Not quite a perfect day

Today’s guest picture is another from my brother Andrew. As well as greenfinches, we have lovely pink peonies in common in our gardens.

We have two of these nice peonies on the go at the moment . . .

. . . and I had plenty of time to photograph them as Sandy postponed his usual Monday visit for coffee until tomorrow, and I had nothing more important to do than to walk up to the chemist to get a prescription, and to make soup for lunch. This left me with plenty of scope for garden wandering.

The delphiniums have not been blown over yet . . .

. . . and the rosa complicata nearby goes from strength to strength.

Mrs Tootlepedal is very pleased with this clematis this year, because for once it has decided to show its flowers on the right side of the fence, and look into the flower garden, and not the vegetable garden

St John’s Wort pops up in many places in the garden, but I think that this is the first one so far.

My favourite shot of the morning was not a flower but a leaf. Mrs Tootlepedal is not so pleased with it as she tells me that the colour of the leaf shows a deficiency in the soil.

After I got back from the chemist, I had a look to see what was making all the buzzing noises near the greenhouse. There were a lot of buzzers to choose from.

After lunch, Mrs Tootlepedal went out to do a little gardening, and I had another look round.

Mrs Tootlepedal pointed out a poppy which she kindly allows to grow in the shelter of the greenhouse . . .

. . . and I did a little weeding and dead heading, while enjoying the colourful flower beds.

I didn’t have much luck with birds today, but I was pleased to see that we still have redpolls visiting the feeder.

Then, as yesterday, since it was sunny at the moment, I spent some time considering the weather forecasts and the possibility of getting a dry bike ride in. The Met Office was showing the probability of some brief passing showers, while the BBC had a much more ominous view. The wind was reasonable in both forecasts, so I decided to ignore the BBC and believe the Met Office. I set off on my push bike to replicate a ride that I had done on my e-bike a few days ago.

My legs felt quite sanguine about a 23 mile bike ride, so I pushed along into the wind, stopping only to exchange the time of day with an old friend . . .

. . . and I was very pleased when a few drops of rain fell on me as I got to the top of Callister but almost immediately stopped. One up to the Met office, I thought, as I pedalled happily on to Dunnabie, where I took the beautifully surfaced newly opened road to Waterbeck.

It takes years off you to pedal on a surface like this with a helpful breeze at your back. My heart sang.

I stopped to take in this pastoral scene before cycling up to Gair, internally criticising the BBC for being unduly pessimistic with its talk of thunder showers and heavy rain.

I was intending to take the road past the Solwaybank Wind Farm on my way home, and some raindrops started to fall almost as soon as I had taken that last picture, and as the drops were rather large, I stopped again and put on my rain jacket which I had sensibly brought with me. This was a good decision.

Within minutes, the rain had begun to come down in earnest, and by the time that I had turned on to the Solwaybank road at Gair, it was pelting down. I had only got a few hundred yards up the road when the rain turned to hail and began hitting me so painfully that I had to stop riding and take shelter under a tree. I changed my mind about the BBC. Sound people.

The tree wasn’t much good as a shelter, as the rain and hail was coming down so hard that it was coming through the full canopy of leaves as though it was winter. I was standing there rather miserably, waiting for the shower to pass, but not only did the rain get heavier, but a flash of lightning in the sky above me heralded a deafening crack of thunder, and this continued for some time.

Standing under a big tree in a thunderstorm is not recommended, but neither is standing in the middle of a hail storm with no shelter at all. The road was filling up with slushy hailstones and I began to wonder if I would be able to cycle home at all.

After a quarter of an hour, the thunder eased off, as did the worst of the rain, and I decided that rather than going across a rather bleak and exposed stretch of moorland on a narrow back road, it might be better to head back to more well used roads, and go home over Callister.

This was a good decision, as after two of three miles of very wet and windy riding, I got out of the worst of the rain, and the wind came round enough to blow me back over the hill and down into Langholm, where it had turned into quite a pleasant afternoon. The change of route only added another mile to the trip.

I had a hot shower to warm myself up when I got in, and then it was time for our regular Zoom with my brother and sisters. Being the second Monday of the month, there wasn’t long after the Zoom to squeeze in a quick meal before I went off to the last Camera Club meeting of this session.

The meeting was an excellent way to round off a day which had left something to be desired in the way of unalloyed pleasure. There was a good turnout, and a really interesting and varied selection of photographs to enjoy. We will meet again for the autumn season in September.

The flying bird of the day is a siskin.