An indeterminate day

Today’s guest picture comes from our son, Alistair. Our granddaughter Matilda made this Easter brownie today.

It was below freezing when we got up, and the day stayed grey and chilly. In spite of the coming of storm Dave being heavily advertised in the forecast, it was very calm as I walked along to the producers’ market in the Buccleuch Centre after breakfast, and it was still calm when we got out into the garden after coffee to get something done while we could.

It was raining, but so faintly that we had to look up from time to time just to check. I cut back a couple of fuchsias and wandered round taking pictures. I looked at one of the stones that surround the pond.

It was covered with life and I could recognise common moss and tiny lichens, but the other pale green plants were a mystery to me. Some research with Mrs Tootlepedal in the evening when I got the picture onto my computer told us that they might be Rhizomnium punctatum, a sort of moss, but we are not completely sure.

The fritillaries were huddled together for warmth . . .

. . . but both the plum and the silver pear are in blossom mode.

The daffodils have survived cold and wet, so we hope that they can cope with wind too.

A pigeon couldn’t make up its mind what to do and sat on the fence.

I did some shredding and then got discouraged by the light rain, so I went in, leaving Mrs Tootlepedal planting out hostas. She came in eventually as the rain got wetter, and we had lunch.

Mrs Tootlepedal is practising flower painting, and she had bought in a scilla flower to look at. Scillas hang their heads down in the garden, but this one perked up in a most unusual way once it was put in a vase, and it looked me straight in the eye.

The rain fizzled out as the afternoon went on, so I picked up my umbrella and went off for another short walk. In recent days, I have crossed three bridges on one outing, and then four bridges on another, so by way of variety, I crossed all seven in one go today. I couldn’t do it by going over each bridge only once, so I had to cross the Sawmill Brig twice. I made a record of the bridges as I went along. I really do live an interesting life.

I conclude with the two very insignificant bridges over our dam at the start and finish of my walk . . .

. . . to bring the grand total of bridge crossings on a walk of less than three miles up to ten.

It wasn’t a day for views, but I did look about from time to time as I went along, and I spotted script lichen, golden saxigfrage, a game of football, and a camellia hiding behind a fence.

When I was coming back along the road beside the Kilngreen, I got a pleasant surprise. Mrs Tootlepedal and I were among a group of volunteers who planted out some daffodil bulbs earlier this year, not in very good ground and much too late in the season for them to have a good chance of coming up. However, they have defied our expectations, and lots of them have emerged, and one is even in flower.

Coming back through the park, I photographed a decoratively drooping conifer.

I needed some research on this too. I think that it might be an Eastern Hemlock.

The wind was starting to blow a bit more strongly by the time that I got home, and while I am writing this post in the evening, it is fairly whistling round the house. It is due to get stronger still overnight, and one forecaster says that it will be a moderate gale, which seems to me to be a contradiction in terms. However, if all goes to schedule, it should have calmed down again by the morning. We will keep our fingers crossed.

The flying bird of the day is that pigeon sitting on the fence. It finally made up its mind and shot off before I could get a good picture of it.

Waiting for Dave

Today’s guest picture comes from my sister Caroline. Her day was greatly brightened by this lovely flowering currant.

We had hoped that we were going to avoid the worst of storm Dave, but the forecast is now offering us 65mph gusts for several hours over the Easter weekend. Under the circumstances, it would have been good if we could have got out into the garden today, but it rained persistently until the late afternoon. We spent the morning organising our menu of meals for the next fortnight, and then going shopping to get the provisions that were needed. After lunch, I spent several hours waiting for the rain to stop, hoping that I might be able to sneak a bicycle ride in before our regular zoom with my family.

Just to annoy me, the rain kept stopping and then starting a few minutes later. In one of the gaps, I went out into the garden and saw that we had visitors.

I had many opportunities for photographing raindrops, though not on roses. The top two pictures in the panel below are large fritillaries. Mrs Tootlepedal planted six round the chimney pot outside the kitchen window, and one came up ages ago. She thought that the others were probably not going to appear, but finally another one came up today.

I could hear a bumblebee flying around and eventually tracked it down.

A spring milestone was reached today when I was able to take my first plum blossom picture of the year.

At 4pm the wind suddenly wiped the sky almost completely clear of clouds. I picked up a precautionary umbrella and went out for a walk. I chose a five bridges route today, crossing four of the bridges which I had passed but not crossed on my last three bridges walk. You can see that I lead a very interesting life.

The rivers had risen a bit after the rain, and waterside birds were few and far between.

I did spot a wagtail perched on the back of a seat on the Kilngreen

It had turned into a lovely day by this time . . .

. . . and although there were some threatening clouds for a moment . . .

. . . they blew away too, and the sun was soon out again.

