Today’s guest picture comes from the son of my friend Sue and shows the very impressive container (used only once on the trip from Hong Kong) which Sue has had craned into her garden. She will transmogrify it into a garden room and office.
We have been blessed with an unexpected rise in temperatures and we were back into double figures by breakfast today. Sadly, it didn’t come supplied with additional sunshine so a great deal of fine autumn colour went unrecorded (to sighs of relief from happy readers).
Mrs Tootlepedal went off to Edinburgh for her weekly visit to Matilda and I did a little tidying up and a crossword until Sandy arrived for coffee. He tells me that he too has bought a coffee grinder. Soon you won’t be able to hear yourself think in Langholm because of the roar of coffee grinders all over the town.
After coffee, I had a walk round the garden….
…and put out some pellets on the lawn feeder. The starlings were there in force almost immediately and I put the following picture in, despite its poor quality, just to show that the pink pellets are still the pellet of choice among discerning avians.
Other starlings looked on with amazement at the goings on below.
Then I got the bike out and went off for a pedal. I was intending to do exactly the same double trip as yesterday and go twice to the top of Callister but when I got back to the town, the prospect of a fourth trip up the hill in two days seemed uninviting so I continued through the town and out in the opposite direction.
Not being in any hurry, I stopped for a photo or two.
The new direction meant that I finished my twenty mile outing with a relaxed spin down hill and down wind back into the town.
Although I didn’t realise it while I was pedalling, this ride took me to exactly 400 miles for the month and as the weather ahead looks a bit variable to say the least, it was comforting to reach this target with a few days in hand.
After lunch I had another wander round the garden and took some shots of foliage colour now that many of the flowers are over.
Some flowers have not gone yet though.
I sawed another couple of logs from the apple tree and sieved some compost as well. Mrs Tootlepedal’s garden tidying work has filled Bin A to the brim so there will need to be shifting and turning in the near future.
She has made a very neat job of packaging the kindling cut for the apple tree twigs.
Later in the day, Sandy arrived back from a trip to Carlisle and we went for a walk. The light was fading fast but I took a camera anyway. We kept an eye out for fungus but there was surprisingly little to be seen.
The autumn colour may not be with us for much longer as we were trampling through fallen leaves for much of our walk…
…though as you can see, there are still a lot of leaves left to fall.
We met a handsome dog on our way round Gaskell’s Walk…
…and saw any amount of colourful leaves as we went along.
The whole day had been very mild and it was pleasant to be able to walk without a coat so late in the day and so late in October. My final shot was of a very calm Pool Corner just before we got home.
In the evening, Susan kindly drove me to Carlisle for our regular recorder group meeting and we had an enjoyable time playing quartets as our fifth member is currently in Spain.
It wasn’t a great day for catching flying birds.