Showers and sunshine

Today’s guest picture comes from my sister Susan.  It was taken by the friend who took her on a tour of Germany recently.  They were quite surprised to find this plaque.

It was a day of frequent showers with bright spells in between so the trick was to get the timing right if you wanted to get anything done outside.

I was able to get about and do some dead heading and picture taking after breakfast.

The were poppies to dead head and photograph.

And yellow flowers to enjoy in the sunshine.

And then Dropscone came for coffee bearing treacle scones and with the scone radar in the manse on full alert, we were soon joined by Scott, the minister.  He will have to get a fuller strength radar now as he is leaving us and going to minister in a church in Glasgow soon.

We will miss him.

Dropscone went off to play golf and Mrs Tootlepedal and the minister set the world to rights while I took the opportunity of another sunny spell to mow the lawns.

The white cosmos is coming on well.

Then I sieved a bit of compost and seeing that Bin D was getting low, I shifted almost all of Bin B into the empty Bin C between showers.  Mrs Tootlepedal has been trying to keep the soil in good condition so she has been using up the compost as fast as I can produce it.

I also took a look round.  The peacock butterflies were judging the weather too and as soon as the sun appeared, they appeared as well.

I went in to have lunch and set the camera up in the kitchen.

The feeders were very busy, especially with sparrows but they didn’t have it all their own way…

…and a greenfinch stood its ground against a host of them.

The jackdaws have us on their feeding list and appear from time to time and then fly off again.

And I am very happy that we seem to have a whole family of blue tits as regulars.  I saw five at a time today (but only captured two of them together).

The composting and dead heading went on after lunch as did the showers but in the end, things looked stable enough, in spite of an impressive cloud…

…to make a walk seem like a good idea.

I set off along the path beside the park wall, where the recent rain has encouraged all sorts of growth.

The red spots on the cladonia lichen were so small that I couldn’t see them with the naked eye and had to rely on my camera to show them to me.

At the  end of the wall, a flash of yellow caught my eye.  It was a small group of most uncommon flowers…

…hanging down from the leafs above them.  I had to get Mike Tinker to identify them for me and he tells me that they are ‘Touch-me-not balsam’  or  Impatiens noli-tangere.

It is a very odd flower, looking for all the world like a flying goldfish.

As I walked up the track from the Stubholm towards Warbla, there was more to see both in the verge beside the track….

…and on a wall a bit further up.

The rain has livened things up a lot for  a walker with time to look about.

Once on the hill, I left the track after a while and headed across the grass towards the summit.

The sheep hoover up most things but there were one or two growing things left among the grass.

They had to lie pretty low though.

And of course, there are the views as you get higher up the hill.

A click on this panorama will bring up the bigger picture.

The weather gods had a little joke and laid on a heavy shower just as I got near the top of the hill so I retreated and they promptly whisked the shower away and turned on the sun again.

I wasn’t going to go back up to the top though partly because of the additional climb and partly because I had spotted some cattle on the open ground behind the mast and I prefer to leave cattle to themselves when I am walking.

I took a picture of the town on my way down….

…and pointed the camera past the town and towards my favourite view of the Ewes valley beyond.

I took a picture of the cows on the top of the hill in the rain and of two more standing in a field beside the road when I came down the hill and as always, I was an object of interest to the many sheep that I passed.

The sun lasted for the rest of my walk and as I came along the road, peltigera lichen, rose hips in the hedge and slow worms at Pool Corner all kept me busy clicking away with the camera.

During the day, both Mrs Tootlepedal and I picked plums whenever we passed the tree but there are plenty still ripening and when I had got back from my walk, I spotted a jackdaw helping out with the plum eating.

It rained again in the early evening but it had cleared up by the time that Mike and Alison came round for their customary Friday visit.  Both Alison and I had been practising and and although we found out that practice doesn’t necessarily lead straightaway to perfection, we had a most enjoyable session.

They went away with plums….

…and a marrow.

That is what friends are for.

I promised a picture of the new garage doors open and here it is.

I can’t tell you what a good idea it is to have doors that open easily.  I wheeled my slow bike in and out several times today just for fun.

The flying bird of the day is a greenfinch.