Three treats

(First a note about yesterday’s guest picture which I claimed was taken by Tony in the morning, In fact, it was taken by his partner Marianne in the afternoon but apart from that, I was completely correct.)

Today’s guest picture comes from my Somerset correspondent Venetia who recently strayed far enough from home to arrive in Marseille where her hotel had an enticing pool – though not quite enticing enough to tempt her in for a swim as it was unheated.

We had a very unheated day today with temperatures very close to freezing in the morning and back below zero in the evening.

The sun shone throughout the day which made enforced leg resting a bit hard to bear. Things are improving though and I was able to totter to church in the morning to sing with the choir.

When I had tottered back home again, I slow marched through the garden.

In spite of the near zero start to the day, flowers are still blooming.

The winter jasmine is a cheat as it has just started.

There are still lots of nasturtiums along the wall of the house, both in red….

…and in yellow.

Lilian Austin hasn’t given up yet…

…and the fuchsias have still got a lot to give potentially.

The lamium….

…and the ornamental strawberry continue to delight…..

…but the  violas are looking past their best…

…as are the clematis.

However, rather to my surprise, I saw a bee hard at work.

The chaffinches were still giving the new feeder a wary look.

I put my enforced rest to good use by going indoors and entering a couple of weeks of the newspaper index into the Archive Group database, and then after lunch, we drove back to church for a choir practice.

Our organist and choir master had accepted an invitation to take part in a four choir mini festival in a neighbouring church and had decided that we would sing the Hallelujah chorus as one of our two contributions.  Luckily, he had acquired a few extra outside singers to help us and we had a good practice.

Then we got the first treat of the day as a reward, a slap up afternoon tea in the Eskdale Hotel with a mountain of sandwiches, sausage rolls and fancy cakes.

Fortified by this, we drove over to Lochmaben, about 25 miles away, with two other choir members in the back and Mrs Tootlepedal at the wheel.

I had not known what to expect from the event but Lochmaben church turned out to be very charming and comfortable and the mini festival was most enjoyable with the efforts of the choirs being interspersed with singing of some old favourite hymns. Our turn went off pretty well so the whole thing was another treat…..(especially as it didn’t go on too long.)

And then there were more cups of tea and more fancy cakes so that was the third treat.

When it came to driving home, the temperature dipped below zero but as the roads were dry, there was no danger of ice to alarm us and we got home safely.

My leg got through all this excitement with no trouble and steady improvement continues but it will be another quiet day tomorrow.

The flying bird of the day is a chaffinch which plucked up its courage and approached the new feeder directly.