Apres le deluge, moi

Today’s guest picture shows that Bruce was not just looking at trams on the Great Orme. He was looking at the view of Llandudno too.

After yesterday’s miserable day, we had a very pleasant, warm and often sunny day today.

I didn’t make the most of it but I didn’t entirely waste it.

The better weather certainly encouraged my trigger finger and when I downloaded my camera card onto the computer in the evening, I found that I had taken a lot of pictures.  I ruthlessly pruned them down and discovered that I still had 54 so in the end, the number that appear on this post are just a shadow of the ones that I took.

While Mrs Tootlepedal went off to sing in the church choir, I made a beef and mushroom stew for the slow cooker and mowed the greenhouse grass.  No speed records were broken during this process.

I did have time to admire the rambler roses on the arch…

…and to reflect on the downside of a camera which sees the greenhouse, the whirlygig and the houses beyond while the human eye just sees the roses and ignores the rest.

I walked round to the back of the house to admire the excellent display of flowers along the dam.

In the garden, the privet is attracting bees and it was quite hard to get a shot without a bee in it.

The sparrows stopped eating Mrs Tootlepedal’s vegetables for a moment or two and started pecking my lawn.

There are so many berries on our blackcurrant bush that our neighbour Liz came in and picked a colander full…

…and then passed them on to another neighbour and came back and picked the same amount again, all without making a serious dent in the number still on the bush.  I will have to make more jelly.

After lunch, we settled down to watch the Tour but I felt a bit guilty about wasting such a good day so I put it on to record and went for a walk.

I went along the Kilngreen seeing sparrow and gull….

…and thought that the sparrow will enjoy the blackberries when they ripen.

I walked along the road to Whitshiels and then took the track up through the woods.

The track was covered in self heal and occasionally decorated with ragged robin.

At the top of the track, I took a picture of a remarkable tree.

It is one of a row of three which defy the odds and flourish in spite of having only half a trunk and a tenuous connection to the earth.

I walked onto the rough pasture and and saw a good selection of interesting (to me) things.

The bird is a meadow pipit which was trying to hide from me, the energetic cyclist was in the process of doing five repetitions of the climb to the White Yett and back down again and the pylon was doing nothing much at all.

I enjoyed the views of course…

Ewes valley

…and took a panorama to show the extent of them.

Click to enlarge

You can see why I like being up here on a sunny day.

I walked back across Whita Hill, passing these pretty pink flowers on the way….

…which may be lousewort (I am open to correction of course).

I came back to the town by way of the Kirk Wynd.  I was very distracted by the large number of red soldier beetles doing their best to contribute to the survival of the species.  There seemed to be several on every flower I passed at one point.

The Kirk Wynd was very flowery.

At the bottom of the Wynd, I passed the old graveyard wall which is hidden by a metal fence while repairs are being done.  I peeped through a gap.

The wall is supposed to be fully repaired by next week.  This seems like one of those targets which may be missed.

I will doff my chapeau to the wall builders if the job is finished on time.

At the bottom of the Wynd, I stepped into the Market place and noticed that the Common Riding bunting is up at the Town Hall.

The Common Riding will take place on the last Friday in July so we are getting very excited already.

I walked down to the river….

On the gravel bank below the suspension bridge, a man was making a circular bench out of the river stones.

This is a real labour of love as it is very likely that it will either be covered up or swept away by the next flood to come down  the river.

I got home and sat and watched the end of a very exciting stage of the Tour and followed that by eating the beef stew with peas and potatoes from the garden for our tea.  The presence of peas in the meal was a tribute to the fine pea fortress erected by Mrs Tootlepedal.  The sparrows’ frustration was our treat.

After tea, I got out the fairly speedy bike and had a fairly speedy trip down to Canonbie and back by my usual route but in the opposite direction.  It was a lovely evening but the brisk wind made the return part of the journey quite hard work.  Fortunately, I didn’t take my camera with me!

The sitting bird of the day is a blackbird which was keeping an eye on Liz as she picked the blackcurrants.