Rain delayed

Today’s guest picture was sent to me by Anne, wife of my cello playing friend Mike and shows the tall tower of Elgin cathedral….

…and if you look very carefully, you can see Mike and a grandchild peering over the very top of the tower.

I had a kind of slow motion day today in which nothing much happened very slowly.

In the morning, I pottered around the garden weeding, watering and dead heading, did a little compost sieving and mowed the front lawn.

I took a few pictures as I went along.

A gardening friend gave Mrs Tootlepedal a verbascum in the spring and it has come on really well.  The white flowers look a little dull until you have a closer look, when as so often…

… a little nosiness is rewarded.

The astilbe is flourishing without any watering from me…

…and the bees love the privet which has just come out.   I could hear them buzzing all around me but couldn’t see one so here is a bee-less picture.

I couldn’t miss the bees on the poppies though….

…they were filling their pollen sacs at both varieties.

The most surprising thing in the garden to catch my eye today was  a walnut…or to be precise lots of walnuts.

We are generally too far north to expect a lot of walnuts on our tree, although we always get some, but this year the conditions  are obviously favourable because there were clusters of well developed nuts on many branches.  I hope the weather stays good enough for them to ripen properly.

The Sweet Williams are doing well without much watering from me…

…and the lily in the back border seems to add another open flower each day.

But the star of that part of the garden for me is the moss rose.

I have never seen it looking better.

The forecast held out a strong possibility of rain later which was why I mowed the front lawn.  It had much more grass on it than I had expected and I had to work hard to get the mower through it in places.  I did a lot of watering of the lawns as soon as the dry spell started and this seems to have paid off.

The rain however turned out to be a figment of the forecasters’ imagination and we had a cheerful sunny day from dawn until dusk.

Every time I look at the forecast, it says rain tomorrow but I fear rain tomorrow may turn out to be like jam tomorrow.

The supply of beetroot in the veg garden is very good this year so I had a beetroot and sardine salad with leaves for my lunch.

In the afternoon I went to the Health Centre for my regular asthma check up and as a sensible move to cut down prescribing costs, they are trying different treatment.  Since it will cut down my present two puffers to one, I hope it works.  The less puffers you puff, the better your throat is and anything that saves the NHS money is to be welcomed.

While I was on my way back home, I took a look at the Langholm Bridge.  The powers that be have cleared away the tree that had floated down against the bridge but today the bridge hardly needed one arch, let alone three so low was the flow.

I cycled along the road beside the river to see if the oyster catcher family was still in residence.

It was.

The slightly darker beaks show two youngsters.  The other parent was out in the middle of the river keeping an eye on things.

When I got home, I did think about a cycle ride but energy levels were low so I did some more pottering in the garden and then retired to watch the end of the Tour de France stage, followed by some Wimbledon.

I did watch some birds too.

A greenfinch wondered if this was its best side.

I picked a turnip from the veg garden and had that for my tea with yet more peas and beans and potatoes from the garden.  There is no danger of me losing any weight at the moment.

After tea, I went off to church for a church choir practice which was most enjoyable.  There is a special service for the Common Riding in a couple of weeks time and we are singing the Hallelujah  Chorus as the anthem.  As our choir is rather small even with a few reinforcements, this is going to be a challenge but we are up for it.

I got back in time to view the national tragedy that was the second half of the World Cup semi-final and was sorry to see ‘our boys’ going out as they had played and behaved well during the tournament.

The flying bird of the day is a semi circular chaffinch.