Today was blessedly free of cleaning at the cottages and doing the bank is a doddle (more a matter of finding something to do to fill in that last 15 minutes of the contract actually - and that has to be done out of sight of the security cameras so they don't spot me texting, lol).

So on my return home i mixed up the bags of concrete and finally installed the post for the clothesline. Getting it vertical proved a challenge, but it seems to have 'gone off' in the right position. Tomorrow I will start back-filling with soil and rocks and so forth. I delayed this as I will be hosing the soil in to ensure it does not have any pockets of air in there. 

During this activity I (shock horror) chained Sebastian to the ladder that is lying against the fence to discourage wandering and let him sit and watch. He didn't seem unduly worried by this heinous act, so later when I was doing some other gardening he was once again chained to the nearest fixed object. Maybe he will take the hint from Shadow who simply collapses in an inelegant sprawl while I am doing such things.

Also removed the top box from the unexpected hive and put a travelling lid on it since someone is coming to collect it soon. Since this was an informal and unexpected swarm, the remaining box on the hive has frames but no foundation and they are doing some rather elegant ad-libbing in the way of combs. This is one up on the box I removed which had no frames at all in it. I am just hoping the brood box at least had frames and foundation. Since i have discovered my own new frames in another of the boxes, I rather suspect that may not be the case, but we can but live in hope. They are very calm and lovely bees - it will be a pity to see them go.

The household remains calm. Today I went to the library and left dogs and cats all in together and nothing was broken and no-one was hurt. Probably not something I would do for more than an hour just yet, but good to see things are that calm and settled.