Wool gathering

Today’s guest picture comes from our older son Tony.  He was working at Anstruther, on the north coast of the Firth of Forth today and took time off to admire the coastal rocks.

Mrs Tootlepedal spent a lot of the day visiting the Woolfest at Cockermouth with friends.  The Woolfest is what it says on the tin, a festival of wool….and sheep and lambs and alpacas and anything that you can think of to do with wool.  She had a good time.

I had a good time in her absence as Dropscone came round with treacle scones and a cheery mood because he had played a very good round of golf at Galashiels yesterday.

Before he arrived, I went up to the town to pay a bill and then walked round the garden.  It had rained earlier on and everything was wet.

A day lily had unwisely decided that this was the day to come out.

It was wet.

In fact several day lilies had decided this was their day….

…and they were wet too.

The butter and sugar iris was wet….

…and so was the rose Wren.

But in spite of the damp, they all looked pretty cheerful.

After Dropscone left, the weather didn’t look very promising so I made a pan of potato soup for lunch and hoped that the weather would improve.

I was just getting ready to go out after lunch when it started to rain very heavily so I stayed in and put a week of the newspaper index into the Archive Group database.  Rain is very good for motivating me to do the archive work.

When I finished the week, I did a bit of dead heading and was thinking of going out for a walk but the weather looked alternately quite promising and very threatening and the muggy conditions weren’t making me feel very active so I abandoned thoughts of a walk and mowed the front and middle lawns as quickly as I could, took a few more pictures and went in.

I saw a lot of white.

A bit surprisingly to me, this turned out to be a Sweet William and not a pink  Mrs Tootlepedal says that they are closely related.

Things were still a bit wet.

This is another Philadelphus

The first of many blooms on the rose Bobbie James

I was wrong to say that the Goldfinch couldn’t get any more blooms on a stem

Feverfew

The Hydrangea against the wall of the house. The outside flowers are sterile. The bit in the middle is the working part.

And a bit of red.

The first flower on a newly planted Fuchsia.

And I hope to get better weather to have another look at this spirea.

I was still thinking about – but not going on – a walk when Mrs Tootlepedal arrived back so I had a cup of tea with her instead.

After that, the midgies came out so being outside was less attractive and I only went out for long enough to pick a few strawberries and take two final pictures.

The last coral peony

The Dutch irises are enjoying the weather.

I kept on thinking that I might do something active but I never quite managed it and in the end it was lucky that we had a concert at the Buccleuch Centre to go to or I might have let the day collapse into nothingness.

The concert was very enjoyable. It was given by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and they provided a very cheery programme for us.  It started with Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony and this was followed by two charming ‘Sentimental Romances’ by a Swedish  composer called Stenhammer where the conductor acted as violin soloist as well as leading the strings of the orchestra.

In the second half, the orchestra leader, Benjamin Marquise Gilmore and one of the double bass players,  Nikita Naumov gave us the Gran Duo Concertante for violin and double bass by Bottesini.  This piece was an opportunity for showing off some virtuoso skills by both the soloists.  If you get the chance to hear Nikita Naumov play the double bass, take it.

The concert finished with the Haffner Symphony by Mozart and that rounded off a most delightful evening.

The flying bird of the day is a young blackbird sitting on the fence after I surprised it when it was trying to get at the strawberries.  It wasn’t happy.