Home alone

Today’s guest picture, sent on to me by the kind offices of my sister Susan, appears as a reminder from my sister Caroline, another special grandma, that there is more than one world’s greatest baby about.  This is her grandson Jamie with his yet to be named brand new sister,  daughter of Jem and Lotti.  The baby is my great niece and of course the greatest baby on the world.

The day was another hot and sunny day at the start but by evening time the weather had broken and a light and welcome rain is falling as I write this.  We are promised cooler weather for the next few days which will be a relief for those of us who don’t do too well above 25C.

When we got up, Mrs Tootlepedal directed my attention to the excellent display of Shirley poppies in the border beside the front lawn.

This is a new scheme and the poppies are designed to be set off by some yellow crocosmia.   It is not easy to get everything to come out exactly at the right time and we are still waiting for the crocosmia to join in.  They are nearly out though.

The picture above shows the difference between looking and shooting.  When I looked out of the upstairs window, all I saw was eleven lovely poppies but when the camera looked, all it saw was a mass of green stuff with a few red spots.  You’ll have to take my word for the fact that the poppies looked outstanding.

There were two significant points in the day.  One was the moment when Mrs Tootlepedal went off with Al, Clare and Matilda to put them on the train home to Edinburgh (sad) and the other when I felt that my hip was well enough for me to mow the middle lawn (happy).

As a result of my programme of unusually sensible behaviour, I spent the day doing nothing much and continued to see improvement in my ability to walk around without crying.   I accomplished the lawn mowing by doing one or two strips at a time and having a sit down in between.

I was thinking about a short and gentle cycle ride to see if that would be therapeutic but by the time that the the opportunity had arisen so had the wind so discretion was the better part of valour and I watched the Tour de France instead and got my pedalling in vicariously.

During the day I had plenty of  time to stroll round the garden.

An unusual sunflower from Mrs Tootlepedal’s packet of assorted sunflower seeds.

A new colour of cosmos has turned up

The ones that have been out for a bit are looking well.

The berries on the perennial nasturtium come in surprisingly different colours

Currently my favourite shade of Shirley poppy

The recent spell of hot weather reminded me that I had a small ice cream making machine in the house so after Matilda had gone, I set about making an ice cream custard and then put it into the mixer to get chilled and beaten.  The result was extremely tasty.  It’s just a pity that I hadn’t thought about the machine a few days earlier when we really needed cooling down.

The side effect of making the ice cream is that you get left with a lot of egg whites so I made some meringues too.  Someone is going to have to eat all this stuff over the next few days but I expect that I will be up to the task.

There is an old saying that plenty of berries on the rowan trees mean a hard winter is coming.

I think that it is more likely to mean that we have just had a mild winter and a good summer.

Among the flowers, I was pleased to note a tortoiseshell butterfly.

I had time to look out of the window today too and the birds were a bit more active than they have been lately.

A chaffinch looking a bit the worse for wear

Another chaffinch looking rather debonair

And a third chaffinch arriving for a feed.

Sparrows and siskins are always around at the moment.

And always squabbling.

I am keeping and eye out for diseased birds and washing and changing my feeder regularly.  The birds seem healthy enough at the moment.

I am hoping to get out for a short cycle ride tomorrow to test how things are going.

The flying bird of the day was yet another chaffinch.