Today’s guest picture shows a gannet which my brother Andrew met at Flamborough Head. He met more more exciting things too while he was there, which will appear on another day.
A rather soggy post today, I am afraid, as I stayed up all last night watching the results of the Brexit referendum coming in and getting steadily more depressed as the night wore on.
As a result, I had a very quiet day today, going no further than the corner shop and the end of the garden. I spent a lot of time watching the telly and hoping that some sensible interviewer would ask someone a pertinent question. You will not be surprised to hear that I waited in vain.
At least there was some fine weather outside to cheer me up when I did put my nose out of the door….and a beautiful rose too.
The sparrows keep on coming and although Mrs Tootlepedal views them with a jaundiced eye as they eat her vegetables, they seem very charming to me.
They are certainly getting through my seed at speed.
Mrs Tootlepedal’s dahlias are blooming away very well….
…and she grew so many from seed so that she still has has plenty to give away. If any local reader would like a dahlia, let Mrs Tootlepedal know.
She has got some pretty annual cornflowers on the go too and they are popping up all over the garden.
I was surprised and a bit alarmed to see some fungus in one of the flower beds…
…but Mrs Tootlepedal was quite calm. She thought that they would have arrived with some of the manure from her manure mine.
I cheered myself up by finding a good quantity of ripe strawberries ready to pick. I picked them and we ate them. With cream.
Mrs Tootlepedal likes the ‘Butter and Sugar’ Iris which was the last of our irises to bloom and you can quite see why.
More new flowers have arrived, a nasturtium…
…and an ornamental clover.
The bees were buzzing around in quantity again today and this one was cheering up a Melancholy Thistle.
I had a short snooze after lunch and when I came downstairs, I found that Mrs Tootlepedal was busy trimming some of the garden hedges.
The hedges are very pretty and give the garden some shape but they quickly grow too big and you can see that she has taken some drastic action to thin down the hedge in the foreground. I like the curve that she is shaping in the hedge at the back.
I thought that I ought to do a bit of work too so I borrowed the trimmer and got to work on a couple of box balls on the front lawn path. They grow relentlessly too and need trimming every year.
You will see that I am a rebel and refuse to be bound by boring convention which dictates that each ball should be a perfect sphere. Variety is the spice of life, they say.
It was such a lovely afternoon that it was no hardship to tackle another two at each side of the lawn, one beside the bridge over the pond…
…and the other beside the lupins.
Four down and seven more to do.
As well as sparrows and siskins, we are beginning to get a few more chaffinches on the feeder after a quiet spell for them.
I had enough strength left to make a risotto for our tea and then play some music with Alison when she came round with Mike. She had bought a set of seven pieces by Rameau from a second hand bookshop in Wales while she was on holiday there last week and we had a go at playing them. It was good to have new music to work on.
The flying bird of the day is one of our extended sparrow family.
I end with a quote from Robert Burns which seems appropriate to me today:
“An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear! “
Tootlepedal's Blog 
Your flowers cheered me up.
Good. They always cheer me up too.
You are not alone in feeling miserable today. I felt shocked and sick when I heard the news this morning. I concur with Beautywhizz – your flowers are an antidote to depression.
I agree on that.
A very cute little fluffy sparrow on the ironwork, and many lovely garden shots. News from the UK not so lovely. Oh my. I feel for you. What’s that old curse – “may you live in interesting times”?
That is the curse and it turns out that interesting times are very boring indeed.
The dahlias are beautiful and to have grown them from seed would be a proud accomplishment for any gardener. It’s not an easy thing to do and timing is important.
The butter and sugar iris remind me of our butter and sugar sweet corn, which is a great summer treat.
I don’t envy your having to carve so many spheres out of boxwood.
The power trimmer makes it a fairly quick job even if it doesn’t end up as regular as hand clippers would manage.
We are among 16 million who are perplexed, dismayed and deeply saddened.
😦
I think it was supposed to be an insult to wish someone to live in interesting times, but here we are. Mrs T is to be commended upon her green fingers and your photos do her efforts justice 🙂
The times are indeed very interesting. I think it was more of a curse than an insult so it is quite appropriate under these circumstances.
Commiserations to Scotland, and to my own district council area, Mendip, which also voted to remain. And to everyone as all will have to endure the consequences.
Which are very hard to foresee at the moment.
I thought maybe you might post England as the flying bird of the day. Good grief–so many changes. Do you think Scotland will have another vote about staying in the UK after all this?
They might well and many people think that there would be an appetite for independence but there are a huge number of complications and it might not be worth all the trouble in the end. It was more practical when both Scotland and England were in the EU but now that Little England is going out, the problems of borders and tariffs and currency would be very difficult to solve.
We have plenty of room in Western Australia so you can always emigrate over here 😃
I am afraid that your points system would keep me out but thank you for the kind offer.
It is always a pleasure to walk round your garden, something is needed to cheer us up after such a disastrous event. The Burns’ quote was most apposite.
Your box balls were a delight to view and a good diversion from political despond.
They took my mind off the whole matter quite effectively.
I, too, am very sad about .Brexit.
Actually, I think that you have little to fear from the vote on the Brexit. Under pressure from the mega-corporations, the EU will renegotiate the terms for Britain to stay in the EU, they’ll be another vote, and this time, you’ll stay in the EU, although I don’t know why any one would want to.
The results are pleasing, but I wouldn’t want to have to trim the hedges or the box balls, I’d end up scratched and bleeding from the ends of my fingers to my shoulders. Nice job though.
Loved the dahlias and the rose!
With regard to Brexit, I am not sure that you are right this time. This is mainly because the popular press in this country is absolutely against the EU, presumably because its rich owners don’t care for regulation. The part played by the right wing press in setting the agenda for our public life goes largely unreported….because of course the right wing press controls three quarters of the circulation and Sky TV is not going to criticise or examine Rupert Murdoch in any way.
The BBC has been terrorised by Murdoch and the Daily Mail’s influence in the government into not doing any critical reporting on its news bulletins at all. It presented all the arguments in the referendum as equally valid even when they were obviously preposterous.