Today’s guest picture comes from David, one of my walking companions of yesterday. He took this delightful view of our house as we had our cup of tea under the walnut tree at the end of our journey.

We certainly chose a good day for our walk yesterday, as it was a grey and miserable day today, with no sun and the temperature not getting above 16 degrees until it mysteriously got a degree or two warmer in the evening.
Mrs Tootlepedal had a busy morning visiting the hairdresser and the dentist, so I was by myself as I cycled up to Cronksbank to do some more work with the volunteers at the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve tree nursery. There were five other volunteers, so a lot of work got done, with about 1000 more seedlings put into new trays, while rabbit proofing of the area was also going on. The Nature Reserve managers are hiring some professional help, as there are far too many seedlings for the volunteers to deal with by themselves.
It was gloomy up on the moor, but the rain held off while we were there . . .

. . . and it let me cycle home in the dry before it started. Once started, it kept going for most of the rest of the day.
I found a nearly dry moment to whizz round the garden.
The nasturtiums are thriving this year and lasting well.

And the dahlias looked positively cheerful in spite of the rain.



A lily was blowing its own trumpet.

After yesterday’s walk and the morning’s volunteering, I felt quite happy to have a relaxing afternoon in today, with continuing rain and some wind too giving me a good excuse.
I put some of the newspaper index into the Archive Group database, did some puzzles from the paper, mooched about moodily, and occasionally glanced out of the window at the bird feeder.

Once again, sparrows were to the fore, and a greenfinch was a bit offend by some of the language that they used.

Mrs Tootlepedal had purchased some cream on one of her morning outings, so I filled an idle moment by making some gooseberry fool. For those who don’t know it, this is a dish of stewed and mashed gooseberries, sweetened with sugar and judiciously mixed with custard and whipped cream to a smooth consistency. Whether it tastes good or not depends very much on the quality of the gooseberries. The ones that I had picked a couple of days ago were just right, and the result was excellent. Mrs Tootlepedal, who doesn’t much care for gooseberries, is recalibrating her opinion after having a taste test.
It looks as though we are in for some more cool and rainy weather over the next few days, but there might be some sunshine too. As we need the rain, a mixture of sunshine and showers would be very acceptable. That is as long as there is time for the occasional cycle outing between the showers.
The light was very poor this afternoon under the thick clouds, so the flying sparrow of the day is correspondingly pretty poor too.
