Stuck

Today’s guest post comes from Mary Jo in Canada.  She went to the west coast and found the traffic queuing up in Vancouver harbour.

I had a day indoors today to keep resting my foot and was assisted in this by a series of showers throughout the day and a brisk and chilly wind.  If it had been a kinder day, I might have ventured out on my slow bike for a virtual walk.

Dropscone arrived on his bike when he brought treacle scones to go with our coffees.  In keeping with the rest of the day, it rained heavily while we were sipping and chatting but the sun came out as he cycled home.

He has just been on a short break to the coast where he hoped to do some sightseeing and play golf but as he chose to have his holiday while storm Gareth was on the go, he didn’t get much of either.

When  he left, I had a quick garden outing but nothing much was happening there so I took a token daffodil picture…

…and reflected that if it is daffodils that you want to see, then Carlisle is the place to go as the city fathers really love a good display of daffs.

I saw this bed under the city walls when I went to park my car before the concert yesterday.

The rain gauge is registering three and a half inches for the week so far.  It feels as though there has been more rain than that and the ground is getting quite soggy.

The birds were busy again….

…and there always seemed to be a chaffinch looking for a perch.

Goldfinches were active too.

I spent some useful time finalising my picture framing for the forthcoming exhibition and tried not to change my mind more than three times every minute on which pictures to include.

I didn’t spend too much time just sitting around except for a time out to watch the Gold Cup from Cheltenham.  I practised some music for church and choirs and put two weeks of the newspaper index into the Archive Group database so I was feeling quite virtuous even if I was a little bored.

I was still sitting at the computer and I had made up my mind to poke my nose out of doors when a strange rattling noise made me look up.  It was a dramatic hailstorm which covered the lawn in minutes and then took not much longer to melt away again.

I sat back down at the computer.  A bright sunny moment made me look up again and think of stretching my legs but when I got to the back door, I discovered that it was pouring with rain while the sun shone….

…and since rain and sun means one thing, I popped upstairs and looked out of the back window.

Someone in Henry Street was getting rich.

Mrs Tootlepedal is enjoying the quiet life in the south while visiting her mother but she made the mistake of watching the news and had to ring me up just to shout at someone.  I sympathised.  It was not a good day for news.

The forecast for tomorrow shows even more rain on the way so I may be forced to stay in and watch Scotland get a battering from England on the rugby field.  We have so many injuries that we may soon run out of players altogether.

One of those intent chaffinches is the flying bird of  the day.