A stay at home day

Today’s guest picture is a second from my brother Andrew’s trip to King’s Lynn. He passed through Peterborough on his way, and sent me another nice bridge shot.

I had a very uneventful time here today where it was cool under grey clouds for the most part. There was a little burst of sunshine in the afternoon, but it didn’t tempt me out for a walk or a cycle ride.

I spent quite a lot of time indoors doing the crossword, reading the papers, having coffee with Margaret and Mrs Tootlepedal, and finally catching up with entering into the Archive Group database two weeks of the details that had been dug up by the data miners of the Archive Group from the microfiches of ancient editions of our local paper .

Among the entries in 1902, I noticed that the district committee of the county council were offering free vaccinations against smallpox to anyone in Langholm who wanted one. Modern anti-vaxxers must imagine that smallpox disappeared in this country by magic.

To give myself a break from indoor activities, I occasionally went out into the garden and looked at insects . . .

. . . of which there were many about in various shapes and sizes.

Dahlias were a favourite haunt.

I made several excursions during the day.

I was sad not to see any of our colourful butterflies about. I presume that it was a bit too cold for them.

The buddleia was given over to bees.

There were other flowers attracting customers too.

And other dahlias of course.

I did look at other plants, and I am always interested in things that I might be able to eat.

Talking of eating things, if our pink strawberries produced fruit, I would never be short of a treat. They keep flowering all summer long.

I tried to take in the bigger picture too.

I did a little dead heading while I was out, and sieved another batch of compost. Bin A is filling up and I will need to get Bin D sieved and cleared soon, so that I can start the process of moving the compost down the line again.

Mrs Tootlepedal had some sunflowers last year that grew far taller than the seed packet suggested. She was not caught out this year and has grown a lot of decidedly small sunflowers. I didn’t need to stand on my tip toes to look down at this bunch.

A lone delphinium has flowered in the vegetable garden and a late campanula has appeared too. I thought that they made an decorative panel with the fresh Michaelmas daisies and a sweet pea.

On the rose hip front, the Roseraie De L’hay has produced a lonely red hip . . .

. . . but to counterbalance that, the little rose hips which were reddish have got a lot darker with age.

In between putting in the weeks of the newspaper details, I watched a half stage of the Vuelta with Mrs Tootlepedal in the afternoon.

When I had finished the second week, I went back out into the garden and sniffed the mint.

The biggest physical effort that I made all day was bending down to take a picture of a very low flying dahlia which I might have been ignoring because of its lowly stature and habit of hanging its head.

We have a relatively busy day ahead tomorrow, so it was no bad thing to have taken things easily today.

The flying bird of the day is a collared dove flying over the garden in the short sunny spell in the afternoon.