Today’s guest picture comes from our son Tony in East Wemyss. He wanted to show me that they have butterflies there too but their ones come indoors.
It was a stop start sort of day.
Our car had two warning lights when we got back from Carlisle yesterday and they were still sending out bad vibes when I switched on the engine this morning. I rang the garage to see if they could do anything and there was a good deal of sucking of teeth and sighing. “Very busy….not taking any more work this week…(sound of Tootlepedal crying) ….oh well, bring it in and we’ll see if we can look at it….no promises.”
I took it in. They looked at it. No more warning lights. I collected it. It was raining lightly by this time but I was very sunny. Fingers are firmly crossed as I have to drive fifty miles tomorrow.
When I got home, the sun was shining so I went out into the garden for a walk round with Mrs Tootlepedal. There had been ice on the car windscreen with a temperature of 2°C before breakfast and a lot of the dahlias had turned up their toes as a result. However, it had warmed up quite quickly and there were survivors all around.
The upside of the demise of the Sunny Reggae dahlias was more space and light for the two fuchsias behind them.
And I did see a red admiral butterfly. It was on the remains of the French marigolds which did such a good job of protecting the carrots earlier in the year.
In the vegetable garden, chive and mint are still in flower.
Mrs Tootlepedal was mourning the loss of some nasturtiums to the cold when she noticed that there was some damage that wasn’t weather related.
Cabbage white caterpillars were chomping their way through leaves and flowers.
Our kitchen was being painted and I had to wait in for the call from the garage so I put the morning to good use by entering two weeks of the newspaper index into the Archive Group database. I am well behind schedule at this task so this was not before time.
When the painter went off to let the first coat of paint dry, I watched the birds from the kitchen window. It was another busy day.
There was a mixture of greenfinches, sparrows and chaffinches at first…
…but a small gang of goldfinches soon turned up too.
Political discussions grew heated and a sparrow had to fly in to calm down two goldfinches who were debating the merits of Canada ++ and/or of falling of a cliff.
Greenfinches pursued sparrows…
…and then goldfinches pursued sparrows.
But the goldfinches couldn’t stop arguing. The one on the left is practising the ‘no deal’ Brexit position.
A coal tit rose above the bickering…
…and a chaffinch showed her disgust at the whole situation.
One of our visiting jackdaws has some elegant white wing feathers to show off.
Over lunch, we watched a re-run of the last kilometres of the men’s world championship cycling road race and felt for the riders as they had to battle up an extremely steep hill.
When the painter came back, we went out into the garden and did some useful work. I mowed the drying green and the green house grass, did some shredding and sieved some compost. The compost went on to the first of the new beds at the top of the vegetable garden which Mrs Tootlepedal had been preparing.
I trimmed the top of the white clematis round the back door as it was creeping up in to the gutter and while I was in clematis mode, I noticed that we still have two clematis on the go in a modest way.
I rounded off my photographic day with a glimpse of a dunnock…
….the first to appear on the blog since early June.
Mike Tinker dropped in to report that his son David and family were safely on their journey back to New Zealand. They will be looking forward to some warmer weather no doubt.
In the early evening, Luke came to play flute and once again we made steady progress (hemidemisemiquavers are meat and drink to us now) and then after tea, I went off to play trios with Mike and Isabel. What with one thing and another, we haven’t been playing a lot recently and it was good to get together again even though some rustiness was apparent all round. The Reader’s Digest used to suggest that laughter is the best medicine but I think it is music.
The flying bird of the day is a determined chaffinch.
Tootlepedal's Blog 
Hope those darned lights don’t come back on. And ice on the windshield? We haven’t even had that in Maine yet. Enjoyed the political commentary with the “birds.”
It is my answer to Twitter posts by you know who.
He who must not be named. Sigh.
Interesting about your dunnock. I saw the first in my garden for months just two days ago.
Plenty of food around this summer.
Too bad about the dahlias and the car. I hope it runs well tomorrow.
We haven’t seen any outside ice yet and I’m sorry that you have. I hope you didn’t lose too many plants.
I’m betting that the vegetables from the new bed will be amazing after growing in all that compost.
That bed is earmarked for soft fruit so I am very keen for it to do well.
Wishing you a reliable car performance on your drive tomorrow.
Your compost looks nice and rich!
It has done very well this year with a bit of summer heat to help it on.
I liked the disgusted chaffinch and, what a treat, not one but two first class closeups of a fuchsia, thank you.
Just for you.
Just as well to get those warning lights checked out, Tom. I noticed an ominous smell of burning rubber coming from my car yesterday, so I’m hoping it’s nothing too drastic.
Burning rubber is never a welcome smell when driving. Fingers crossed for you.
Your birds seemed to be as sunny as you were! Happy your car recovered so quickly.
We were extremely relieved.
I like the commentary on the bird politics….they may be chirping more sense than the politicians. Thank goodness we have your photos of all things important to keep us happy! The fuchsia photos are particularly lovely.
They have been transplanted this year so we are very happy with how they the fuchsias are doing.
I hope that your car gives you no trouble tomorrow while you’re on your journey. Loved both the bird behavior and the flowers from today, but I didn’t want to hear that you’ve had frost already. It’s too soon for that, I want summer to last another month or two.
We went from summer to not summer in what seemed like a day and now it is definitely gone.
I had a warning light come on in the car and took it to the dealer. He told me it was because the gas cap hadn’t been screwed on properly. Cost me around $100 for that ridiculous information. We went out and bought one of those gizmos that can be plugged into the car to tell us the reason for blinking lights. It’s worked very well. Haven’t had a light blink ever since! 😉
A good value gizmo indeed.
Sorry to hear the cabbage white caterpillars have been rampaging in Mrs. Tootlepedal’s nasturtiums. We are under attack by voles at the moment.
So did the caterpillars become bird food?
Our cars are imported from Japan and still have the warnings etc in that langyage. Thank goodness for google translate 😊