Small but select

Today’s guest picture comes from my Somerset correspondent Venetia.  She is visiting the Netherlands for singing purposes, and saw this fine selection of bridges crossing the river Waal at Nijmegen through the tinted windows of her coach.  The Waal is a distributary* of the Rhine.

We had a fine day here today.  Indeed, we are promised a week of fine weather.  This will be very welcome after our recent very changeable conditions.  The temperature is due to rise steadily until Sunday when it will start to rain again.

A bit of warmth will be very welcome as it was definitely felt autumnal as I cycled about the town on various errands after breakfast.   I almost felt as though I should have been wearing gloves. However, it soon warmed up and Mrs Tootlepedal was recovered enough from her cold to have a wander round the garden and do some light work.

I did some dead heading and clearing up of fallen plums and, of course, looked around as I did so.

After a very slow start, the fuchsias in the garden are beginning to make a better effort…

…and together with the second flowering of the red astrantia….

…they are bringing some late colour to the garden.

An Icelandic poppy and a cosmos were doing a grand job of providing for insects.

The most striking thing about the garden though was not the flowers, but the butterflies on them.  There were red admirals…

on buddleia and sedum…

…and peacocks on both blue…

…and red buddleia.

They were joined by the usual collection of white butterflies too.

Mrs Tootlepedal spotted a very curious white butterfly with odd yellow wings fluttering about.  It was so unusual that we tracked it carefully as it flitted from plant to plant.  Finally, it rested long enough to be caught on camera and it turned out to be not one butterfly but two butterflies engaged in the business of producing more butterflies.

We politely left them to it and went off to a admire a lone small tortoiseshell completing our butterfly collection for the day.

I went back indoors and spent some time getting things ready for the first camera club meeting of the season, testing the projector and making sure that the laptop that we use wasn’t suddenly going to demand an update at an inconvenient time.

After lunch,  I was finally ready to go for a cycle ride.  The wind was supposed to be quite light but turned out to be quite brisk and gusty at times so I had a battle over the first eleven miles to get to the top of a hill on this little used road at Kennedy’s Corner.

From then on though, it was almost all downhill with good views over the Solway to the Lake District Hills 25 miles to the south

…and looking back I could see Burnswark Hill just behind me where forts have guarded the route north from iron age and then Roman  times.

To the west, I could just make out Criffel on the far bank of the Nith Estuary, 20 miles away.

It is an airy spot and I enjoyed the swoop down the hill to Chapelknowe, with the now helpful wind giving me an extra push.

Some time ago, I had been sent a guest picture of some Korean pine cones at Half Morton church and I remembered to have a look for them as I passed the churchyard today.  There are none so blind as those who will not see and I was quite impressed that I had managed to cycle within a few yards of these wonderful trees…

… many, many times without ever noticing them especially or the astonishing crop of cones right under my nose.

The fact that the church lies at the top of a small hill and I am always slightly puffed when I get there might explain it.

While I was there today, I also noted the the stone steps laid into the wall which enabled people to approach the church without opening the gate and letting the minister’s sheep, which grazed the grave yard,  out onto the road.

I stopped for a drink of water just before the final little hill on my route and can tell you that there is a stone wall under this jungle of ferns.

I got home after 27 miles in time to have a cup of tea and a slice of bead with plum jam followed by a shower, before my flute pupil Luke arrived.   Our hard work on improving our breathing is beginning to pay off and we are progressing steadily.

When Luke left, I enjoyed an excellent evening meal cooked by Mrs Tootlepedal and then went off to set up for the camera club meeting.

We had rather a thin attendance and I would have been disappointed except for the fact that the members who came produced such an interesting selection of images that the meeting was thoroughly enjoyable and worthwhile.

The meeting was short though and we didn’t need a half time break for tea and biscuits.  This left me with an unopened packet of bourbon biscuits and a temptation….into which I have happily fallen while writing this post.  I don’t know how many calories my cycle ride used up but I am perfectly sure that they have all been replaced now.

