Today’s guest picture was kindly sent to me by Tuckamoredew, the fearless sub-zero Canadian cyclist aka Keith. He spotted these mud nests on the underside of a bridge as he passed. I have cruelly cropped his picture so I hope he forgives me.
Dropscone and I had another fine day for our morning pedal but the wind was up and it was hard work on the way out to Gair. The reward was a good shove in the back on our way home and we enjoyed ourselves. Sadly Dropscone had business to do so there were no scones to revive me when I got back.
Mrs Tootlepedal was hard at work with the hedge trimmer and kept at it for the rest of the morning. The hedges, as a result, are looking very trim.
All this work meant a lot of bits to collect and deal with. I spent some time putting material through our little shredder but most of it was collected up and put in the back of the car to be taken to our local dump. I took a moment to mow the front lawn following my plan to mow the lawns as often as possible while they are growing well.
I did find time to look at a plant or two….
…and I was distracted by the sight of my neighbour Liz coming down the road on her new bike.
I went back into the garden and my eye was caught by a stray poppy which had fought its way to the light through one of Mrs Tootlepedal’s grass jungles.
I have seen a good variety of butterflies while out cycling recently but they have been very scarce in the garden and this white was the only photo opportunity I have had for a while.
Mrs Tootlepedal continued to slave away and after lunch she got all the stuff for the dump packed into the back of the car with a little help from me and drove off with it. There was just too much for us to be able to shred and compost in our own garden. It is a trip of over fifteen miles to the dump and every time we have to take garden waste to it, I feel disappointed that we couldn’t get a local community composting site for garden waste set up here although we tried hard for three years.
I didn’t go with her as the dump is very well run and there is always someone on hand to help with unloading. This was lucky, because I was hit by a tremendous surge of tiredness and had to rest for a while before I perked up again. I was going to pass the time by watching the Tour de France when I remembered that it was a rest day for the riders. I followed suit and had a little nap in my chair.
Mrs Tootlepedal returned after a while and pausing only for a brief cup of tea, shot out into the garden and set to work once more. I pottered about in her wake, taking some pictures as I went.
There are some fine plants along the fence bordering the vegetable garden.
I snatched a moment or two to watch the birds, although all the garden activity made it difficult at times.
Between us, Mrs Tootlepedal and I made a tasty curry for our tea and then Susan drove me to Carlisle for a meeting of our recorder group.
We are preparing for a guest appearance at a concert in September and we spent the evening playing potential pieces for performance, giving some the thumbs up and some the thumbs down. We chose more than enough material for the time we need and I will have to make myself find time to practise it over the next few weeks.
A chaffinch appears as flying bird of the day.
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Tootlepedal's Blog 
Nice flowers Tom! If you hear bees and don’t see them might be indication that they are building a hive nearby. 🙂
These are bumble bees and there were so many flowers for them to choose from that I couldn’t pin down which ones they were on.
Nice shot of the Wood Pigeon. We enjoyed seeing this rather large pigeon while in Glasgow.
The wood pigeons have a stately air about them which is engaging.
Near military precision on those hedges. She’s good.
And all done without a level or a piece of string.
The hedges are expertly trimmed and I’m not at all surprised. That’s a good looking crop of tomatoes!
But slow to ripen for some reason.
That tomato plant is loaded. I wish mine was, but I guess I should be happy with what I have, given the heat!
If they don’t go red soon, green tomato chutney is looming up. We could do with some more heat.
You certainly didn’t get rusty during the time when you weren’t photographing flying birds! And, your skills at close-ups without a macro lens are better than ever.
I sometimes wonder whether I should spend money on a macro lens or not but seeing some excellent results on other blogs, including your of course, I think I will invest.
You probably don’t need one for the flowers in the garden, they’re large enough for your other lenses. It’s the insects and wildflowers that sometimes require a macro lens.
It’s the insects that I have my eye on.
Congratulations to Mrs T on those hedges.
The tomatoes look very promising.
You take such striking flower pictures they make me gasp, though not stretch my eyes. Loved the neat hedges and keep up the practising.
Very nice blooms in your garden. Pleased you have fuschia flowers at last and I was fascinated by the strange green and white clematis.
We have another fuchsia two yards away which resolutely refuses to flower. It is going to get the chop soon. The clematis is an oddity.
Gorgeous shots of the chaffinch.
They are very pretty birds.
I quite like that pigeon photo. Your tomatoes look great! We are anxiously awaiting ours. We have been enjoying green beans and last night I put some up in the freezer. Soon I will be slaving over a hot stove canning tomato juice and sauce.
The straightness of that hedge is incredible.
She has a good eye but the photo irons out a few deviations from the perfect. I have never tried canning.
Mrs T did a wonderful job on the hedges. Our local council has recently started a brown wheelie bin collection. There is a small anual charge (£35 I think) and they give you a large brown wheelie bin to fill with garden waste. This all gets collected every two weeks and is composted. I think the council sell the compost on so it’s win, win for them. We do compost a great deal of our garden waste but the green bin is handy for the overspill or big clipping projects like the removal of our overgrown New Zealand flax.
That’s fine but we live in such a spread out rural area that our council won’t collect separated waste. as it would take too much money and energy.