A noisy but quiet day

Today’s guest picture comes from my brother and sisters’ recent trip to East Anglia. My sister Mary took this charming study of the beach at Aldeburgh where the well known composer Benjamin Britten lived for many years. (In the town, not on the beach.)

The forecast was quite correct, and we had a very windy day here today. Sometimes it was windy enough to make me worry about damage, and a neighbour did come round to tell me that a small branch on the walnut tree has split. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem at risk of falling.

It was dry and grey in the morning when I had a walk round the garden after breakfast. One elegant lady, Lilian Austin . . .

. . . has been joined by another, Crown Princess Margareta.

As the Queen of Denmark is also in flower, we are well supplied with beautiful ladies at the moment.

The inevitable blackbird kept an eye on me.

Loitering in the garden was rather unattractive in the noisy wind, so I cycled round to the corner shop to get supplies. I got back safely but it was so windy that when I subsequently went up to the butcher in the High Street, I walked rather than cycled. This gave me the chance to observe Mr Grumpy from the suspension bridge. He was doing gentle stretching exercises suitable for the elderly in a sheltered spot.

He looked quite relaxed when he had finished.

When I got back, I found a small flock of sparrows pecking away on the lawn.

Unlike the jackdaws, they don’t so any damage, so they are welcome.

I went in and looked out at the birds. Apart from a sparrow on the drive . . .

. . . there weren’t many about, so I enjoyed looking at the rose and philadelphus at the far end of the garden instead.

After lunch, I looked at the feeder again, and found that there had been enough siskins during the morning to eat a lot of the seeds. The top left panel picture was taken earlier at half past ten. By one thirty, more than half the seed had gone.

I refilled the feeder and then got my push mower out and mowed the front and middle lawns. Mrs Tootlepedal usually does the lawn edging but as she wasn’t here, I edged the lawns myself. The damage that the jackdaws did to the front lawn has not disappeared, but the lawn is looking a bit better each time that I mow it.

As I am not going to use any lawn feed this year, it will never look very good unless we get some much warmer weather interspersed with refreshing rain showers, and the grass really starts to grow of its own accord.

As I was in a mowing mood, I put the push mower away and got out the hover mower to mow the greenhouse grass and the vegetable garden. I was distracted by a pink peony before I started.

The vegetable garden is looking quite busy, with the potatoes in particular looking very healthy.

I did think of going for a walk, but the wind was so blustery and the day so grey, that I went inside.

We have five regular pigeons which come and scavenge for seed under the feeder. Before I settled down inside, I took my bird camera out for a few minutes to see if I could catch any of them flying up into the walnut tree.

Then I went back in to take more standard bird shots. They had to be quite on their toes in the wind to land safely on the willow twigs and the feeder.

In the end, I had a quiet afternoon watching various sporting events on the telly while the wind roared and moaned outside. When I looked out again, it was raining quite hard, so I gave up all thoughts of an outing and settled down for a bit of genuine relaxation doing nothing. However, as doing nothing is quite boring, I did manage to rouse myself enough to change the saddle on my road bike, and fit a wing mirror to my new electric bike. I have used an old saddle from a broken bike and it will be interesting to find out of it is comfortable on a bike with a slightly different riding position.

As an attempt at a summer’s day, today was really a complete failure, though to add insult to injury, a little sunshine came out for a moment when I was cooking my evening meal. Happily, the wind had dropped a lot by the time that I came to wrote this post, and I hope to be able to be a bit more adventurous tomorrow. Perhaps I might be able to test either my saddle or my wing mirror at some time during the day.

The flying bird of the day is a sparrow trying to ignore an unfriendly siskin.