Tea cake time

Today’s guest picture comes from my Somerset correspondent, Venetia.  It shows a view of her garden from an upstairs room.  She tells me that her grass is left long to encourage wildlife and it has been sown with wildflowers which she hopes will appear later in the year.

After yesterday’s glorious warm weather, it rained overnight and today was colder and even windier at times than yesterday.  But it didn’t rain.

This didn’t discourage the tadpoles who are now into independent swimming.

The tulips weren’t very keen on opening wide though, but they still added interest to the garden along with a very pale fritillary…

…while pulmonaria, lamium and berberis added more discreet colour.

We had a leisurely morning with a little sporadic gardening and time to watch birds, sometimes through the window, sometimes in the garden…

…and sometimes while sitting in the warmth of the greenhouse like these two sparrows on the fence. Mrs Tootlepedal spotted the bee on the rosemary while we were in there too.

After some lawn edging, time wasting, music making, cooking, laughing at a poem which my friend the cello playing Mike had sent me and looking at promising tulips…

…I went out for a late afternoon permitted walk.

The river is exceedingly low after weeks with little or no rain….

…but no one is currently wishing for more rain after February’s exceptional rainfall.  Or at least, not out loud.

I walked through the town and then up the Kirk Wynd and onto the golf course.  It is a good golf course because if you are playing badly, which I almost always was, there is a selection of fine views to take your mind off your foozled shots.

The greens are getting some green back onto them after the greenkeeper’s dramatic treatment, and as there are no golfers on it, the course is looking very well maintained.

I enjoyed a final view from the course…

…and walked out onto the open hill, passing gorse, lichen and fresh hawthorn leaves on my way.

From Whita Well, I followed the track along the contour of the hill.  It was a lovely day, although I couldn’t see the Lake District hills as the Solway plain was covered in mist.

The lovely day got a little less lovely as I went along the track because the sunshine retreated up the valley….

…thanks to this annoying cloud which hovered straight above me, leaving sunshine to both the north and the south.

Dropscone had been this way on a walk lately, and he told me that he would have sent me an arty picture of a pylon if only he had remembered to take his camera with him.

So this is for him.

And this one too, as I didn’t know which angle he would have chosen.

Looking  south from the pylon, I could only just make out the windfarm at Gretna which shows how hazy it was down there.

That dark cloud over my head was soon blown away though, and I walked back down the hill  in glorious sunshine again as i went through a little birch wood that has grown up in recent years…

..and the sun lit up the floor of the wood as I joined the main track back to the Round House and Langholm.

I turned down the opportunity of a sit down on the bench at the Round House…

…and walked down the track that goes through the little oak wood…

…past this fine tree…

…and ontothe old railway line.  I got to the path that leads steeply down to the road at Skippers Bridge…

…and the bridge drew me into yet another photograph.

At this stage, I realised that I was going to be late for tea if I didn’t get a move on so I got a move on.

The tea arrived on the table just as I arrived home.

At about three and a half miles, it was another walk which packed a lot of variety into a short outing.

During the afternoon, I had prepared the dough for a set of lockdown teacakes. The supply of ginger biscuits has run out and we need something to cheer us up in these troubled times.

They went in the oven after our evening meal and came out looking like this.

We test drove one or two and they seemed pretty cheerful to us.

The flying bird of the day is a starling, whisking across the garden in the strong wind this afternoon. (Too fast for my camera.)