Today’s guest picture shows the interior of Selby Abbey in Yorkshire which my brother visited last week. If that is a red carpet, the Abbey carpet cleaner obviously does a very good job.
It was raining when Sandy and I went down to Canonbie early in the morning to put up our pictures for the annual Flower Show photographic competition. We were able to find space to present our pictures well and went back to Langholm for breakfast, well content to leave things in the hands of the judges.
It stopped raining for a few minutes after breakfast so I sneaked out into a rather soggy garden.
Flowers were doing their best to ignore the dampness.
The lilies are sheltered from the worst of the weather.
An exposed bunch of cosmos in an old chimney pot have to put up with everything but keep smiling.
The dahlias in the front beds seem impervious to wet weather.
At the other end of the garden, the rowan tree is laden with berries. Usually the birds make short work of the berries and they disappear pretty quickly but this year they are being left on the tree for the moment at least. Maybe they are not quite ripe yet.
Although we are not feeding the birds at present, there are plenty of blackbirds about.
I think that they are eating my autumn fruiting raspberries to keep themselves happy.
I didn’t stay out long as the rain soon began to fall again and it kept going….and going.
It was still raining when Mrs Tootlepedal, Sandy and I went back down to Canonbie to see the flowers and vegetables and check on the photo results. In spite of the rain, a very active dog agility show was being held on the football pitch outside the hall and we stopped to watch a nippy dog or two before we went inside.
There was a good entry of photos so I was modestly pleased to find a first and two seconds among my entries but Sandy was really pleased to find two firsts, two seconds and a third among his efforts. He even won a trophy.
The recent white poppy from the garden brought me my winning ticket which was no less than such a beautiful flower deserved I thought.
As usual there were some beautiful flowers on show but the vegetable classes were rather under subscribed and I hope that Mrs Tootlepedal and I might manage to put in some vegetables next year.
It was still raining when we went home but not long afterwards, it eased off and since it looked at though the worst might be past, I went for a short riverside walk in the hope of seeing some birds.
I was not disappointed. As I walked along Elizabeth Street on the banks of the Esk, I saw a goosander…
…many wagtails…
..and a dipper…
..all busily at work along the water’s edge.
I walked up to the Langholm Bridge, hoping to see some flying gulls but when I peered over the bridge, I was delighted to see a whole family of goosanders sitting on the gravel at the Meeting of the Waters.
As soon as they noticed me, they took to the water…
…and after a moment to get organised, paddled gently upstream in a perfect peloton, eight strong.
I don’t know much about goosanders but I take it that these are a family as I have never seen more than two or three goosanders together before. I am open to any comments from readers who are goosander experts.
Seeing these birds was a real treat but I left them in peace and walked over the bridge and on through Clinthead gardens towards the Kilngreen. There are always a lot of sparrows in the garden hedge but today, they were sitting on the fence and enjoying the view upstream.
This is the view that they were taking in.
Once again, the rain had obviously not fallen evenly over our area and you can see the Ewes Water flowing into the Esk from the right is running much more vigorously than the larger river.
The birds had mostly gone to rest for the evening so there was not much to see and I walked on home over the Castleholm and the Jubilee Bridge, enjoying a little burst of late sunshine as I went.
With the end of the Olympics in sight, I am looking forward to an early night or two next week and readers of this blog may hope to get slightly less incoherent posts. Watching Taekwondo and handball is strangely addictive.
The flower of the day is the Cardoon which is developing a fine punk haircut…
…and the flying bird of the day is a gull over the Esk.
Tootlepedal's Blog 
Birds, flowers and views all interesting and worth looking at. Congratulations to you and Sandy on your successes at Canonbie, well deserved.
What fine hauls of both awards and birds!
Congratulations on your fine showing in the photo contest, the same goes for Sandy!
The goosanders are probably a female and her young, possibly two females and young. The males take no part in rearing the chicks at all. In the winter, they will form medium size flocks of up to around 100 from what I’ve seen.
I liked all the photos of the variety of birds and the flowers that held up to the rain, but my favorite is the cricket pitch, I especially love the lighting in that one.
It was a welcome ray of sunshine on the cricket pitch because sunshine has been very scarce lately.
Aha, cardoon is coming, please keep us updated. Congratulations to the white poppy photo, your flowers are always delightful.
I am keeping a close eye on the cardoons so expect regualr updates.
Congratulations to you and Sandy. The white poppy was stunning.
It was a good shot and I was lucky to get it because it was gone the next day and no replacement has appeared yet.
Serendipity 🙂
Congratulations to you and Sandy on your photo entries!
That is a beautiful little goosander family,and the sparrows did indeed have a nice view up the stream.
I’ve never grown cardoons and wondering how they might do here. Any tips from Mrs. Tootlepedal?
Stick them in the ground and hope for the best. This is the first that she has grown.
Yes, from Nanc and I, congrats on the photo awards for both you and Sandy. I also LOVED the photo of the Gull, one cousin of whom attacked my salmon bail today and got itself tangled. I was able to reel it in, salmon net it, untangle and release it back to the river (Columbia River Mouth Jetty, USA.)
Well done for rescuing the gull. They are very aggressive birds so I was not surprised to read of one trying to steal your bait. I hope that you caught your quota of salmon.
Congratulations on your success in the photo competition! Your goosander pictures are very enjoyable too.
My favourite river bird.
There is alway at least one cloud floating above with a silver lining, and you found it. Well done, Tom. I will have a go at finding one next week.
I hope that you succeed.
Congratulations to you and Sandy on your photo competition successes.
Lovely photos especially the goosander family and the fruit laden rowan tree.
It was a treat to see so many goosanders.
Congratulations to you and Sandy for well deserved awards.
Lovely pictures of the birds by the riverside.
Congratulations to both you and Sandy. The awards are late in coming in my opinion.
The cardoon bud sure is spiky looking. Like a medieval mace. But the flower does look like a thistle. It’s an unusual plant.
Printing a picture out always shows up every imperfection so what looks good on a screen may not work on paper.
Well done on your photo success! I watched a bit of taekwondo as well. But I couldn’t get over how odd it was to have a sport where you get an extra 3 points if you manage to kick someone in the face (though they seemed nice people)
It is strange but then so is most sport when you think about it.
As always a post that is enjoyed very much. Thanks for sharing it.
A pleasure. Thank you for taking the time to comment.
I would love to see that many goosanders together – great shots of them and of the dipper too. Congratulations to you and Sandy!
It was unusual for the goosanders not to rush off as soon as I appeared.
I share in the cogratulations. The outstanding photo of the dipper must have taken some persistence?
It just turned up when I was looking for gulls.
Congrats on the wins, with your exceptional detailed photos and Mrs T’s exceptional green thumb, I expected them! Catching up on your past month, I’ve enjoyed all the colorful flower photos you’ve shared. Well done, Tom.
You have been very dutiful in your blog reading Donna. Thank you.