A slow day

Today’s guest picture comes from my sister Susan’s old friend Stephen who has been spending a week with his wife in Port Douglas, in Far North Queensland. He tells me that it is mid-winter there, and so the temperature is down to a chilly 25-26 degrees.  He sent me this suitably wintry illustration.

It is summer here of course and it rained all day and the temperature barely crept up to 18 degrees.  As a result, I spent a very quiet day indeed doing nothing more interesting than a little data entering into the Archive Group database and a short shopping trip with Mrs Tootlepedal.

She spent the morning at a meeting regarding the possible community purchase of the Langholm Moor and I sat at my computer.  It was sorry about its bad behaviour last night and worked very competently and quickly today.

I did take time to look out of the window.

…and it is easy to see why I preferred to stay indoors.

The siskins were out in force….

…and spent a lot of time squabbling rather than getting on and eating seed.

A sparrow looked disgusted but whether it was because of the weather or the siskins’ behaviour, it is hard to say.

The rain eased off and a blue tit appeared.  The tits prefer the nuts to the seeds…

…which ever way they look at it.

We must have a small family of blue tits nearby because several appeared at the same time…

…and unfortunately seemed to have learned from the siskins’ bad habits.

I made some celery and stilton soup for lunch and I enjoyed it in company with Mrs Tootlepedal who had returned from her meeting.

After lunch I took a quick walk round the garden at a moment when the drizzle had slackened off.

The overnight rain had not been heavy enough to beat down the flowers…

…but there was a soggy feel about the garden….

…although some of the effects were quite decorative on leaf…

…and petal.

Yellow lilies are appearing…

…and the ligularia is coming on…

…so things were still cheerful in places.

I like the sweet peas that Mrs Tootlepedal has grown this year.

Then, for the want of anything better to do, we drove down to Gretna to do a little shopping.

Then we drove back again.

That ended any excitement for the day as the Tour de France and Wimbledon combined to provide a lengthy excuse for testing the comfort of the sofa.

Mike Tinker dropped in for a cup of tea and Mrs Tootlepedal cooked a meal of chicken and asparagus for our evening meal and we tried very hard not to think of the political situation as it is even more depressing than the weather.

I had hoped that I had captured one of the blue tits for the flying bird of the day…

…but it was just too quick for me so a sparrow kindly offered to stand in, beating off a siskin who was trying to get the job.