Suspense

Today’s guest picture comes from our son Tony who, after his otter yesterday, met an European eagle owl today. It is very exciting living in East Wemyss.

We had a calm and cloudy day here today, but we didn’t get wet when we cycled to church this week.

We had an extremely select choir of five but less choral chaos than last week. However, the sight of our organist creeping around mid service issuing new sheets to sing from did not inspire a great deal of confidence. All the same, we are starting midweek practices next week and our organist is encouraging more people to come and sing, so things make be looking up.

We had coffee and went shopping after church. I took a couple of dahlia pictures in the garden . . .

. . . and then we had lunch.

The seed in the bird feeder was going down very slowly today, but when I looked after lunch, there was a short burst of action. A small flock of greenfinches turned up and a lone siskin got a look in too.

There was a modest amount of bad behaviour.

Mrs Tootlepedal went off to a meeting in the afternoon, while I checked on the garden flowers and found poppies and astrantia lasting very well, the last remaining contestant in the last rose of summer stakes, and some up and coming yellow crocosmia . . .

. . . as well a few good rose hips.

I only wish that more of our roses would take the hint and get hip too.

Then I went for a cycle ride.

As it was Sunday and the main road should be quiet, I started off by going south out of the town along the A7. The traffic was indeed quiet and the combination of a kindly wind and the gentle downhill gradients got me ten miles down the road at a very speedy 16mph.

Here, I turned off onto quiet back roads and began the process of heading back home into the wind and up the slope. As you can see from the route map and elevation chart . . .

. . . the climb from the lowest point of my ride up to the highest is pretty steady and my my average speed went downhill as my bicycle went uphill. However, with the wind coming from the north east, I was only heading straight into it for two brief spells so I enjoyed my outing a lot.

I stopped on a little bridge to show that the water underneath the bridge is so low and slow that pond weed is growing in mid stream.

. . . but the dry weather has let the farmers get on with their work.

As I came back across the hill towards the Wauchope valley, I spotted a buzzard sitting on a pole beside the road. Inevitably, it spotted me just as I got my camera out, and flew off to a much more distant pole where it hid.

Having taken a broader view of the heather beside the road on the last occasion that I came this way, I took a close up today.

It is odd that the individual flowers always look a lot more pink than the famously purple whole plants look from a distance.

The rowans have enjoyed the weather as much as any this summer and my journey was dotted with bright berries.

I was greeted by a very odd looking pigeon at our front gate when I got home.

A look at its legs showed me that it was a homing pigeon, perhaps trying to hitch a lift from a passing motorist.

Mrs Tootlepedal had got back from her meeting before me, and we watched the last few kilometres of the Vuelta stage on catch up while I had a restorative cup of tea and a slice of toast.

Although the late afternoon was rather gloomy by this time, I had a last look round the garden where the flowers did their best to cheer the day up.

Sometimes, plant breeders make flowers so fancy that they don’t attract bees any more, but this cheery dahlia . . .

. . . definitely has pulling power.

I couldn’t see any bees on the dark dahlias though, even though they have come out of hiding.

Some pink phlox has escaped the chop from Attila the Gardener . . .

. . . and the snapdragons keep producing more and more flowers.

Mrs Tootlepedal is already reading the seed catalogues as she thinks of next year in the garden, and snapdragons and dahlias are on her mind.

As far as we could understand him, the minister seemed to say in church today that a fault has been found in one part of the suspension bridge and it still needs repair. Perhaps it will not be opening tomorrow after we all. We will just have to wait and see. Perhaps that is why it is called a suspension bridge.

I didn’t get a very good flying greenfinch of the day today . . .

. . . so I have called up one of Mrs Tootlepedal’s favourite dahlias to finish this post off. It shines even on a dull day.