Today we decided to spend a bit of time working in the garden. None of us are keen gardeners – we subscribe to the ‘let nature find it’s own way’ school – but we have a free-standing pond and a big wooden planter arriving next week, so we needed to do some tidying up. This included breaking up an old planter and spreading the tired compost over the garden. Nothing very exciting about any of that, except we had some unexpected company.

I was bent over the planter, scooping the old soil into a bucket, when I felt something in the gap between the top of my jeans and the bottom of my t-shirt. I squawked and jumped and disturbed a robin who had perched on my behind to watch the proceedings. It was a juvenile who spent the next couple of hours supervising our work, darting down to collect the odd worm or wood louse, then bouncing back to the fence to sing out encouragement.

As if that wasn’t exciting enough, when I lifted a piece of tarpaulin to put in the rubbish I noticed a movement and spotted three frogs – one adult, one youth and one babe. We don’t have a pond yet, but the wildlife seems to be gathering in preparation.

We stopped work just before the heavens opened and we’re both pretty sore from our exertions, but neither of us could stop grinning.