And finally . . .

Today’s guest picture comes from my Lancashire correspondent Paul who is on a visit to the Lake District. He climbed Cat Bells and got this fine view of Derwent Water.

Although the forecast had been full of rain, it was another case of “rain later” today, and we woke up to a quiet dry day with occasional sunshine. Once again, I sneaked out for an early bicycle ride while Mrs Tootlepedal and Matilda went off to do more tidying up round the church.

I did the 20 mile loop round the Solwaybank windfarm, and found the wind in a generally helpful mood, so I enjoyed myself and managed quite a decent average for an undulating run. I stopped a few times for pictures on the way. The green field in the second picture in the gallery is not corn but willows, growing freely again after being harvested. The next picture gives a close up. As always a click on a picture in a gallery brings it up at full size.

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When I got home, I had a coffee and played balloon tennis with Matilda. As I was able to play this while sitting down, it was a very satisfactory game.

After a while, we went out to look at the garden. Matilda took one of my cameras and we both took pictures. She took some good bee pictures and mastered the zoom function today. I have cropped some of her shots.

Matilda’s gallery:

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My efforts:

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The little green bug on the sunflower is a closterotomus norwegicus, or so Google lens tells me. I am not dead heading the little poppies at all and they are thriving on neglect.

After lunch, Mrs Tootlepedal, Matilda and I went for a three bridges outing. Mrs Tootlepedal and Matilda both cycled and I scuttled along behind them on foot.

We passed banks of yarrow as we went round the new path on the Castleholm and stopped for an ice cream from Pelosi’s van when we got to the Kilngreen. A young black headed gull was very keen to collect any scraps, and came and stood very close to us.

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When I had finished my nougat wafer, I went along to the end of the Kilngreen and took another picture of the river at the town bridge, just to show the gravel banks exposed by the low water. I also looked up the Esk towards Timpen Hill.

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We didn’t linger long because it looked as though it might finally start to rain. The cyclists shot ahead of me once we had crossed the bridge. I stopped to take a picture of a crow with white feathers on the rocks beside the river.

We were very pleased with our timing, as it started to rain as soon as we got home. This necessitated the bringing in of the washing, but, needless to say, as soon as the washing was safely in, the rain stopped.

The various forecasts had different timings, but they all agreed that heavy rain was on its way during the afternoon, However, it just wouldn’t rain properly. We did everything we could to make it rain. We hung more washing out. Al, Clare and Matilda washed their car. I took pictures of flowers . . .

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. . . and the sun came out.

Mrs Tootlepedal gave up hope and started to water things while I mowed the middle lawn.

Still it didn’t rain.

In the end, it started to rain a bit more seriously as the evening came in, and it is still raining as I write this, so perhaps the garden will get a good soak at last.

I didn’t have much time to look at the birds today but I did catch two siskins on the feeder . . .

. . . and in a desperate effort to have a flying bird of the day, I pointed the little Lumix at some passing gulls while we were eating our ice creams on the Kilngreen.