Today’s picture, taken by Dropscone, shows Arthur beaming with pride at Langholm’s answer to Augusta. Arthur regards the Langholm golf course as his garden.
Another boringly fine day dawned and in the absence of Dropscone, who was taking his bent bike down to the repair shop, I pedalled round the morning run in lonely splendour. I managed an acceptable time and when I returned, I found Mrs Tootlepedal hard at work in the garden.
She never ceases in her labours with the trowel and in my humble opinion , as the posters on the internet say, she does a cracking job.
She asked me particularly to take this shot of her favourite border of the moment.
I walked round the garden taking pictures of newly blooming flowers.
Some established flowers caught my eye as well as the novelties.
There’s a feast of colour in the garden at the moment but underpinning it is the hard work of the gardener. Here are the compost bins that she reorganised the other day.
Dropscone called in at coffee time to show me the bill for the repairs to his bike and I think that after being flattened by a motorist, we should change his name to Pancake. He seems to have survived his ordeal remarkably well and we arranged to play golf tomorrow. He will be playing golf and I will be aimlessly waving my club somewhere near a golf ball.
In the afternoon, I visited that Aladdin’s cave, G & J Latimer’s in the high Street to test drive a new bed under the supervision of Mrs Tootlepedal. In a rare moment of serendipity, the bed that seemed most comfortable was also extremely reasonably priced. We ordered it. These things do not happen often.
The air quality is not good and my breathing, which had survived the morning cycle ride in the cool of the day, was suffering quite a lot by the time I got home. The temperature in the greenhouse was 90º. I soon recovered and went out to snap a few more flowers.
There are still birds in the garden as well as flowers. In fact the blackbirds are making such a sing song that you can hardly hear yourself think. The most common bird at the moment is the sparrow. When it comes to the bird feeders they adopt a more sinuously curving posture than any other bird.
The jackdaws are definitely nesting in the old chimney and this one looks as though it is keeping guard in case of unwanted intruders.
Sitting guard rather than standing guard.
In the evening, we were visited by Dr and Mrs Tinker. Mike seems to be recovering well from his back operation and Mrs Tinker and I dealt with a number of recorder and keyboard pieces with varying success. As you may be able to tell from the style of the blog, I enjoyed the best part of a bottle of Lidl’s finest claret as the evening progressed.
Here’s a glimpse of a tulip
Tootlepedal's Blog 
Glad to hear that Dropscone isn’t too badly damaged…. I understand that the same can’t be said for his bike. Hope it can be fixed to his satisfaction.
The garden is looking beautiful. Mrs. Tootlepedal must have green fingers as well as a remarkable work ethic. I can’t believe how far ahead of us you are, even magnificent rhubarb! We have had a cold, wet April with snow, sleet, hail, ice pellets and lots of rain. And that was all in one day, yesterday! The garden is just too wet to do any work.
This has been a very unnatural April indeed so far. It is not normally like this at all. I am sorry about your wet weather.
Glad you enjoyed the claret, Lidl sells quite drinkable wine. My compliments to Mrs Tootlepedal, the garden is in fine shape, her hard work certainly pays off. Do other people, besides the B&B guests, get to look at it?
Lots of good photographs as usual and I liked the sinuous sparrow!
Magnificent photographs – well done “head gardener” and Mr. Tootlepedal. I agree Pancake may be a better name for poor Dropscone, but I did spot him driving up the High Street soon after 8am this morning.
The garden looks absolutely wonderful, and so do the pictures of it, which I much enjoyed.
Good luck with the golf tomorrow. Temperatures purport to be 27 in London today, and it certainly felt like it when playing tennis this a.m.