This has to be one of my favourite allbingo  challenges. This year I chose the Holidays theme to give me:

Winter Solstice	Christmas Day
New Years Eve	St. Nikolaus Day

Sunshine Revival Challenge #1 - Journaling Prompt: Light up your journal with activity this month.
Talk about your goals for July or for the second half of 2025.

I'm working my way through 25 things in 2025, and have completed the first 14, as well as chosen 2 for April to September.  Which means it's time to choose the next 5, leaving 3 for the final quarter, plus Thing #1 which is simply to complete and write about the other 24 Things.

They are:

Quarter 3 - July to September

18 - Take part in the Big Butterfly Count
This runs from 18 July to 10 August and further details can be found here.  Part of my plan to support wildlife.

19 - Sort out my current papers/documents
They're all filed in an expanding file, so I can find everything, but it's time to move the oldest papers elsewhere, so they can be stored but I don't need them to hand.  Another of the 'I really should do this sometime' tasks, which should now get done.

20 - Sort Anchor threads
A few weeks ago I bought a box for storing my Anchor threads, so I can find the colours I want easily.  All I have to do now is get round to sorting them.  That is definitely a challenge, which is why I've added it here.

Half 2 - July to December

21 - Take part in the weekly Garden Bird Watch
I started this as part of 30 Days of Wildlife, and the intention is to keep going for six months, after which I will automatically continue or realise it's simply not working.

22 - Revise some German
I only have very basic German, which every so often I go back over.  As we shall be on holiday in Germany next April, it wouldn't hurt to go over it again.  We're on a tour, so it mostly won't be needed, but there's always buying cakes etc!

23 - Autumn Holiday
We haven't decided where we're going this year, but we'll be going somewhere, probably in early October, which is when we usually go, so I'm including this as one of my things I'm doing this year.

My full list can be found here

Week 4 had a creative theme, so I wrote a tanka:

Counting garden birds
Filling up the water bowls
Walking through the woods
Small steps to gentle progress
Building a lifetime's habit

And I downloaded a knitting pattern from the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, to knit a bittern - a 'knittern' for making later.

In addition, I downloaded 14 spotter sheets for use during different seasons (and therefore encouraging me to go out), plus masks and colouring sheets for our after school club.

Finally, I made a bumblebee felt craft brooch from a kit I'd myself a while ago.




Looking back on the 30 Days Wild challenge, it's been fun and hopefully will encourage me to do more - I always feel it would be a good idea, but finding the necessary motivation is important.  I've become a member of the British Trust for Ornithology (it's not very expensive) and have submitted two weeks' worth of garden bird sightings.  And I'm currently watching the house martins flying around catching flies.

7 books read this month, so 38 for the year and I'm on target!

A Frightfully Fatal Affair by Hannah Hendy
I normally listen to these on audiobook, but for a change I borrowed it from the library.  The next in the Dinner Lady Detectives series.  Entertaining, slightly implausible, but the two dinner ladies are appealing characters, so I enjoyed reading it.

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
A look at how Mr Rochester might have found his 'mad' wife in Jane Eyre.  Worth reading, but I didn't feel for Antoinette (Bertha) as I had expected to.

The Dead Witness edited by Michael Sims
A collection of short detection stories for the nineteenth century.  Very few of the stories appealed, and I was left grateful for Sherlock Holmes!

Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells
The next Murderbot story, which was fun and continued to prove that Murderbot was far better equipped to deal with most things than anyone else.

The Rose Apple Tree Mystery by Ovidia Yu
The next in the Su Lin series (which was the Crown Colony series, although the name is no longer accurate), this one is set not in Singapore but in the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia.  As always, it's an interesting look at the region in 1947 and I enjoyed the mystery.  I had guessed part of it, but I imagine the reader was supposed to have their suspicions.  

Cyanide in the Sun edited by Martin Edwards
Another of the British Library Crime Classics short story collections.  Not as good as previous books, it may be that the pool of such stories is being drained.

CWA Anthology of Short Stories: Mystery Tour edited by Martin Edwards
Another short story collection, but this time modern short stories.  I enjoyed the majority - in any collection there are going to be some which I don't like, for various reasons, but it was a good batch.


Also, I had a go at the Goodreads Seasonal Challenge for May and June and achieved 5 of the 7 categories:



And here is my book bingo card - I may even finish it next month!

Word count for the month 11,500, bringing my total for the half year to just over 62K, so marginally ahead of my goal so far - always good to have a few words in hand!

I've written two squares for whatif_au Bingo: for Air Travel You Don't Have To Be Nuts to Work Here which is Hamlet/The Hobbit and a follow up to the last time I wrote for the air travel theme, Thank You for Flying Elsinore Airways and the second for the High/Low fantasy square, which is written but needs another readthrough before posting.  

The major word production went for my caseficexchange story, which won't be revealed until next month.

My other major achievement this month was to complete my 11 year streak for fan_flashworks with Support Your Local Baby Bank , a Spooks (MI5) ficlet.