I was just about to get in the shower when I heard my wife calling up the stairs, “My beloved….Come quickly! Come and see….Out on the patio….Bring your camera!“Wondering what on earth it was she’d seen, I immediately snatched up small toweling eight sizes too small dressing-gown and sought to put it on back-to-front like one of those “open all areas” proctologist’s examination gowns….not simply

for the reason I don’t actually either possess a dressing-gown of my own or understand the rudimentary mechanics of wearing one, but more because it was the only thing to hand that went at least some way towards covering my otherwise shameful, full-frontal nudity! Then, with my rear still fully exposed to any and all passing sarcasm, I rushed downstairs, grabbing my camera as I ran.“What? What is it?” I eventually managed to gasp between breaths. At the very least, I’d expected to be confronted by some overly opportunistic Sparrow-hawk perched atop the garden shed or perhaps another daylight visitation by “Old Stripy”, one of the local Badgers or even the sight of a solitary Red Kite passing high above the house….but it was none of those. Instead, my wife, obviously delighted by whatever it was she could see, was pointing excitedly out of the kitchen window and down towards the concrete patio floor.  “Look my handsome knight!” she said, “Pixie, Dixie and Trixie!”…..and there they were, three (in total) of the cutest little things you could possibly imagine romping all over the place and chasing each other’s tails amongst the herb-filled plant pots right there on the patio!Now, cute they may be for the moment, but I shall give them a week or so to learn to fend for themselves before eventually catching them and releasing them in some far-flung field miles away from human habitation.This, of course, is a typical example of what having a wildlife-orientated garden is all about, and, at the very least, it’s an indicator that, (a), things are more or less in balance within the confines of the garden and, (b), we have no significant rat problem in the wider vicinity at the moment.Finally, for reasons of common public decency, I admit that there’s one picture I shall most definitely NOT be adding to either of my websites because it’s the one that my wife took (somewhat unkindly I thought) with my little point-and-shoot camera of me as I lay belly-down out on the patio in order to get these shots as close as possible while simultaneously doing my best impersonation of somewhere to park your bike!Has anyone else, apart from me, noticed how often it is that my married life seems more akin to some kind of surreal situation comedy than to anything even remotely normal?