Another quiet day

Today’s guest picture, sent by my sister Mary, shows Mr Grumpy’s London cousin posing on the Serpentine.

Our spell of dry weather continued today, although it was rather gloomy in the morning.  The main feature of the weather, apart from the lack of rain, has been the prevalence of light winds and this has been very welcome after such a windy year.  This morning there was hardly any wind at all.  I had contemplated cycling but a phone call from Dropscone offering scones to go with coffee made me put that idea on hold.

The scones were well up to their usual standard and I hope that a good cup or two of coffee put Dropscone in the right frame of mind for an important golf competition in the afternoon.

While we were sipping our coffee, a robin paid us a visit.

There was another one about too and as they were not fighting, I hope that they are a happy couple.  I always like to see robins in the garden.

After coffee, Dropscone left and a coal tit arrived.

Then I went for a walk round the garden.  In the rather grey weather, the poppies once again provided many rays of light.

I thought that two of them deserved solo spots.

What a great packet of seeds that was.

I cut some sweet peas to put in a vase in the kitchen.

There were a lot of insects about in spite of the lack of sunshine and I noticed some life on a Japanese anemone.

I waited for some action but none came.

The bug eyes mini monsters on all sides again.

On the Michaelmas daisies

And on the marigolds

As I was toasting some cheese for my lunch, the sun broke through for a while and I watched the birds…

…and after lunch, I even saw a new butterfly.

Red admiral butterfly on the sedum

I took a picture of the ornamental strawberry which has lasted very well….

…and then I got myself organised and set off for a ride of indeterminate length on the fairly speedy bike.

My plan was to sweet talk my legs into a medium distance ride by starting off very gently.  A light wind had got up by this time and as it was in my face, I had no difficulty in not going very fast.  This let me stop for some pictures.

Signs of autumn are not hard to find.

And when I stopped and looked back while going up the hill at Callister….

…it was clear that green has now pretty fully turned to brown.

I did get the chance to test whether the phone camera was up to a little bug shooting.

The bug is less than a centimetre long so I think the phone passed the test.

I had a choice of whether to to go north or south at one point in my ride and fortunately I made a good decision when I went south, as this turned out out to be the sunny side of the street so as to speak.  Looking north, there were threatening clouds but in Middlebie (so called because it is exactly in the middle of nowhere), the sun was making their little church look very cheerful.

And the sun followed me down the road to Eaglesfield, lighting up the bridge over the  Mein Water on the way.

After that, the light wind was behind me and I pressed on a bit with the agreement of my legs so I didn’t stop for any more photo opportunities.  I ended up doing 33 miles at exactly the same speed as I had done yesterday.  I should have tried a bit harder!

I had enough energy left to sieve a little compost before I went for my shower.

In the evening, I spent a little time at a party to celebrate 200 years of brass band music in Langholm.  I played in the Langholm Town Band, as it now called, for some years when I first came to Langholm and was pleased to be invited to the do.  A kind lady invited me onto the dance floor in a snowball waltz and then we walked gently through The Gay Gordons, a well known Scottish country dance.  I am happy to say that my new knee passed the dance test satisfactorily although no one could say that we were whirling round the floor.

I didn’t stay for long as I had bread cooking in the machine.  To tell the truth, although I was enjoying the company, I was quite pleased to leave because there was a DJ present with a disco machine blasting out loud music accompanied by flashing lights.  As this is exactly the technique that unscrupulous intelligence torturers have been using for many years on their victims to break them down, its charm as a medium of social interaction is lost on me entirely.

The flying bird of the day is a beady eyed chaffinch.