The flying bird(s) of the day are a small bunch of swallows.  They were sitting on a wire as I passed on my bicycle and I stopped, meaning to take picture showing swallows getting ready to depart when they suddenly departed.

* A distributary is a river which, instead of joining like a tributary, has split from the main river as it enters the delta at an estuary.

Solo singing

Today’s guest picture comes from our son Tony who spotted this bird flitting along the shore of the Firth of Forth.   I like the delicate colour combinations a lot.

We had a grey but dry day here and although the temperature is getting more autumnal by the day, it was still warm enough for me to cycle to church without the need for extra cold weather clothing.  I went by myself as Mrs Tootlepedal is suffering from a cold and was not in singing fettle at all.

She joined me for coffee when I got back from church, where once again the choir had been seriously lacking in numbers.

After coffee, there would have been enough time for me to go for a short pedal or a walk but my legs are still in a non co-operative mood so I gave them a chance to get better and confined my walking to a stroll round the garden.

I was interested to note how much colour one of the dahlias loses as it ages.  Here is the youth…

…and here is the adult.

Across the garden, another dahlia showed off the plant breeder’s skill.

Mrs Tootlepedal has several potentillas spread about the place.  It hasn’t been a great year for them but most of them still have some flowers left.  This is one of the few on the red variety.

The rudbeckias have enjoyed the weather and are still flowering well.

In a sheltered corner, a begonia which Mrs Tootlepedal picked up as a bargain on a garden centre visit is proving to be well worth every penny spent on it and more.

I am drawn to the honeysuckle on the fence because I pass it a lot and I tried to get a different take on it today.

And I noticed these little flowers when I looked at the bright red leaves on the creeper.

A little geranium is soldiering on.

A jackdaw is kindly helping us with picking the last of the plums…

…and the garden is still full of odd looking blackbirds…

…swallowing the last of the rowan berries.

I haven’t been dead heading the Icelandic poppies lately and this might explain why one of the few poppies flowering had such a large attendance of insects.

We can look forward to some colour from the nerines.

In the afternoon,  I once again left Mrs Tootlepedal nursing her cold at home, while I went off to sing with our Carlisle Community Choir.  The choir committee had been very conscious of the difficult conditions at last week’s practice and as a result, they had changed the seating and this week’s practice was much more satisfactory.  Two of our new tenors came back for a second go and it looks as though they will stay on, giving us a much needed number boost.

Our regular conductor was not there again this week but she had organised a very charming and competent young man to take her place and he got through a power of work.

I cooked a comfort meal of ham, egg, mushroom and tomato for our tea when I got back home and it was followed by a second helping of the tarte tatin.  This brought a bit of joy to a somewhat subdued day.

That odd blackbird in pursuit of rowan berries is the flying bird of the day.

A man with a plan…and a pan

Today’s guest picture comes from our friend Gavin.  He and his wife Gaye (pictured beside the train) spent 18 hours on this train from Salt Lake City to San Francisco.  He tells me that route took them through the Utah Salt Desert, Nevada Desert, and then finally the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It was spectacular but the accommodation and food on the train left a bit to be desired. He thinks Gaye was delighted that the journey was finally over.

I spent a very quiet day today, partly because my legs were not in the mood to be co-operative and mainly because the wind blew vigorously and relentlessly all day so it wasn’t an attractive cycling day.

The morning was given over to late rising, a crossword, coffee and a little light mowing of the greenhouse grass.  I wandered about dead heading and looking at flowers.  The poppies continue to surprise me with their tenacity…

…and here and there, bright colours stand out…

…though I had to hold the rose’s head up with my hand to get the picture of it.

I found a break in the wind to capture gentian, crocosmia and perennial wallflower.

And there were insects about too, although the butterflies were very scarce.

The rowan berries are getting very scarce too….

…and jackdaws decided that plums were a better bet.

