Today’s guest picture comes from my brother Andrew. He visited Sheffield for cultural purposes recently and enjoyed a sunny spell while he was there.

We had a very occasional glimpse of the sun here today, but in general it was grey and pretty windy again. Dropscone came round for coffee, bringing some of his excellent scones with him, and we enjoyed the coffee and scones spiced up with a vigorous political discussion where contrasting views were expressed. When it comes to politics, Dropscone and I agree to differ.
After coffee, I had a look at the birds and found a pigeon skulking around under the feeder.

Up above, a blue tit and a goldfinch enjoyed seeds and sunshine simultaneously.


I took a walk round the garden and found a few new flowers to go with the Jetfire daffodils. The daffodils seem to be getting redder trumpets every day. Pulmonaria, primula and chionodoxa are bringing a little colour to the flowerbeds . . .

. . . and there are potential flowers on every side now.

Things are looking up, even though it didn’t feel very springlike in the brisk and chilly wind.
I soon went back inside to prepare lunch. Outside, blackbirds came to look for fallen seeds.


I was emptying the kitchen waste caddy into the compost when I saw a very decorative snail hanging on to the lid of the bin.

I left it undisturbed.
I occasionally looked out of the window when I went back in, and I saw that goldfinches were our main visitors today . . .

. . . with a few siskins about too. Some of them were camera shy . . .

. . . but I had better luck with this one.

Encouraged by the glimpses of sunshine, I decided to go for a cycle ride after lunch. Needless to say, that was the last that I saw of any sunshine, and it even started to rain while I was pedalling. Fortunately this turned out to be a little weather gods’ joke and it soon stopped.
It was bad enough battling the strong wind. Rain would have made for a very miserable outing.
The recent rain had turned the field pond at Tarcoon into a small inland sea.

There were no gulls on the pond, perhaps because they were all at the far side of a field a bit further on.

The strong wind kept me concentrating on my on my pedalling and I forgot to take any more pictures until I arrived at my favourite little larch tree beside the river on the old main road. It wasn’t hard to spot the larch flowers.

I took two more pictures while I was stopped.


I got home to find that Mrs Tootlepedal had been busy in the garden while I had been cycling. The new hellebore has found a home. (I noticed that the sun had come out as soon as I stopped cycling.)

The sun soon went in, and so did I, but not until I had checked on the rhubarb patch . . .

. . . and the winter heather which Mrs Tootlepedal kindly planted so that I would have something colourful to photograph in the dark months. It has been very successful.

In the evening, Mrs Tootlepedal went off to take to the stage in the Centenary Concert for the second of the three performances, while I was picked up by my friend Susan and driven off to the depths of Cumbria to play music with the other two members of our recorder quartet. Mrs Tootlepedal reported that her concert went well, with a good audience in attendance, and as the recorder group had a very good playing session followed by tea and home made ginger biscuits, we both had a good night out.
For the curious, I should say that Mrs Tootlepedal’s appearance as the mother superior involved worrying with the other nuns about what to do with a problem like Maria and did not require any mountain climbing. The recorder group played music by Bach, Handel, Haydn, Tomkins, Corelli, Frescobaldi, and de Lassus.
The flying bird of the day is a chaffinch, one of the few I saw today.
