Proving the tooth of an old saw

Today’s guest picture shows a little guerilla gardening seen by my sister Susan near her house in London.  It brightened her day up a lot.

It was a briskly windy day today so I decided to leave my first cycle ride of September until a later day.

I put the day to good use though and entered a week of the newspaper index into the Archive Group database.  This is usually a straightforward if slightly boring job but this particular week was another matter entirely.  A conscientious data miner had come across the entry for the annual Langholm Cattle show of 1893 and had painstakingly transcribed the names of all the attending members and all the prizewinners (together with their farm or street) recorded in the newspaper report.  Since Ken had done his part of the bargain so well, I thought it only right to type them all in and so this single week had more entries than three normal weeks combined.  I took it in stages but I had it all done by tea time.

I managed to walk round the garden as well though.

The dead heading of the cosmos beside the front door has kept them in very good order…

…though Mrs Tootlepedal feels that it is almost time to let them go.

We had plenty of butterflies in spite of the breezy conditions, sometimes coloured and sometimes white…

…and sometimes both at the same time.

In between times, I provided Dropscone with a cup of coffee and a sympathetic ear.  Not only had he had a disastrous round of golf yesterday but his phone line was out of order as well.  He came round to use our phone to report the fault.

After he went,  I did some more archiving, battled with the crossword and then had lunch.

After lunch Mrs Tootlepedal went off to Edinburgh to see Matilda and I thought about a walk.  The weather looked rather threatening though so I stayed at home and sawed up quite a good number of logs from various bits of trees that have been culled over the summer by Attila the gardener.  It was fortunate that I had stayed in because a man came round to lay new flooring in the little downstairs room that will house our washing machine soon.

While he was at work, I cycled up to give a message from the telephone people to Dropscone and as a result of this an engineer will soon appear and mend everything (I hope).

The weather brightened up for a while so I nipped down to the riverside to see if I could get a picture of the many wagtails there.  Once again, there was no trouble spotting these little birds as there were six or seven on the shore or on rocks in the middle of the river but they are very small and lively so getting a shot was not easy. One or two bobbed up into the air not too far away from me.

I frightened this one off

This one had risen vertically from a rock (to catch an insect I presume).

I didn’t stay long and went back home to put in more of the newspaper index.

I had a break and another walk round the garden.

The green and white clematis is thriving

The Nigella has many stages.

A delicate seed head (probably dill) was swaying about beside the Nigella.

And a stocky lamium was well sheltered under other bigger plants.  It has flowered regularly over several months.

After I had finished the newspaper index, there was not enough time for a walk before I had to make my tea and then go off to Carlisle with Susan to play with our recorder group.  Our librarian Roy had an excellent selection in his music poke tonight and we played music written across many centuries and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

The biscuits afterwards were good too.

The flower of the day is the welcome reappearance of an almost white poppy in one of the few sunny moments of the day…

…and the flying bird is a herring gull making off down the Esk.

It is my general rule only to use photos which I have taken during the day in any post but just after I posted last night’s effort, Mrs Tootlepedal called me into the garage to show me a visitor.  I thought it deserved to figure in a post.

We left the door open and the hedgehog had gone back into the garden by morning.