Today’s guest picture comes from my younger son, Al. He took this picture of Mr Grumpy’s Edinburgh cousin in reflective mood in the Botanic Gardens.
It was a perfectly horrible day here, wet, windy and chilly so it was just as well that our morning was brightened by a visit from our friend Bruce who shared a cup of coffee with us while he entertained us with his description of a visit to a very grumpy back specialist. Bruce has suffered from his back for a long time and was quite surprised to be given exercises to do fourteen times a day by this chap. He feels that his back may well improve though as long as he doesn’t pass away from fatigue first.
The wind and the rain has taken its toll on the delphiniums and we saw the first casualties of the year today.
The Sweet Williams are more compact and are made of tougher stuff.
It wasn’t a day to be cycling or outside in the garden at all so we were quite pleased to be going to Edinburgh to visit Matilda rather than just sitting indoors looking out at the rain.
We were less pleased to find out that our train was late yet again. I seem to have spent a lot of my life staring hopefully down the track from the platform at Lockerbie Station.
However, we got to Edinburgh in the end and spent a very cheery afternoon with Matilda and her parents.
I asked Matilda if I could take her picture and she gave the matter some serious consideration…
…before kindly giving me the big “cheese”
She then settled down to making biscuits with granny…..
…before beating me all ends up at Pelmanism and snap.
We enjoyed an excellent meal (a cheese flan provided by Mrs Tootlepedal) before going back in the persistent rain to catch our train home.
This was on time and I was happy to find that it had stopped raining by the time that we got to Lockerbie so the drive home was by no means such a puddle filled adventure as I had feared.
A better forecast for tomorrow. Fingers are crossed.
Tootlepedal's Blog 
Matilda is looking so grown-up! I’m sorry your lovely delphiniums have been blown over; I hope Mrs T can rescue some of them. We had quite a pleasant day today but tomorrow is supposed to be a little stormy.
Our weather was the opposite of yours as we had a relatively pleasant day today.
I won’t be taking any notice of forecasts in future! We had a mild, cloudy day, quite pleasant, in fact.
A nice surprise.
It was!
We are coming out of our rainy season now, and into the dry phase of the year. The weather has been quite pleasant as June comes to a close.
I agree with Clare, Matilda is looking so grown-up these days! Beautiful photos, and I love that patch of Sweet William.
There is no such thing as a dry phase in a normal summer for us. We had a dry spring though.
Too bad about the delphiniums. I’ve grown them against a wall and they were still blown over.
Matilda will carry loving memories of cooking with granny for a very long time. I know that because I do the same.
I was getting over confident about Mrs Tootlepedal’s staking powers but they get so heavy when the flowers come out that I suppose a collapse was inevitable.
Did you cook biscuits with your granny?
No, mine taught me how to stuff and bake a chicken.
Useful skills.
I don’t starve.
Making biscuits is a good way to spend a rainy day, eating them is even better 🙂
Agreed.
Good portraits of Matilda…By the way, she’s growing so fast… 🙂
She is. It hardly seems any time since she was a tiny tot.
Sorry about weather and the late train but good to see Matilda in cooking mode.
What a lovely picture of Matilda.
Very serious consideration.
Absolutely. She is a thinker.
I echo all the above: what a grown up girl! I’m also wondering how you fit fourteen lots of exercises in a day and still achieve anything
With great difficulty.
As we would say in Maine, Matilda is as cute as a button. So much fun to cook with Granny. I always hate it when the rain beats down flowers. May the weather improve so that you can go on a bike ride.
It did and I did. Thank you.
stopped raining, you were lucky. here in the NE it has rained almost continuously for 4 days. I decided I had to cycle this morning, rain or no rain and got a soaking from that very fine fretty rain, Hopefully tomorrow will be better
Yes, I see that Edinburgh has just had its wettest June on record so obviously the west did better than the east for once.
Real hot on Wilden Marsh today. I moved the cattle from the south to north end of the marsh.
We are stuck in a cool stream of air but I would rather have that than too much heat.
That look from Matilda made me think of many similar exasperated looks I’ve had from women over the years – they grow up so fast!
My grandmother taught me how to make scones and sad cakes. I hadn’t thought about that for years…
Sad cakes?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorley_cake
Thank you.
🙂