Showing up

Today’s guest picture comes from my Somerset correspondent Venetia, who is hanging around in Brazil focussing on jaguars.  She made a very good job of focussing her camera on this one.

We were focussed on the Eskdale Agricultural Show, commonly known as the Cattle Show, for most of the day today.  I started off by cycling up to the field with Sandy’s and my entries for the photographic classes.

Things both great and small had already started on the show field with ponies being led out to be shown to critical judges and shiny new tractors parked to be shown off to prospective purchasers.

Then I cycled home again and not long afterwards, cycled back with Mrs Tootlepedal do some judging of children’s classes.  There are always a lot of children’s entries and I was a bit worried about the workload ahead.  It turned out though that several judges were being employed and Mrs Tootlepedal and I had just a small section of the whole thing to do.  Across the table, our friends Bob and Nancy were judging some edible entries.

Mrs Tootlepedal and I managed to agree on the prizewinners in our classes and we had time to look around the tent.  Experts were rating the adult baking classes and Bob and Nancy seemed to be weighing up a bit of broccoli.

Our job done, we went for a bit of a wander around.

There were pretty  flowers in the tent and big beasts outside.

There were sheep of all sorts…

And this brightly coloured one was a champion…..

…which would be worth a bit of money if properly handled, the judge told us in a confidential aside.

There were lots of horses too.

There were old hands at one end of the ground and pony club members at the other.

There were veteran cars and tractors on show.

And a bunch of crooks in the tent.

Being judges, we were treated to a free lunch which was very welcome and then we went home for a sit down.  The secretary had asked me whether I had returned the trophy from last year and after some discussion, we agreed that I had and that she probably had somewhere about.  All the same, I got a bit uneasy and a search through the house when I got back, uncovered the trophy lurking in a corner so I whizzed back up to the show ground with it and arrived just in time to miss the prize giving.  I was rather embarrassed.

There was still quite a bit of time before the tent closed and I could retrieve my photos so I bicycled back home once more and looked around the garden.

The poppies are very battered…

…but a bit of brighter weather had brought a cloud of insects out on the sedum and Michaelmas daisies.  There was so much buzzing that I could hardly hear myself think.

The sedum was covered in bumble bees, mostly white tailed ones I think.  Mrs Tootlepedal and I counted well over forty on the flowers beside the bird feeders.

There were a few other sorts of bees about.

The Michaelmas daisies were very busy too but they had more hoverflies and flies than bees.

Though they did have a pretty butterfly too (but only one).

Some birds looked on.

A glossy great tit and an untidy robin

And some birds were too busy to notice us.

Then I made my final visit to the field to pick up my pictures.  They hadn’t attracted much attention from the judge with a second place and a highly commended being all I had to show for my efforts.  Sandy had done better with a first in one class and lesser tickets in others..

By the time that I came out of the tent, the top of the field was deserted….

…and only a few ropes remained as a memento of a great day’s entertainment.

Everyone was very grateful for the recent spell of good weather becuase the show had been within a whisker of being cancelled if the summer rain had continued for much longer.

I met Mike Tinker on the field with his daughter, her husband and their children clutching several prizes between them and was delighted to find out that his son-in-law Lorne is going to come round tomorrow and spike my lawn for me.  This is kindness far beyond the call of duty and I mowed the  lawn when I got home so that it will show up the spike holes well.

Amidst all the excitement of the day, I managed to find a flying bird in a sunny moment.