Today’s guest picture comes from our son Tony. As well as seals and curlews, his new house offers him fine sunrises as he walks his dogs.
We had a lovely crisp and sunny morning here, perfect for cycling if I had had any go about me. Sadly, my go was gone and I was still having a light snooze after breakfasts when Sandy came round on Archive Group business and roused me enough to make a cup of coffee. When he went on his way, I looked round the garden.
There were peacock butterflies all over the place, on the red buddleia…
…on a cosmos…
…and on the main buddleia too.
They were sunning themselves on paths and flitting about in a very butterflyish way all morning.
The white cosmos are flowering freely…
…and after a slow start, poppies appear as if by magic on fine days like today.
As well as a lot of edible plums, we also have a silver pear on the silver pear tree. You would need teeth of iron to eat one though.
After a great rush of blackbirds earlier on, they have become rather scarce lately so I was pleased to see this one today.
When I looked at the birds on the feeder, once again a blue tit was hanging about in the plum tree….
….waiting for a chance while the sparrows played follow my leader round the feeder.
Beside the feeder, the accidental sunflower is going from strength to strength.
The main business of the day was going to Edinburgh to see Matilda and for once the trains were more or less on time and not too full so the journey was a pleasure and it is always a treat to see Matilda and her parents.
She took her father and me to the shops to get the ingredients for a one pot lemon and asparagus linguine for tea.
(I have digitally scrubbed the graffiti off the board behind her as I don’t like to encourage that sort of thing.)
Al and Clare are preparing their house for sale so while we shopped, Mrs Tootlepedal and Clare cleaned windows. Then Al cooked the linguine and it turned out to be delicious so we went home in a cheerful mood.
The flying bird of the day is a strangely twisted sparrow.
(We are looking at it from behind and it has its head turned sharply to the right to check out the feeder.)
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I like the white cosmos and colored poppies. They’re papery and beautiful.
I wish I had half that many butterflies in my own yard.
The accidental sunflower is just about as perfect as a sunflower can be.
It has done very well and there may be an intentional one there next year as the birds like it.
You pack a lot of great photos into a short time at home on the days that you go to Edinburgh! Nice job of erasing the graffiti as well.
I would like to do that in real life.
Love the butterflies!
They come for such a short time that they are very valuable when they are here.
Great macros! 🙂
Thank you HJ
Matilda is so photogenic! And those peacocks. I can never get enough of them.
You can tell that we like them
Beautiful sunrise from Tony.
Glad the visit to Edinburgh went well.
Wonderful pictures of the butterflies.
very clever doing the digital scrub of the grafetti
I am not a graffiti fan at all
I’ve really enjoyed your peacock butterfly images these last posts, such a pretty butterfly!
I am sorry to have put so many in but I can’t resist them.
I also thought your photos of the peacock butterflies were very nice indeed.
Love your butterflies! Buddleia davidii is firmly on the noxious weed list here, to the point where plant police will chastise those who grow it. I miss having it. I have a different kind of buddleia but it doesn’t seem to attract butterflies.
That’s sad.