I dug up a couple of leeks and made some leek and potato soup for my lunch and then Mrs Tootlepedal went off to her monthly Embroiderers Guild meeting and I did a little shopping.  Among the things that I acquired was a pan suitable for making tarte tatin.  My first effort a couple of days ago had no been very successful and not having a suitable pan had not helped.  We have got a good lot of apples about to ripen so I thought that I ought to have another go.

The new pan made things a lot easier but I still slightly overcooked the caramel sauce…

…and I need to improve my apple packing skills but once again, it didn’t taste too bad and things can only get better with experience.

While the tarte was cooking, I mowed the front lawn and edged both it and the middle lawn.  A neat edge always makes a lawn look better.

When the tarte had come out of the oven, I left Mrs Tootlepedal to recover from her meeting, which had gone very well, and set off to shake a little of the cussedness out of my legs with a two mile walk.  In spite of the strong wind, it was fairly warm and I didn’t need a coat or an umbrella.

I took a familiar route along the track to the Becks Burn and back by the Wauchope road and I passed plenty of fruit and seeds along the way.

Crab apples, unknown seed head , elderberries and rose hips

The rose hips on the hedge roses have really come into their own at the moment and there were flashes of red all along my walk.

These cones and seed heads were near the end of my walk.

There were some flowers along the way too.

I kept an eye out for fungus but the only example that I saw was this good spread on top of a tree trunk.  I think that these are turkey tails.

When I got to the track down to the Becks Burn itself, I was very impressed by this sea of grass, tossing in the breeze.

By the time that I had crossed the burn and walked up the slope on the far side, the sun had come out so I turned and looked back at the track that I had walked down on the far side of the little valley.

And I took a panorama of the bigger picture…

…which will expand if you click on it.

In the course of my walk, I photographed two gates, one near the beginning in dull light…

…and one near the end when the sun was out.

I ended my walk by looking to see if there were any slow worms in their favourite spot at Pool Corner.

There were.

And as my sister Susan, likes fuchsias, I took this picture of a really fine specimen just as I came back into the town.

I turned the tarte tatin out of the tatin pan when I got back and we had it as pudding after our evening meal.

Even though I hadn’t cycled myself, we were able to watch the highlights of great men cycling furiously in exciting stages of both the Vuelta and the tour of Britain to end my day.  It was quite exhausting just watching their efforts.

The flying bird of the day is a composite of a jackdaw that flapped across the garden in a relaxed way.

A tootle and a pedal…and a walk…and a scone

Today”s guest picture comes from our son Tony.  Looking through my files I see that I didn’t use this one from his highland holiday earlier in the year.  I thought that it should have gone in then so I have put it in now. It shows keen canoeists in Plockton.

We had a pleasant and mostly sunny day and it was filled with interesting things to do.  Fortunately they came at a leisurely pace and well spread out.

I started the day with a conversation with a neighbour over the garden fence.  As we chatted, blackbirds flew into the rowan tree and munched away on the berries, quite unconcerned about our presence.

After we finished our conversation, I went in and got my other camera out and spent some time recording blackbirds wondering where the berries had gone, checking out the berries that were there…

…and then eating them.   It will not be long until they are all gone.

Our neighbour has a rowan with yellow berries and he pointed out that they  have not been touched yet.  I wonder if the birds just don’t think that they are ripe.  Maybe they are not so tasty.

Then it was time for coffee and excellent treacle scones with Dropscone.  He has been busy playing golf and visiting his new granddaughter so I hadn’t seen him for some time.  It was good to catch up with his news.

When he left, I wandered round the garden doing some dead heading and looking at flowers, both individually…

There was plenty of evidence of yesterday’s rain

…and in clumps.

Then, thinking that I had better do something useful while Mrs Tootlepedal was busy at a meeting, I trimmed one of the garden hedges and the hedge along the road.

This should be the last time this year that the hedges need trimming I hope.

On my way back inside, I noticed that a nerine had come out…

…and I watched a sparrow watching a passing insect.

I don’t know if anyone was watching me.

Mrs Tootlepedal came back from her meeting and we had a light lunch.

