No time to sit and stare today

Today’s guest picture comes from our friend Bruce and his holiday in Yorkshire. The authorities are quite happy to direct people to Rosedale, but they don’t seem to care about giving them a clue about where to go when they came back the other way.

Unlike yesterday when I did one thing for a long time, I did lots of things today for a relatively short time. This meant two many pictures and a late start for the post, so it is going to be rather garbled galleries. Click on a picture for a fuller view of you wish.

We got up early and I had time to nip out into the garden to see how my two favourite roses are doing . . .

. . . before we cycled up to the tree nursery on the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve to water the trees in the nursery at Cronksbank before the day got too hot. There was a carpet of white clover at the nursery gate, and the geraniums are still looking good. We stopped on the way back to admire orchids among the horsetail beside the road, alerted by the sight of ragged robin which often grows near orchids.

I had time to put my bike on charge when I got home, before I walked up to have coffee with Sandy, His mobility is quite limited by his ongoing foot problems, but he remains remarkably cheerful and good company. There are lots of good things in his garden too. I spotted a bottle fly on a flower head as I went home.

When I got home, I joined Mrs Tootlepedal in the garden for a while . . .

. . . before the heat of the sun drove me in to cool off, read the papers and do the crossword. I checked on the birds while I was inside . . .

. . . and then popped out into the garden again before lunch.

A late red rose has just produced its first flower.

I have been doing quite a bit of cycling lately, and neglecting my walking legs as a result, so although it was still sunny and quite hot (25°C/77°°F) after lunch, I went for a walk.

My plan was to head up a hill as soon as possible. There was a bit of a breeze blowing which might keep me cool. I purchased an ice cream on the Kilngreen and made for the monument on the top of Whita Hill, going up by way of the road to the MacDiarmid memorial and the track to the summit. I was helped by some kindly clouds which floated overhead and gave me occasional breaks from the direct sun. It was still warm when I got to the top, but the breeze did its job.

It was such a good day for walking that when I had got to the monument, I continued on to the edge of the last hill in Scotland, and looked down over the Solway Plain. In the distance, I could see a glimpse of the Solway Firth and the flat lands where I had cycled yesterday.

I followed the path down to the end of the wall which you can see on the left in the picture above, and then turned to walk round the back of the hill to the cairn at the Castle Craigs. The path is very faint among the heather and blaeberries, but I had done it before so I knew it was there, though from time to time it took the eye of faith to see it. I looked over the valley to Cronksbank where we had been earlier in the morning, and at a splendid view of the nature reserve from the cairn at the Castle Craigs.

From the castle Craigs, I walked on round the hill and then back to Whita Well on the track down the Birnie Braes, and thence down past the golf course to the Kirk Wynd and the town. I looked at the wild flowers as I passed the golf course.

I have had many unsuccessful efforts at photographing the red clover this year, but the light must have been better today, because I got a better result than usual.

It had become quite overcast as I came down the hill, but it was muggy, and as I lost the cooling breeze, it got too warm for comfort . . .

. . . and I was glad to get into the house and have a cup of tea.

We have a carpet of clover at our back door too at the moment.

The Strava app on my Phone which I use to record my walks malfunctioned today, and when I got home it proudly announced that I had done three miles in 23 seconds. As I had been out for over two hours, this seemed a bit improbable, and further research with a map showed that I had walked about six miles, quite a bit further than I had intended when I set out, but very enjoyable so I wasn’t complaining.

After the pause for refreshment, we went out into the garden again and Mrs Tootlepedal helped me pick the blackcurrants. It was not a great crop but they were nice and ripe, and there might be just enough of them to make a jar or two of jelly.

Then there was time for a shower and a light evening meal, before we walked down the road to the Buccleuch Centre to see a company of six young actors put on a very entertaining account of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. We thought that they were particularly good at making sure that everything that they said was clear and understandable while maintaining a good quality of verse speaking. As all six actors had multiple parts, they not only had a lot of lines to remember but also the job of remembering which part they were playing at any given time. There was a good house and they were given a resounding round a applause at the end of the play.

We walked in home with the temperature still at 19 degrees feeling quite midsummery ourselves. As the temperature is set to plummet tomorrow and with added rain, the play was a very good way to celebrate our brief spell of summer weather.

As you can imagine in all this activity, I didn’t have time to hang around waiting for a flying bird to turn up, so a starling doing some seed tidying up is the non flying bird of the day.