A productive visit

Today’s guest picture comes from my brother Andrew. He enjoyed some perfect weather on a group walk beside the River Dove today.

We enjoyed a sunny day here too. This was a good thing, as it was the day of the Langholm Agricultural Show on the Castleholm, an event all too often plagued by equinoctial gales and rain.

Mrs Tootlepedal was up and about early, taking her marrow to the show.

I was up and about a little bit later as I went to the corner shop to buy food for lunch for visitors to the house.

We had time before they came to have a walk round the garden in the sunshine.

(The nerines were in the sunshine too, but the camera couldn’t cope with the brightness so I had to stand in front of them.)

This red admiral butterfly tucking into a dahlia caught my eye,

When I tell you that our visitors had taken this picture before they left home . . .

. . . regular readers will know at once that our son Tony and his partner Marianne had left East Wemyss to come and visit Langholm.

They arrived safely and in perfect time for a cup of coffee and an oatmeal and raisin biscuit.

Then they got a walk round the garden too.

There was a good turnout of butterflies by now and we spotted walnuts and a queue of bees too.

Above our heads, a starling and a collared dove looked around.

Mrs Tootlepedal made some lentil soup for lunch, and it went down well with a selection of cheese, ham, tomato and bacon butties.

I had put out some lunch for the birds too.

Tony and Marianne’s plan while they were here was to go to visit an old friend in the afternoon, but sadly he was overcome by illness, and they stayed with us instead.

This was their misfortune but a great treat for us. First, Tony checked that our wireless linked smoke alarms were working correctly (which they were), and then inspired by his enthusiasm, we all went out and created a new log store. This was a scheme that Mrs Tootlepedal had been mulling over for some weeks but with four people on the job, the task of clearing the old and ramshackle log store and creating the new one went far more smoothly and quickly than expected.

Marianne took a picture of some of the work in progress (you can see a glimpse of the old log store in the background) . . .

. . . and the new store was soon constructed from scrap wood and put in position . . .

. . . and all our rather eclectic collection of logs was added to it.

Cuttings too small to store are going to continue to live in a big bag.

With the work completed and everything tidied up, we went in for a well earned cup of tea. The birds were busy coming and going for their afternoon snacks.

It was a lovely afternoon, so when we had been refreshed by our tea, we decided to go for a short walk to the park and back. Just as we were leaving, Tony got a business call which gave me time to look round the garden.

A bee was visiting the astrantia.

We enjoyed the view down the Wauchope Water from the park bridge . . .

. . . walked down to the banks of the River Esk . . .

. . . walked round the far end of the park, looking back at the church . . .

. . . noted multi coloured laurel berries and some fungus on a tree stump . . .

. . . and pottered home again, quite content with a little walk on a lovely evening.

I cycled up to our local fish and chip shop and acquired four fish suppers for our evening meal, a rare treat for us.

Before the light faded, Tony and Marianne left to head back to the sunshine capital of Scotland. It had been very good to see them for the first time since we visited them there in May.

Those of you who have noticed the header picture in today’s post will have realised that when she went to collect her marrow from the show, Mrs Tootlepedal found that she had won second prize. As the marrow had largely grown without any special help from her, she was very pleased.

The flying bird of the day is a sparrow.