Saved by a scone (or two)

Today’s guest picture comes from my brother Andrew. He has been visiting the Welsh borders and dropped into Attingham Hall in Shropshire on his way home.

We had a day of very dreary, drizzly, wet weather here. It would have been a total write off as far as interest went if Dropscone had not saved the day. He has been a bit distracted lately by his recovery from his shoulder injury, and his recent scones by his own admission have not been up to his usual high standard. However, in a sign of his general improvement, he nailed the recipe today and brought round scones of the highest standard. They brightened the morning up considerably.

After he left, I set about turning the blackcurrant juice, which had been dripping from the jelly bag overnight, into four jars of jelly. You don’t get the same quantity that you would get if you made straight jam, but you don’t get pips in your teeth either, so it is a good policy.

I filled the bird feeder when Dropscone left, and the seed level went down at a great rate so I had to fill it again in the afternoon. There was enough fallen seed to get the attention of pigeons . . .

. . .and visiting starlings were responsible for some of the fallen seed as they find eating from the feeder perches is quite tricky.

Mrs Tootlepedal had been out for coffee with her ex work colleagues, and it was too wet for her to work in the garden when she got back, so we settled for a leisurely lunch.

After lunch, she went off to the Gretna Green shopping village in the hope of finding some comfortable shoes and stocking up our dried fruit and nut store. While she was gone, I watched the birds, practised some singing, and put most of a week of the newspaper index into the archive group database.

On the bird feeder, starlings were back, but they didn’t discourage visits from sparrows and goldfinches as well

A chaffinch enthusiastically added to the pile of fallen seed below the feeder . . .

. . . and then, when he saw me looking, tried to pretend that it hadn’t been him

We didn’t have a great variety of visitors today, but we were visited by a single siskin.

As you can see from the quality of the photographs, the light remained very poor all day. It did look once or twice as though the drizzle might stop so that I could go for a walk, but it never got dry enough for long enough to tempt me further than the garden. I had a very quick garden tour in some light drizzle, and did a bit of one handed weeding on the drive under an umbrella just for the sake of doing something.

Once again, wet flowers were the order of the day. I have put a few in to add a hint of colour to a dull post.

I like the clogs on the verbascum.

Mrs Tootlepedal’s visit to Gretna was about as dull as the day. No comfortable shoes could be found and the emporium selling nuts and dried fruit had shut up shop altogether.

Luckily, we had a Zoom with my brother and sister to cheer us up. My sister Mary provided an art quiz, after a visit to a London gallery. I did not score highly, or indeed, at all.

At least we had new potatoes with our evening meal.

We are hoping for better weather and a more exciting day tomorrow.

The flying bird of the day is a sparrow, one of about fifty that are eating us out of house and home.

Footnote: on the bicycle front, the bike shop tells me that the sprockets for the road bike have arrived at last, but they can’t source a spoke for my electric bike. It is very frustrating.