I meant to tell you

and completely forgot.

Last Monday I was sorting out the fridge and found, tucked at the back, two meatballs which were slightly past their best.  I thought I might take them up to Hill House and donate them to the magpies.  Then I thought I might just put them out in our courtyard and see if the local magpies fancied them.  So I did that and got the ironing board out to do the week's ironing.

The bit of the courtyard where I put the meatballs
Jim is weeding it
We are planning to grow zucchini and melons there in the summer

I became aware that there was a large crow sitting on the roof of the unit next door. It hopped down onto the fence, then hopped along until it was near the meatballs. Then it jumped down, grabbed a meatball and flew up back to the gutter of the place next door. It dropped the meatball into the gutter where it meets the roof valley.  It checked very carefully that no bird was watching. (It knew that I was watching but didn't seem perturbed by me.) Then it carefully covered the meatball up with all the leaves and twigs that sit in the bottom of the valley.  Then it flew down, grabbed the second meatball and flew away all the way over there to a stand of trees.

The unit next door.
There's another one behind us but the crow showed no interest in that

Bundle of twigs and leaves behind the baby gum tree

Just as I was finishing the ironing the crow came back, uncovered the meatball and sat in peace on the guttering while it ate its lunch. The magpies didn't get a look in - though there are lots of them about.

Such a very clever crow!

In other news, yesterday Jim and I went out and bought a new fridge/freezer, which is coming tomorrow. While we were about it, we also bought an Apple TV (that's a digital box, not an actual TV). The signal here is terrible and often we can't watch the TV at all.  I was going to buy a signal booster (and I may yet do that) but with the Apple TV we can watch many of the free to air channels that we would have watched anyway, even if the programs are not at the time of broadcast. Plus we can watch some of the subscription channels. Finally my Netflix subscription is looking to be value for money!

It's been snowing this morning!  It's stopped now and the sun is shining, though there are black clouds about.  We are trusting to the Weather Dogs (a dubious plan, I agree) and are shortly going with Lindsey to Talbot to the monthly market, then to Clunes to see if they have any more of the cute glasses I bought last time we were there, and then possibly to the tree nursery so Lindsey can get some more fruit trees. I had better go and look out my winter weather gear!