Going completely nuts

Today’s guest picture comes from my sister Susan, She met a new friend, Gertrude, on one of her recent outings.

We were promised a windy day here today, and we got one. Luckily it was also mainly dry and not too cold so it wasn’t a bad day on the whole.

It didn’t encourage going out very much though, so it wasn’t until after coffee that I poked my nose into the very fresh air when I walked round to the corner shop for supplies.

I walked along the river in the hope of seeing interesting birds but only came up with the regular gull.

There was a glimpse of sunshine as I looked under the trees and across the river . . .

. . . but it had gone by the time that I got home and looked round the garden. The dahlias continue to stand up to wind and rain pretty well . . .

. . . but there were few insects about to enjoy them today.

I shot some more random garden pictures . . .

. . . and while I was doing this, I noticed a couple of walnuts on the lawn which had been blown off the walnut tree. Further searching turned up another twenty on the ground and I took them in to Mrs Tootlepedal who likes nuts.

We went out into the garden a bit later on and picked up another thirty walnuts. Many of the ones that Mrs Tootlepedal opened had good well developed kernels.

Our new air fryer has many more functions than just frying, and Mrs Tootlepedal was using it today to slow cook mince for our evening meal. This meant that I had to use an old fashioned frying pan to cook the bacon for my lunchtime bacon sandwich. What a come down.

It was far too windy for comfortable or even safe cycling, so I put on my walking boots, buttoned up my coat, ignored the rain which started as soon as I put my boots on, and went out for a walk. The weather gods seeing that I wasn’t deterred by their little joke soon turned the rain off again, and I had a dry outing. Because of the wind, I chose a well sheltered but dull route up the Wauchope road for three and a half miles and then back down it again.

The walk started well with some healthy looking peltigera lichen on a wall just as I left the town.

Because I didn’t have to take care about where I was putting my feet, I had plenty of time to look about as I went. I soon realised that there were quite a lot of hazelnuts around, and by the time that I had finished my walk, I had picked (or picked up) fifty or so nuts from the hazels at the side of the road.

There was also rather battered fungus to see . .

. . . and at the price of a short scramble down a banking, I visited the little waterfall at Bessie Bell’s.

Just round the corner, the river looked a lot calmer.

There are few flowers in the verges now but I saw a couple (complete with insects), along with some golden bracken just going over, and some colourful alder catkins.

I took a little diversion through a small riverside wood . . .

. . . where I was hoping to see many fine fungi flourishing. But I was disappointed, and apart from a puffball or two, I saw more in the field when I had left the wood.

They were sitting close to ground so it was hard to take an interesting picture of them in the long grass. This was my best effort. (I don’t really do crouching any more.)

When I got near to Wauchope Schoolhouse, I made another little diversion to see the cascade there. I found that a tree had fallen across the river, blocking my view . . .

. . . so I had to clamber under some intervening trees to get a better picture from below the waterfall.

When I got to the schoolhouse, I turned to walk a little way up the Cleuchfoot road, just far enough to visit the Glencorf Burn . . .

I was tempted for a moment to take the route across the rough ground back to Langholm, but only for a moment. I found some pretty yellow fungi . . .

. . . and then turned and plodded back home by the way that I had come.

Since I had taken a lot of pictures on my way out, I kept my camera in my pocket on the way back, with only this golden bank of bracken making me take it out again.

When I got home, I added the hazelnuts to the walnuts. Over 100 nuts in a day was a good haul we thought.

In quite a satisfactory way, it started to rain very heavily not long after I got home. I enjoyed looking out at the rain as I ate a slice of toast and blackcurrant jam.

In the evening, Mrs Tootlepedal attended a Woodland Trust Zoom seminar on the care of old trees, while I went off to a practice for the Langholm Operatic and Dramatic Society’s centenary concert next spring.

When I got back in, we watched the accompanist for our Carlisle Choir, Dida Condria, taking part in the BBC Young Musician of the Year contest. She is terrific. We are supremely lucky to have her as our accompanist. (If you want to see her play, it is on the BBC I-player and she is the last to play.)

In all the excitement of gathering nuts in October, I completely forgot about flying birds and only took one bird picture all day. The flying bird of the day has landed!