Checks and cures

Today’s guest picture comes from our son Tony.   He must live in a sunny place now he has moved to his new house because the locals have turned their wellies into a garden.

It was a crisp and bright morning with the thermometer in the car showing 5°C as I took the car to the garage after breakfast to get an intermittent squeal checked.  Intermittent squeals and squeaks are hard to fix so I drove ten miles before dropping the car off to see if I could make the squeal appear.  Of course it didn’t but nevertheless the garage managed to find the root of the problem and sort it out before the day was over.

My next visit was to the health centre to get a blood test to see if taking iron tablets has done me any good.  A visit to the doctor next week will supply the answer to that question.

The next business of the day was to photograph the Lilian Austin rose which had reacted to two days of sunshine by coming out….

…quite beautifully.

I mowed the greenhouse grass with my second best push mower, one without a roller.

And then diagnosis and cure continued when the telly aerial man arrived to find out why our guest bedroom television was not receiving a signal.  Because the cables from our dish had been run under the roof when our end wall was being rebuilt, diagnosis was fairly easy – the cable under the roof is faulty – but the reason for the fault and the way to cure it was obscure to say the least.  A ‘work round’ was put in place and the television is now receiving a signal and as the job took a lot longer than expected, we have received a bill.  Such is life.

I had soup for lunch and went for my customary 20 mile short pedal down to Canonbie and back.  I had an a appointment later on so I didn’t dilly dally on the way, though I did see a cow which was outstanding in its own field…

…as they say in the obituary of eminent scientists.

And I gave three cheers for these hips in a hedge.

For the second day running Mrs Tootlepedal had been busy painting the new garage doors so she was resting when I got back.

I looked round the garden briefly…

…and then, while Mrs Tootlepedal picked up the car from the garage and went shopping for plants, I went for a walk with Sandy.

We drove a mile out of town and took a triangular walk, up through a birch wood…

….along a track…

…with helpful signposts…

….through an oak wood….

…and back down the hill to where we started.

We were hoping to see some fungi as we went along and got quite excited when we saw these just after we had set off from the car….

We have walked this walk before and seen very few fungi but today, we saw more as walked along…

…and then more….

…and then even more.

We have never seen anything like it.  Conditions must have been perfect this year.

I thought that this one deserved to stand alone.

We looked at other things too.

The horse chestnuts are always the earliest to change colour these days.

I quote from the Woodland Trust website: The horse chestnut leaf miner can occur on trees in huge numbers, causing the foliage to turn brown and fall early. There is no evidence to suggest this harms the trees, as most of the damage occurs late in the season.

The oaks appear to be in good health.

Ferns are always interesting.  This one seemed to have been decorated  by a careful embroiderer.

It was a delightful walk, warm and pleasant in the shelter of the wood and with far too many photo opportunities for us to make full use of them all.

Mrs Tootlepedal had arrived back by the time that I got home and while she prepared a plum crumble and a giant courgette fritter, I mowed the drying green with our hover mower.  I like to have the right mower for the job.

All this took up so much of my time, that iIdidn’t have the opportunity to take a flying bird picture today and as the flower of the day has already appeared, there is no more to say.

Oh alright, here is the fungus of the day.

You can see Sandy’s excellent pictures from our walk by visiting his blog here.