After lunch, I got my bike out and pedalled quietly round my customary 20 mile Canonbie circuit.  Yesterday’s visit to the physiotherapist confirmed previous advice that I shouldn’t cycle up steep hills so I shall continue to pedal along tried and trusted familiar  flattish routes.  This means that cycling photos will continue to be on the dull side.

I was pleased to finally get a reasonably sharp photo of some clover today.  I have been trying and failing all summer so it was only right that the clover should be going over when I finally caught it.

Looking over the Hollows Bridge, there was just the faintest suggestion that leaves are beginning to turn.

Following a previous picture of beech nuts, I took two more shots of beech trees, one on each side of the bridge at the Hollows just to show that almost all our beech trees are heavily laden this year.

I have passed the laughing poodle tree many times this year on my bike rides so I thought that I might record it once again as it always amuses me as I see it.

When I got home, I found Mrs Tootlepedal relaxing after some hard gardening while I had been out.

I had a quick butterfly hunt after I had had a cup of tea and was pleased to find three different kinds on the go, red admiral, painted lady and peacock.  I had hoped for a small tortoiseshell as well but had to make up the panel with a plain fly on the sedum.

Crown Princess Margareta has flowered but she has turned her back on her public and I had to wade into the border to get this shot.

I went in and had a shower, and then, while Mrs Tootlepedal was cooking our evening meal, I went out for a short walk.  The physiotherapist has said that I should walk as much as I can.

Some dog tooth peltigera lichen appeared on a wall shortly after I set out…

…and my next stop was to look at the bridge over the Becks Burn.

I stopped again at the Auld Stane Brig, the next bridge along, to admire a small garden on the bridge parapet and a lichen jungle on the fence post at the end of the bridge.

I walked back to the town along Gaskells Walk.  There were plenty of fine ferns to admire as I walked along.  I looked at the front of some…

…and the back of others.  This is a buckler fern.

There were fruits as well as ferns.

I finished by walking along the path beside the park wall.  I was hoping for more lichen but it hasn’t developed yet or I wasn’t paying enough attention.

I will look again soon.

The day was rounded off by a visit from Mike and Alison and Alison and I played old and new favourites including Telemann, Vivaldi, Marcello and Finger while Mrs Tootlepedal and Mike once again set the world to rights.  We may have to check on their methods as things have not improved much as I hoped since they set the world to rights last week.

Among the many blackbirds visiting the ‘birdberry’ tree was this one, who just managed to qualify as the flying bird of the day.

There was a ray of sunshine

Today’s guest picture comes from Sharon’s trip to Orkney.  Her shot shows the famous Skara Brae site.

It is a brief post with few photographs today as the morning was perfectly miserable with nothing but a few soggy dahlias to look at from the shelter of the front door…

…and buckets of that thin but penetrating rain drifting across the garden.

I put up my brolly and walked up to the town to see the physiotherapist.  I have been fairly religiously doing the back exercises that she gave me last month and they have been very beneficial.  She gave me some more sound advice on what to do and what not to do and I will see her again next month, by which time I hope that some better weather will have given me some walking opportunities.

It was still miserably wet as we drove across to Lockerbie in the afternoon to catch the train to Edinburgh.  However, as the train was only two minutes late leaving and bang on time in arriving, and the rain had stopped by the time that we had got to Edinburgh, we arrived at Matilda’s in very good order.

On our way down, we passed this magnificent display of hanging baskets on  the front of the Theatre Royal Bar.

I have to admit that I actually took this picture when we passed it last week in the sunshine rather on the grey day today.

Matilda was in a very sunny mood when we arrived and we enjoyed spelling out words and playing cards with her before having another excellent pasta alla Norma from Alistair for our tea after which we Matilda treated us to a very enjoyable display of improvised ballet. So we had a good time.

The weather had cleared up by the time that we went to catch the bus back to the station and I could almost have said that there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, except that there was one.

The train back was punctual and our drive home was illuminated by a lovely moon at which I had a close look when I got home.

No flying bird of the day today because of the rain but a high flying celestial object does quite well instead.

