Today’s guest picture comes from my friend Bruce who had business in Berwick on Tweed and saw three bridges. You may have to look carefully to find the third one.
We had a very quiet day today after the active day yesterday. I can confirm that standing around on your feet for seven hours is very much harder work than sitting around pedalling for the same amount of time.
The weather helped, with frequent showers giving us a good excuse to sit indoors not doing anything much.
I did go up to the town to do some shopping and then replenished my stocks of good cheese and honey at the local producers’ market at the Buccleuch Centre but these were my only excursions.
We did take advantage of one of the dry spells to clip the yew ‘chessman’ in the garden.. This is quite a complicated operation as it has perennial nasturtiums sprouting out of it which one of us needs to hold up while the other clips and snips.
In other dry moments, I caught up on the mowing which has been sadly neglected of late.
I looked at a few flowers while I was out there.
The crown makers have left us plenty of rambler roses.
The cornflowers continue to delight me. They seem never ending.
And the darkest of our three astrantias has finally condescended to put out its flowers for inspection, long after the other two.
Once again, the garden was full of insects and almost every flower seemed to have one.
We found a moment to dig up a row of early potatoes and once again they were surprisingly large for earlies and as you can see…
…one of them is suffering from a large crack in the surface. This has been a frequent problem this year, presumably arising from some very wet weather while they were developing followed by a long dry spell.
We entertained Mike Tinker to a cup of tea in the afternoon and he brought some long awaited stability to the weather and the evening turned out to be beautiful.
I might have seized the moment and gone for a walk or a short pedal but I let it slip through my hands like sand and watched an exciting woman’s city centre cycle event from London instead.
This event was made even more exciting by the fact that before the broadcast started my daughter rang up from London to say that she was standing very close to the finish line.
When we turned on the telly, there she was in the background behind two talking heads. We rang her up to report this and had the rather bizarre experience of hearing her answer her phone a few seconds before we could see her reaching down to take it out of her pocket on the screen. Such are the wonders of technology.
The flower of the day is another wonderful poppy. The mixed bag of seeds is really working hard now.
Tootlepedal's Blog 
Its a good job that you didn’t see your daughter reach for her phone before you heard her speak to you!
🙂
You must have gotten a kick out of seeing your daughter answer your call – on television! The purple and greens in your garden shot are lovely.
We did enjoy seeing Annie. We are easily amused. 🙂
Poppies, roses, cornflowers – beautiful harvest on a recovery day. And new potatoes! I hope to dig up some soon in my father’s garden…
I hope that your potatoes crop well.
Your potatoes are looking good despite the crack. Ours aren’t so good this year – a fair size but some are scabby and some have been sampled by slugs. The sunshine in your garden at the end of the day looked most lovely.
It was. I ought to have been out there making use of it but sometimes you just have to be a spectator of life rather than a participant.
I heartily agree with that.
I’m glad you have some roses left.
I never knew that potatoes would crack like tomatoes in the wet / dry cycle. That’s not a bad crop even with a crack or two.
The interior macro shot of the pink poppy is very beautiful. I’d hang it on a wall.
The potato crop is excellent and the crack doesn’t seem to do any harm. Surprisingly after such a wet month, we don’t seem to be too troubled by slugs which is a bonus. I am glad that you liked the pink poppy becuase I was pleased with it.
The cornflower and the astrantia images are excellent!
The way things are going with technology, it won’t be long until we’re watching every one on video from one feed or another most of the time. Still, it had to be weird hearing your daughter first, then watching her answer the phone.
You may well be right about the technology and the time lapse was very odd.
Your photos today are spectacular and your garden is beautiful. What a lovely way to end my day.
You are very polite but at least it was a much shorter post. 🙂
I wonder what the odds of a person seeing their son or daughter on the television are.
One in three in our case!
Yes. Excellent odds.
After yesterday you deserved a quieter day. Your shots of the garden in the evening were so beautiful.
The garden looks lovely in the sunshine. The rambling rose just keeps on flowering and what a lovely pink colour. Gorgeous poppies too.
Although the weather in July has been very inconsistent, the flowers have done their best.
Our new potatoes are very large this year, too. Not sure why. I’m so glad to see all the bees in your garden.
It is curious about the potatoes. Perhaps the cold soil when they were put in followed by a good spell persuaded them that they needed to work really hard.
Wonders of modern technology to see Annie about to answer your call.
The flowers and the garden are looking lovely – that rambling rose is especially gorgeous!
It has had a wonderful year.
Aha, spotted the third bridge! Great to see the insects enjoying your fabulous blooms 🙂
It is good to be fully insected.
The poppy seeds are indeed working hard now. That is a beautiful one too.
We’ve harvested a couple of batches of potatoes so far, and may get one more in before the autumn rains start. We occasionally see cracks in ours too, but the main problem has been slugs in a bad year. So far, the invasive slugs are at a minimum, and we seem to have more of the predatory slugs, Limax maximus, on the prowl.
Is the slug situation good or bad? I didn’t know that there were different sorts of slugs but when I think of the size of the ones in potatoes, I suppose there must be.