Busy doing nothing

Today’s guest picture comes from our son Tony. He was up at the crack of dawn today with his dogs to see a typical East Wemyss day in the making.

On the other side of the country, we had a different picture when we got up (several hours later than Tony) with mist covered hills after some genuine overnight rain. It had rained enough to save Mrs Tootlepedal the task of watering the flowers, but not nearly enough to make any difference to our low reservoirs.

For obscure reasons, but probably to do with my neglect of regular back exercises lately, my legs were on total strike today, and they flatly refused to go further than a quick cycle round to the corner shop for supplies. When I got back, I took a picture of the sweet peas and went inside.

I made the best of it though, and managed to put another week of the newspaper index into the Archive Group database. This was the only useful thing that I did all morning.

I didn’t pick up a camera again until after lunch, when I looked out of the window at the bird feeder. The birds were more active than I was. Sparrows checked out the situation . . .

. . . and found siskins being as unwelcoming as ever.

There were a lot of blue tits about today, and I took several pictures of them. They are frisky little birds and the gloomy day made it hard to get good shots as they popped to and fro from the feeder. Their beaks are too small to eat the sunflower hearts so they have to pick up a seed and then take it away to peck at it rather than swallow it whole.

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After a quiet afternoon watching the last half of the second stage of the Tour of Britain cycle race, I prepared a liver and onion stew and roused my legs enough for a walk round the garden. The sedums are nearly out . . .

. . . and they should be attracting insects soon.

There were no butterflies to be seen today but catching a dahlia without other insects on was quite a task. I found this one . . .

. . . but when I looked again a moment later, it had a marmalade hoverfly visiting

Other dahlias had other smaller insects . . .

. . . and a Michaelmas daisy had a small one too.

We run an ‘open insect’ garden and insects of all sizes are welcome on the same flower at the same time.

Surprisingly, the colourful heleniums seemed to be be insect free.

I noted that our phlox are coming to the end of their season, and they are phading phast.

They have done very well, so we can’t complain.

I took a look at the little tomatoes in the greenhouse . . .

. . . which have been providing tasty snacks for some days now, and then we just had time to dig up Mrs Tootlepedal’s main crop potatoes . . .

. . . before our regular Zoom with my brother and sisters.

The potatoes could perhaps have stayed in the ground a bit longer, but blackbirds have been scrabbling at the soil and leaving the top of the crop exposed to the air, so it seemed a good moment to have them up. The crop is not bad, and it is totally clean and slug free which is a real bonus, probably down to our very dry weather this summer.

The day of rest seems to have done my legs good and as I write this, they are complaining a lot less than they had been in the morning. A serious set of back exercises tonight should get them in a good mood again tomorrow. We are in for a few much warmer days with light winds, so I hope to be able to take advantage of this with a couple of cycle rides (if the forecast is correct).

The flying bird of the day is a greenfinch.