A plum and apple day

Today’s guest picture comes from Camera Club member Simon who was at work in Winson in Germany when he found himself being observed.

After a rather wild and wet night while Storm Dorian had its last faint fling over Scotland, we had a generally dry and occasionally sunny day today so we got off pretty lightly.

It was still breezy but that didn’t discourage the birds and the garden was fully occupied by feathered friends all day.

When I went out to have a look around in the morning, I spotted this little dunnock looking askance at a blackbird which was stretching its wings in a flowerbed.

As well as birds, there was a considerable number of red admiral butterflies about too, and I found one on Michaelmas daisy.  I got too close to it though and it flew off, leaving a bee to enjoy some peace and quiet.

I stood for some time watching stream of blackbirds and some starlings feeding on the rowan berries.

Unlike Mrs Tootlepedal who has picked all the low hanging fruit from the plum tree…

…the birds have eaten all the topmost berries from the rowan and are now having to look at lower fruit, often on the end of branches.

I was surprised to see how often the birds dropped a berry before being able to swallow it, but all the same, a lot of berries went down a lot of throats today.

A starling posed for me…

…and any number of blackbirds were too busy eating to mind me pointing a cameras at them.

Sometimes when they had pecked a berry off the very end of the branch, gravity was too much for them and they had to fly off with the berry or risk being pushed off by the  next customer.

Underneath the rowan tree, a snowberry was a haven of peace for a visiting insect.

In the garden, many flowers had survived the night of wind and rain.  Mrs Tootlepedal wishes to point out that all the sunflowers in the shot below came from the same packet of seeds, advertised as short sunflowers.  Quality control at the seed merchants looks a bit lax.

The Japanese anemones are not discouraged by anything.

In the middle of the day, I made some plum jam with some of the plums that we have picked.  A number of things conspired to make the result unsatisfactory.  The plums were too ripe, it has been raining a lot recently, I didn’t have proper jam sugar, and I was probably too impatient.  As a result, the jam didn’t set properly and I had to give it a squoosh of lemon juice and a second boil later in the day.  Mrs Tootlepedal stewed a lot of the rest of the plums.  They will be frozen.   There may well be more chutney in the offing too.

In the afternoon, I got my bike out, and after having another look at blackbirds in the rowan tree…

… I went for a short ride.  There was evidence of the recent rain.

We had a very good dry spell earlier in the year but the persistent rain has finally got things soggy again and the water is running off the hills and onto the roads in several places.

A cow kept an eye on me as I photographed the puddles.

The forecast was for a gusty wind.  Usually round here it is hard to tell if the wind is gusty because it just blows all the time, but today it really was gusty.  One minute I would be pedalling along merrily, whistling a happy tune, and the next minute I would have my head down, battling to make any progress at all.

Still, I got to the top of Callister and back and stopped as I pedalled through the town to salute our lonely gull on its regular rock.

Although it was not in flood, there was enough water coming down the Esk to create a fine back ripple.

As I crossed the Langholm Bridge, I could see that the cormorant was back at the Meeting of the Waters, so I parked my bike at the Kilngreen and walked along to get a closer look.  It was drying its wings.

I looked up from watching the cormorant and enjoyed the view of the hills.  The mixture of blue skies and heavy clouds summed up the day.

I only got rained on for a very short time during the ride and got home after 15 miles in good order.  I had enough energy left to mow the middle lawn.  For the first time for a few months, I thought that the rate of growth in the grass had slowed down.  It has stayed quite warm recently, around 15°C most days, but the shorter days are getting noticeable now.  We are only ten days away from the autumn equinox and facts are facts.

As the flowers and leaves are showing.

The starlings were lined up on the electricity wire as I went in to have my evening meal.

As well as plums, we are beginning to get quite a lot of apples from our espalier trees.  I have been picking up the windfalls and we decided to take a step into the unknown and convert some of them into a Tarte Tatin.  We were handicapped by not having a suitable pan for the job but we battled on and the result was good enough to eat even if it definitely would not have won even second prize in a beauty pageant.  I am going to try again soon.

