Mother Duck!

I hardly need to mention it was Mothers Day here yesterday... I was treated to some lovely flowers and gifts by my rugrats.



What a beautiful colour!





Now, Mothers Day is always a bittersweet affair for me. A struggle between appreciating what I have now with what I no longer have. Suffice to say yesterday had its fair share of tears and smiles. One of my brothers posted a beautiful picture of our Mum on FB, I have another from the same time which I treasure.

I often wonder what things would be like if she were still here. How different would my life be now? What would she make of the things I do? What would we have in common? What would she say about taxidermy??!!??

Which leads me nicely onto a serendipitous (is this even a real word?) event from yesterday. My treat for the day was a proper grown up trip to the garden centre followed by a mosey round the antique shops in Lechlade. One of them had clearly had a consignment from a taxidermist recently... a huge cabinet of parrots and fancy birds, a small dome of hummingbirds,  framed moths, spiked butterflies and this beauty.....

Now I always associate kingfishers with my Mum and I'm sure there's some wonderful animal folklore stuff out there. Brother #1 has a tattoo of a kingfisher dedicated to her. So, when I saw this I knew I had to have it and damn the food shopping for the rest of the month! DD was less than impressed with the new dead things but politely said 'they're lovely'. They are currently on my bedroom floor awaiting space to be made. Somewhere.

Meanwhile I'm off to research kingfishers!