A day of surprises

Today’s guest picture shows a recent sunrise in East Wemyss. It comes from our son Tony who gets up very early in the morning to walk his dogs.

We had no sun here in the morning, but it was warm and I enjoyed a walk round the garden before coffee after having listened to a surprisingly interesting radio programme about Shakespeare’s sonnets.

I liked the colourful leaves on this little shrub . . .

. . . and the bold colour of the Tropaeolum which grows out of our clipped yew.

On the paler side of things, a white campanula has just come it, beating the blue ones to it . . .

. . . and there was only a hint of red about this peony.

It was warm enough for coffee in the garden with Margaret, though a cloud had been cast over the proceedings by the news that there have been several Covid cases in the town, allegedly brought back by people who had gone to London to mix with other football supporters at the recent England-Scotland football match. We were a bit cross, as this sets us back on the gradual road to normality. Our son Tony was going to visit us this weekend, and see an old friend in the town while he was here, but that visit has now been cancelled.

After coffee, I walked round the garden again to cheer myself up, doing some dead heading as I went.

Luckily there were quite a lot of cheerful flowers about. Crown Princess Margareta has come out fully, and she has been joined by the first flower on the Goldfinch.

The sun had come out and persuaded a peony to open up a little.

And the red astrantia was showing off its many mini flowers.

There were no bees visiting though, and as astrantias are normally bee magnets, this was disappointing. All the same, there was a bit more buzzing in the garden than there has been lately, and a Rosa Complicata was a popular spot.

There was quite a spread of different bees and other insects on various plants . . .

. . . but we are nowhere near where we should be yet for this time of the year.

As well as seeing the flowers, I noticed a young dunnock having a drink at the pond.

After lunch, we went back out into the garden, and found that it had turned into a lovely day. Mrs Tootlepedal got busy and I settled down to sieve some compost. It was in surprisingly good condition, and the effort that I had put into to turning the compost recently seemed to have paid off as I got four lots sieved quite quickly. Mrs Tootlepedal put some onto the garden straight away, and I stored the rest for future use.

After I had finished with the compost, I took another look round and noticed that a single rose bush had flowers with three different colours on it.

We are just getting into full rose time in the garden and there are flowers on every side.

And I was happy to see another coral peony waiting to be a sensation.

As it was such a lovely afternoon, we decided to go for a cycle ride. Out of interest, I checked on the weather forecast to see which way the wind was blowing. It came as quite a shock to find that the forecasters were pretty certain that it was going to start raining soon.

We gave up the cycling plan and went for a short three bridges walk instead. This was a wise decision as the temperature dropped, the wind rose and clouds covered the sky in no time at all. We rather scampered round our walk and got home just as it started to drizzle.

On our way we did have time to spot a gull flying, a mallard swimming and a wagtail busily collecting food at the water’s edge.

Mrs Tootlepedal spotted a giant hogweed beside the river.

Crossing the Castleholm, we passed the red horse chestnuts. There were a few flowers left . . .

. . . but there were no shortage of buttercups as we went past the cricket pitch.

Mrs Tootlepedal spotted another wagtail and a dipper as we crossed the Jubilee Bridge, but by this time the light had got so poor that I wasn’t able to take a usable picture of them.

We got home in the nick of time to take the washing in while the drizzle set in for the rest of the afternoon.

I watched the birds through the window and saw the usual regrettable behaviour from a siskin.

The day faded quietly away after that, but as the forecast says that it will be a lot colder and probably wetter tomorrow, maybe today will look like a very good day in retrospect. It is fair to say that we need the rain, so we shouldn’t complain.

We are very sad that we won’t be seeing our son Tony and his partner Marianne this weekend, and we can only hope that contacts of the cases in the town behave carefully so that we can see Tony and Marianne soon.

The (just) flying bird of the day is a goldfinch . . .

. . . and the flower of the day is an understated geranium amidst all the colour.