There's a cat in the alleyway dreaming of birds that are blue.

We had a heron land in the back yard yesterday. (redcountess has posted on the subject.) Much as last year's, we suspect it was a young one that got lost flying from one local marsh to another. We heard crows outside and looked to see them getting very annoyed at this heron being anywhere near their nests. Liz was afraid its wing was broken and called London Wildcare for help, but it did manage to fly over to the next yard, so we suspect it was just utterly buggered. I went down to scare the crows off (and get pics, of course), but I fear it was more scared of me than the crows.

( Heron pics. )

valkyriekaren had a birthday do last night and Liz and I attended. After wandering the dodgier bits of Walthamstow trying to find where on Earth the W15 had been diverted to. Eventually we just staggered up to the station and got a minicab. We had a lovely time, Karen got in a marvellous selection of "beardy beer" which I guzzled in short order and it was very nice indeed to be out with Liz.

Pictures and rollcall are up — please let me know of naming errors or objections. They could probably do with some work (brightening, cropping, shrinking for that matter), but I've realised that putting up pics and fixing them at my leisure is more likely to satisfy both myself and my victims.

Turkey apple carrot stir fry.

That subject line isn't a Go-Betweens lyric, it's what we had for dinner this evening. Adapted from a recipe Liz found when looking for good ways to stir fry turkey.

½ tsp paprika
2 tsp minced garlic
2 tbsp light soy sauce
½ cup unsweetened apple juice
500g turkey breast, cut into thin pieces
Just a bit of oil for the wok
1 cup fresh snow peas, trimmed
Three carrots
A spring onion
Brown rice

Mix up the apple juice, garlic, soy and paprika. Put the turkey in, making sure it's entirely covered in the stuff. Leave it for half an hour.

Start boiling the water for the rice. While it's boiling, thinly slice the carrots and the spring onion and trim the snow peas (I believe you Engrish call them "mangetout" or something equally silly). Put the rice on as soon as the water's boiled, then go back to chopping up stuff.

By now you should be ready to start cooking stuff. Nice hot wok, apply oil. Put the turkey mix in. Stir fry for about seven minutes. Push the turkey to the sides, add the vegetables and stir fry for about four or five minutes. Mix it all up and stir fry for another three minutes. By now, if you've timed it right, the rice should be done and you can serve it up. You should get three serves out of it. I'm not clear on what the original recipe thought it was serving six of.

Liz says it was over the top on the carrots, and I cut them down quite a bit from the original. But it filled us nicely.