As the blackbirds had taken my advice to try to pick berries from above their heads rather than below their feet, there was no shortage of flying birds today so here is the genuine flying bird of the day.

Beside the sea

Today’s guest picture comes from our friend Gavin who was in California recently seeing his son and grandchildren when he visited the Capitola Pier.

We had another grey morning here with the occasional threat of drizzle which didn’t come to much.  It was enough though to persuade me that coffee and a tricky  crossword and some light shopping at our corner shop could fill up the time satisfactorily.   The wind was light and I ought to have been out making the most of a reasonable cycling day but I didn’t feel guilty enough to do more than walk round the garden.

I was hoping to see blackbirds in the rowan tree again but they were too quick for me today and flew off as soon as they saw me coming.

I looked at a shy dahlia instead.

The last of the poppies are far from shy.

And once again, the red admirals were about.  This one was resting on a sedum…

…and this one on a buddleia was showing off its goggle eyes and its antennae.  The antennae look as though they have LEDs on them.

At noon, Mrs Tootlepedal went off to help out at the Buccleuch Centre coffee shop and I finally got organised and took my bike out for a pedal.

We are being threatened with the arrival of the last gasp of Storm Dorian but the rain isn’t due until the evening and although the wind was expected to speed up during the afternoon, it was still going to be pretty reasonable.  I planned a route which would take advantage of the strengthening wind to blow me back home.

These things don’t often work out well but today everything went to plan.  I cycled westwards into a gentle breeze as the sun came out.  On one of my refreshment pauses, I looked up to see a hefty crop of beech nuts on the branches above me.

My turning point came after 20 miles when I arrived at Browhouses on the Solway coast.  I took a few minutes to eat half a banana and enjoy the views.

The tide was well out and although there were some sea birds about, they were well out of range of my cycling camera.

A group of swans and some of a large group of gulls with some oyster catchers behind them.

Looking westward, I could see the English shore across the shining levels of the Solway…

 

…and looking eastwards, I could see the estuary of the River Esk rather than any sea.

In the distance, I could see the wind turbines at Gretna…

..and at Longtown and unlike my last ride, this time the direction of the blades showed me that I would get my wish of windy support on my ride home.

I noticed that one of the few wild flowers to be seen was attracting attention…

…and then set off to do the twenty odd miles home.

I went back by a different route to my outward journey, missing out Gretna Green which I had passed through on my way out, but going through all the other places on this neatly painted signpost which is in England in the  county of Cumbria.

It still carries the name of a county council which was abolished in 1974, the year in which we came to live in Langholm….

…and it is good to see that no-one thought it necessary to go to the expense of making new signposts when the old ones were in such good shape.

In the hedge beside the post were some bright rose hips.

At Englishtown, the farmer had been busy cutting grass and there were bales on every side as far as the eye could see.

Thanks to the favouring breeze, which had strengthened noticeably after I had turned for home, I did the first 20 miles down to the seaside (net elevation loss 250ft) in 1 hr 33 mins and the slightly longer return 22 mile journey to Langholm (net elevation gain 250ft) in 1 hr 27 minutes.  This is the way that well planned bike rides for the elderly should always work out.  To complete the picture, I should add that I took 23 minutes of rest and refreshment stops along the way.
 A map and details of the ride can be found here by anyone interested.

Mrs Tootlepedal had had a very busy day and was working hard at some business arrangements when I got home.  I left her to it and walked round the garden after I had had a cup of tea.

The ornamental strawberries are having a late burst and look very good at the moment.

Crown Princess Margareta is trying her best but will need a couple of kind days if she is to come to anything.

And the blue clematis at the front door continues to produce small but quite elegant flowers.

I picked some more plums and stewed some of them and ate them as a dessert with some ice cream after our evening meal.  Garmin (which records my ride on a nifty bike computer) claims that I used 2289 calories on my ride so that should have put most of them back.

No flying bird of the day today but another of the many young blackbirds in the garden stands in for it.