Rain later

Today’s guest picture is another from Hilary in Charlottesville, Virginia. It shows the ceiling of the rotunda at Virginia University, where she has worked for 22 years.

Hilary is the niece of Dropscone, and the great man himself came round for coffee today. He had been up in Glasgow yesterday for an introductory examination before a cataract operation. This was of great interest to me, as I am going for a similar examination in Dumfries shortly.

Before he arrived, I had walked through to the health centre for some routine maintenance, and had had time to walk round the garden prior to making coffee. I particularity enjoyed a Sweet William pretending to be a yellow rose.

There was plenty of activity on the feeder.

Dropscone’s examination had gone well, and he is now waiting for the call to go for his operation. He had been able to cycle round for the first time for some weeks, and I gave one of his tyres a good pump up before he left.

I was in the garden after he had gone when I saw a family group of starlings playing hopscotch on an overhead wire. As the adult moved away from three demanding youngsters, the young birds literally hopped over each other in an effort to get closest to the adult. I was very amused, and thought that it deserved a little gallery.

The adult finally got fed up and flew off, followed in due course by the children.

I mowed the front lawn and had another look round. I am going to follow the development of this Crown Princess Margareta rose and the pinkish peony, and I managed to take a reasonable picture of the tiny Sweet Woodruff.

I didn’t spend long in the garden though, as I wanted to get a short cycle ride in before the arrival of a long period of forecast rain. As always, it wasn’t entirely clear when the rain would start, so I took my e-bike out, and went round my 20 mile Canonbie run as fast as I could (in this case 15.5 mph). I didn’t hang about taking pictures, apart from this one at the Hollows . . .

. . . as there were some dark clouds about . . .

. . . but I did want to show the rich display of water dropwort beside the road above Todhillwood.

The twenty miles took my yearly total so far to 2000 miles, about half each on the e-bike and the road bike.

I got home in time for a late lunch, and as it hadn’t started to rain by the time that lunch was finished, we went out into the garden where Mrs Tootlepedal did some useful work with a little help from me.

It will not surprise regular readers that I found a moment or two to stop being helpful and take pictures, including the first flower on our potatoes, always an exciting sight.

The red Sweet Williams are popular with bees at the moment, but the pink peony had a different clientele.

We are in a moment of pause as far as new blooms are concerned, but there is plenty of colour around.

When it started to rain lightly, Mrs Tootlepedal stayed out for a while, but I went in and did some useful Archive Group work on the computer, and looked out at the birds from time to time. I had had to refill the feeder as business was brisk.

I scattered some crushed fat balls on the lawn but a gang of ungrateful jackdaws arrived and scoffed the lot before I could get a picture. Most unsporting.

The archive work, bird watching, and a cup of tea with slice of toast and jam filled up the rest of the afternoon. As it was raining persistently, this was a good use of time.

There were so many flying goldfinches buzzing round the feeder this afternoon that I couldn’t pick just one out to be the flying bird of the day. The honour is shared among them.

Footnote: in spite of the cheery flowers, it has remained pretty cool for the time of year, and we put the heating on again in the evening, as the house had got quite chilly.