Today’s picture was taken by my sister Mary on holiday in the Lake district last weekend. She thought it would make a good addition to the tree trunk pictures favoured by Mrs Tootlepedal.
The day dawned brilliantly and to make things better, the waxwings returned to the walnut tree. They came and went in small flocks for the best part of half an hour before moving on to berries new.
I am still trying to get a nice crisp picture of a single bird but they won’t come and sit on a telephone wire nearer the house which is the only way that I’ll get a good shot.
The slightly different sky colour is down to my photo editor as I try to get the sharpest picture.
Being Saturday, I had an early lunch and Mrs Tootlepedal took me up the the golf course as she needed the car to go to the Embroiderers’ Guild meeting in the afternoon.
It was a great day for golf once again. We have been lucky as far as the weather goes in recent weeks.
Although the sun was out, the temperature was chilly at the start because of a nippy wind and woolly hats were the order of the day. I am wearing mine courtesy of a generous gift from Dropscone who acquired them on a trip to Germany to visit old swimming friends.
Throught the luck of the draw, I played with Dropscone in a two ball. I managed a great start, hitting the ball steadily up the middle and not missing any putts. I thought this might be going to be my day. 18 points is the standard score for 9 holes and I had scored 12 points after the first four holes.
All good things come to an end though and I only managed to add nine more points over the next five holes. Even so 21 points was a good score at the half way point.
Dropscone has been having lessons and was attempting to put them into practice. The result of this was a slightly uneven round marked by some fine tee shots as the lessons paid off. As an additional bonus, no dogs ate his golf balls. (See his comment on Thursday’s blog)
The second nine holes was a disaster for me as I could only scrape together the same number of points in nine holes as I had managed in four holes on the first nine. Dropscone improved slightly but neither of us took anything from the sweep at the end of the round.
I consoled myself by snapping this toadstool below the sixth green. Dropscone can be seen lurking in the background.
I had a couple of ginger beers in the clubhouse and then trudged rather sadly back home in some drizzly rain which had appeared from nowhere to round off a bad end to the afternoon. At least I could look back on some wonderful views from the course which made up for the rotten golf.
I took this picture of the walnut tree this morning while I was waiting for some waxwings to re-appear. 
Tootlepedal's Blog 
Lovely pictures – thanks for including my new angle on the tree trunk motif. The toadstool has come out wonderfully well.