Better

Today’s guest picture is another from Venetia’s visit to the Haynes International Motor Museum.  This is a 1949 Jaguar 3.5 litre saloon and very nice too.  They keep the exhibits very well polished.

The day started much as yesterday had finished, windy and grey. I wisely spent so much time over breakfast that by the time I had finished my porridge and tea, it was time for coffee and an iced bun (or two).

Then I had a look round the garden where I was astonished to find a red admiral butterfly at full stretch.

I was so astonished that I had to go inside and sit down again.  I made some vegetable soup and while it was cooking, I popped out and mowed the front lawn.  In spite of quite a lot of rain during August, the ground is still reasonably dry and the lawn mowed very well.

I had a look round the garden to see what had survived the strong winds and was pleased to find a lot of flowers still looking well.

As I looked, there was a break in the clouds and some sun peeped through.

All things considered, I thought that the garden looked not too bad.

I wasn’t at all confident that the rain had actually gone away so I frittered some time away after I had had my lunch by watching some rowing on the telly for a while.  Then I consulted the forecast.

You would think the the forecasters would be able to tell you what might happen in the next hour even if the the next day’s weather was still a mystery to them, but having consulted several forecasts, I had a choice of anything between a 0% and  a 70% chance of rain.  I chose to believe the 0% forecast (though I did pack a rain jacket) and set off for a pedal on my borrowed bike.

The wind was still blowing briskly, but a look around showed a lot of blue sky…

…so I was happy to stop on my way and take some pictures.

I visited my favourite cascade on the mighty Wauchope…

…and had another look at the landslip further up the road.

There is a set of traffic lights here which lets motorists (and cyclists) use half the road , but I would imagine that the road will have to be closed when they try to make the banking safe.  I also imagine that they will not be rushing to do the repair.

I cycled on and picked a route that kept any pedalling straight into the wind to a minimum.  As a result, I had a most enjoyable 18 miles, especially as some threatening clouds soon cleared off, leaving a lovely afternoon.

I was happy to see that the cut silage had all been safely gathered in.

There was some colour beside the road as I went along.

And as I hadn’t stopped while passing over it for some time, I stopped today and took a picture of Skippers Bridge as I neared the end of my trip.

It really was a fine afternoon by the time that I got back to Langholm

When I got home, I took a picture of the plum tree just to settle any reader’s worries about whether I had given Dropscone too many plums yesterday.

We threw away literally hundreds of unripe plums as they were developing to stop them breaking the branches, we have made plum jam and plum chutney, I stewed some more plums and have been eating them with cream (someone has to do it), I gave some to our neighbour Liz, I eat fresh plums all the time and pick more and eat them every time I pass the tree, and still the branches are weighed down with countless more.  It has been, as Ken Dodd would say, a plumptious year.

And now the apples are ripe enough to start eating them too.

I had another walk round the garden to look for butterflies and on my way, enjoyed a new flower on the rambler rose.

There were one or two butterflies about but there were a lot more bees so I looked at them instead.

I liked this cool one with dark glasses on.

I was thinking about going for a short walk but somehow time slipped by again and I had to cook my tea, so I settled for my bike ride.  As the 18 miles took me to just over 400 miles for the month, I was pretty content with that.

I rang Mrs Tootlepedal in the evening and found that she is having an enjoyable time down south.

The flying bird of the day is one of the few butterflies that I saw in the garden today.