Flat

Today’s guest picture comes from our son Alistair in Edinburgh. It was snowing there this morning but it didn’t fill him with the spirit of winter wonderland. He had a car journey to make.

It was grey and frosty again here but it didn’t snow. We had a leisurely morning and around about coffee time, a gloomy mist covered our garden and we feared we might be in for a bout of freezing fog. However the mist cleared and the temperature crept up towards zero as the day went on. (It got as high as -1°C (30°F) by 2.30.)

When I checked on the bird feeder I was happy to see a busy blue tit.

After it had gone off to nibble at its seed in the plum tree, we had a steady but gentle stream of sparrows, chaffinches, and goldfinches.

Our neighbour Irving has his has his holly tree trimmed, and I was happy to see that neither the trimming of the walnut nor the holly tree had discouraged small birds from perching on them.

Talking of the walnut tree, some readers have asked for before and after pictures of the walnut so I have put four pictures of the tree over the years into a gallery.

The tree yesterday

The tree in February this year

The tree in 2013 before a trim

And after. It was thinned rather than pruned.

These are not very good but they are the only pictures that I could find. There must be more but I have obviously not catalogued them well.

We have to drive to Carlisle tomorrow so we defrosted the car and gave it a test run down to the Co-op for a bit of shopping. The battery gauge went down most alarmingly in the sub zero temperatures. We should have enough zing to get to Carlisle and back though.

After lunch I decided to go for a walk. Unfortunately I discovered that I’ve worn out the heel of one of my walking boots . . .

. . . so I had to choose a sensibly flat route today that I could safely do in a pair of walking shoes.

I went up past the Duchess Bridge . . .

. . . and took the very well repaired path through the woods to join the Potholm road. The river was rather icy when I looked down at it . . .

. . . and thick layers of frost covered the fence rails beside the path.

When I got out into the open on the road and looked around, you might well have thought that it had been snowing . . .

. . . but it was just frost and there was even a hint of blue sky in front of me behind a picturesque tree

There was a marked contrast between looking back . . .

. . . and looking ahead . . .

. . . and as I preferred the view in front of me, I walked on.

Unfortunately, even though I walked quite briskly, by the time that I had walked down to the Potholm Bridge, crossed the river, and climbed up the hill on the far side to take the track back to Langholm . . .

. . . the sun was only shining on the tops of hills . . .

. . . and I walked through the shadows for the rest of my outing.

It was another calm day though, and as I had a good coat on, I wasn’t cold and walking was a pleasure.

As far as taking photographs went, you might think that this shot was taken in black and white . . .

. . . but it is in full colour. The curious structure in the foreground is ice covered netting over pheasant pens.

This one is on full colour too.

As I got to the low road back to the Lodge, I fell in with my neighbour Irving, who was out taking a constitutional himself. We walked along together for a while, but finding our comfortable walking paces didn’t match, we split up at the Lodge and went along at our own speeds.

As has been the pattern in my recent walks, the sun had gone down before I got back to Langholm . . .

. . . but this brought out the Christmas lights on the town bridge . . .

. . . and produced a curious pink patch on the still water along the side of the river between the bridges. The water was not reflecting the sun itself. It was reflecting a reflection of the sun from a passing low cloud.

Mrs Tootlepedal was watching the Morocco vs Portugal game on the telly when I got in, and after I had had a cup of tea and a slice of toast, I joined in. It was quite an enjoyable game to watch and as we were hoping that Morocco would win, the result was very satisfactory.

After the game, I had another go at making gingerbread in the air fryer, and I now think that I have done it often enough to make sure I will get a reasonable result if I try it again. The result is not quite as sticky as I would like, but that may be a function of the way the air fryer works. It tastes good and that is the main thing.

I watched a bit of the England vs France game in the evening. I had really hoped that England would win but their midfield never found the time and space to be really convincing in the bits of the game that I watched. Mrs Tootlepedal tells me that they played better in the second half.

The flying bird of the day is that blue tit.