completely pruned by now, so there's only the rest of the garden to get into shape for the next growing season... 

It's gotten a good bit colder here, and there's also been - snow! Finally!  

And with the nice white background I suddenly noticed... we've forgotten to harvest one of the apples on our tiny apple tree.

It's not a huge loss, though, the apple is about as large as a marble, so we are not short an apple cake due to it! (The tree itself is really tiny, as it was intended as a potted tree for a balcony. The apples it makes are, accordingly, also quite small, but most are larger than marbles. And they are quite tasty too!)