Since readers have not been sending me enough interesting (or indeed any at all) pictures, I am reduced to putting in one of myself. To avoid this sort of thing, send me pictures suitable for picture of the day.
After the strong winds and rain of the previous few days, it was a pleasant surprise to wake up to a sunny day with not too much wind. Dropscone and I had a very pleasant pedal round the morning run as a result. The recent rain had done a good job of cleaning up the roads and the wind stayed light until the last few miles when it was behind us. We cycled with one eye on Dropscone’s heart monitor and with great self restraint, we managed to ensure that it only went over his top limit by one beat and only for a very short time at that. He reckons that he is back to about 95% fitness so that is good news.
More good news is that we finally finished the last slices of the birthday cake with our coffee. It was still very tasty even after a week and a half.
It was lucky that we cycled early in the day because the weather got progressively more windy as the day went on and the sun soon disappeared. Once again this made for rather grainy bird pictures. There are still some sparrows about but chaffinches are in the majority most of the time at the feeders.
On some days there are almost as many goldfinches but there is still obviously plenty of food around outside gardens.
Now that the plum tree has lost all its leaves, it is easier to see the birds feeding and waiting.
A commenter on the blog said that I must have a lot of patience to take the bird pictures but it is more that I have plenty of opportunities to take them. All the photos in today’s blog were taken within eight minutes. There is a constant show going on out there.
We are still waiting for the arrival of siskins and bramblings but the weather has stayed very warm and frost free. The snow had come by this time last year.
Apart from cleaning my cycle chain, which was filthy, I spent a leisurely afternoon putting a week of the E and L into the database and preparing for the Archive Group AGM. In the end we had nine members at the meeting and strangely we were all in agreement that we had worked really hard during the year and done a splendid job. It was agreed that the proposed oral history project was very exciting and we are looking forward to hearing more about it. I hope the funding can be raised for it as it will be a big disappointment if it doesn’t come off now.
By the evening the weather had turned to heavy wind and rain with the addition of a single loud crack of thunder. Mrs Tootlepedal is secretly pleased because she wants the window to be leaking when the builder comes so that he knows we are not making it up.
This month has been a month of two halves as they say. I cycled nearly every day in the first half and quite sparingly in the second half. We would like the wind to drop. It seems to have been blowing for two weeks now. Of course, it will probably get quite chilly when it does drop but you can’t have everything.