Today’s guest picture comes from my brother Andrew. He met this very low bridge on a recent outing.
We had a night of fierce winds and rain, followed by a day of fierce winds until the evening when they died down a bit. As the wind in the day was accompanied by a lot more miserable rain as well, I wrote the day off as one that was incurably on the debit side of the great ledger of life.
A few birds braved the elements to come to the feeder . . .
. . . but it never got busier than this.
Like the birds, Margaret braved the wind and the rain to come and have coffee with us. We had nothing in the way of news to exchange, so our conversation was sociable but not exciting.
I had not been happy with my second go at making oat and raisin biscuits, because, as Mrs Tootlepedal sagely pointed out, the results were more like flapjacks than biscuits. They were tasty enough but lacked crunch. I had a third go today, and learning from experience, produced a more crunchy biscuit. All this experimenting with making biscuits means that I now have to breathe in deeply when I am putting on my trousers. I am praying for some settled weather so that I can get some serious cycling in to burn up a few of the surplus calories.
I wisely avoided watching Scotland lose at rugby by putting a couple of weeks of the newspaper index into the Archive Group database instead. Then I went out into the garden. It had stopped raining. I considered a short walk. There was even a hint of blue sky for a moment . . .
. . . but it was only a moment. It was too gloomy to make taking pictures any fun, so I cut my losses and went in to watch the France – Ireland game. It was most enjoyable.
It looks as though it is going to rain for most of tomorrow too, but the winds should be a lot lighter which will be a relief.
Since there were no flying birds of the day today, I took a picture of the snowdrops along the back path so that I could end this post on a fairly cheerful note.
Footnote: Although it has rained quite a lot recently, it hasn’t rained very hard for very long and I only have an inch and a half in my scientific rain gauge after several days. This is doubly bad as it means that we are getting bad weather but not getting our reservoirs filled up for next summer, the worst of both worlds.
Tootlepedal's Blog 
Sorry about your awful weather not even filling up the reservoirs. The snowdrops were very cheery though and the third batch of biscuits while bad for the waistline must be good for the amour propre.
A rainy day is good every now and then, even if all you do is sit and think.
The snowdrops are bright and cheery, even if the weather wasn’t.
I hope you do get enough rain to fill the reservoirs. Drought isn’t a good thing.
I did a good deal more sitting than thinking.
The snowdrops are lovely in any weather. Sorry that the rain hasn’t replenished the reservoirs. Hope that changes soon.
If it is going to rain, at least useful rain would be helpful.
I share your concern about the reservoirs not filling up during what should e the rainy season … winter is already in the offing and the level of our dams remain awfully low. Despite the weather being unpleasant, you appear to have put the day to good use.
I used it very lightly. There was a lot of sitting around moaning about the weather.
One hopes for water to fill the reservoirs. In the Rocky Mountains where I live, the reservoirs are currently at 50% of capacity.
But a day with a good batch of biscuits, or what I would call cookies, seems like a pretty good day.
Have you got a good snow melt to come?
Glad the biscuits turned out well even if the weather didn’t.
Ha ha ha…. experimenting that leads to extra kilograms…. and to much wind for cycling 🙂
Just returned from the backery shop with my bike. Also windy and cold weather but it was dry.
The snowdrops are doing great in your garden !
Same here…. we had lots of rain but the ponds in the park are still completely dried out.
Can it be that the rain is just not as wet as it used to be? It is a mystery.
You missed what I thought was a good game – a result to keep the tournament alive, too
I get depressed by the lack of execution as they call it these days, and the fairly arbitrary decisions of the refs (which are often correct but inconsistent from game to game and sometimes within a game) make it uneasy watching so I prefer to follow the game by text if I have anything invested in one side winning.
Snow drops are always cheerful. We seem to be back in a dry and warmer spell here now. Today will be quite warm and sunny.
We are not cold but we are persistently wet and often windy at the moment.
That is our forecast for tomorrow.
Snowdrops are apparently ‘flowers of hope’ so hopefully the weather will improve during the week for you.
The snowdrops are not getting the message! The forecast is still unsettled.
Batten down the hatchets again for all of us!
I have to say I enjoyed the rugby, not just because Wales won the game, more, it was a close run thing. Two teams battling it out. I was working nights so was able to use wonderful TV technology to record the following game. I watched the magnificent France v Ireland encounter straight after my shift, on my own in the conservatory. It was well worth delaying my bedtime for a couple of hours. The rains arrived here on Saturday, and failed to stop all day yesterday, the river through the village rose quickly, but as you say probably had little impact on the damns upstream around Brecon. Mind you, the forecast is for rain all week, with storms on Wednesday. Guess what? I’m off all week….doah! But giving up isn’t an option lol. Cheers.
I did read that there might be floods. I hope that that isn’t your area. We are in for more wind than rain by the looks of things. I did enjoy the Ireland France game as both sides looked to be trying to play rugby given half a chance.
I too keep making oatmeal-raisin biscuits, which we call cookies, following the same recipe as I have modified it and they come out different every time. I’m trying not to eat too many of them, but they still disappear and my birds don’t eat them, so I just have to keep exercising. February is behaving much like March which my mother always used to call “the adolescent month.”
It has not been well behaved at all here and is going to get worse. The oatmeal cookies are very moreish as we would say.
I love the snowdrops. I don’t have much success with them in my garden, although they do well in the public planters in Long Beach! (Washington) …to my surprise.
They do very well here as you can see.