I had time to look about as I went along.

It was quite muddy underfoot in places, and I had to watch my step as I came down the track beside the pheasant hatchery.

I walked down the back straight of the racecourse when I got to it. All the rails have been laid out ready for erection now. I think that there is a race meeting at the end of this month.

I said that it was a five bridges walk, but to be strictly accurate, a sixth bridge was involved too. I cross this little bridge over the dam behind our house so often that I sometimes forget that it is there.

The weather has stayed clear, and I was hoping to get another picture of the moon tonight, but sadly it is not going to rise above our hills until well after I have published this post. There were hundreds of jackdaws in the sky when I had a look earlier after sunset. They were making an impressive amount of noise.

The flying bird of the day is a single jackdaw, seen on my visit to the garden in the afternoon.

A pedal and a tootle

Today’s guest picture comes from my brother Andrew in Derby. It is a sign of the times.

Having complained in my post yesterday that I couldn’t see the moon because the sky had clouded over, I had a look just after I had published the post, and as I watched, the clouds cleared away.

I also watched the rocket launch which is sending visitors to float round the moon.

The side effect of the clear night, was a frosty morning, and although we woke up to a beautifully sunny day, I had to wait until almost lunchtime until it was warm enough to go for a pedal. Even then it was still pretty chilly (6°C) and I was wearing many layers.

I had a look round the garden before leaving, and spotted a stout sparrow and a vocal blue tit.

It looks as though some tadpoles in the pond may have survived the recent chilly weather. I will try to get some wriggling pictures.

I headed off up the Wauchope road, and was grateful for the sunshine as I found myself heading into another chilly breeze. It was not by any means a brisk breeze, but it was quite enough for me, and I was going so slowly down the hill on the far side of Callister, then I stopped to take a picture of the bridge at Falford. The great pile of shells on the far side of the bridge is still there.

I turned left when I had crossed the bridge and went through Waterbeck before taking the back road to Middlebie. I added the churches in Waterbeck and Middlebie to my recent church collection.

More flowers are appearing every day and I added a primrose and some budding rhododendrons to the celandines and daisies which are growing in profusion now.

Although it was sunny, the light was rather flat, and when I looked up as I left Waterbeck, the sky was steadily clouding over with contrails.

From Middlebie, I swooped down the hill to the Mein Water and stopped to enjoy a view of the railway viaduct over the river.

I always pause a moment when I get to this viaduct in the hope of seeing a train crossing it. Usually I don’t see one, but today the familiar saying came true: “You wait for ages to see a train, and then two come at the same time.”

They actually passed each other on the viaduct, and I was so flustered by having trains going in opposite directions that I didn’t take a very good set of pictures of them actually going over the viaduct. The two images in the bottom of the panel below, show the backs of the trains going south and north respectively.

These trains run in either direction, and the front and back of them are identical.

I enjoyed some very neat field rolling . . .

. . . just before joining the old Glasgow road down to Kirkpatrick Fleming.

There is a bench beside the road in the middle of Kirkpatrick Fleming Village which offers extensive views across the Solway to the Lake District hills on the English side. It had a tub of very good looking daffodils and muscari beside it to day.

At KPF, I turned left to head back to Langholm, and was very happy to be blown along the road by the helpful breeze after making slow progress for the first half of my ride.

I stopped, as I often do, at the graveyard at Half Morton to look at the Korean pines. They look as though they’re going to have a better time this year than they had last year.

I didn’t stop for any more pictures until the need for a short rest brought me to a halt not far from Langholm.

I parked between a very square bridge under the main road and a handsome looking horse chestnut bud.

When I got back after a three hour outing, I found that Mrs Tootlepedal was still at work in the garden, as she had been when I left.

She told me that she had spent a good bit of the time uprooting the privet tree stump which has the fungus on it. I took a final picture of the fungus, which we will not see again, and added a promising yellow tulip . . .

. . . before going in for a cup of tea and a slice of lemon drizzle cake. We had already had a slice of lemon drizzle with our morning coffee, but we both felt that we had done enough since then to earn the second slice of cake of the day.

After an evening meal provided by Mrs Tootlepedal, I collected my recorders and a good pile of music, and went off to play trios with my friends Sue and Jenny at Sue’s house near Brampton. Our fourth member, Susan was unavailable as she is currently on holiday.

We had an excellent session, playing quite a few pieces that we haven’t played for some time, and one that was entirely new to us. Sue gave us a cup of tea and a biscuit to keep our strength up for the journey home. In an echo of Andrew’s picture at the top of this post, Jenny told us that she had almost been unable to join us because it was hard to find a supermarket that was selling petrol in Carlisle. She got to one just before they closed the pumps for the day.

I put our electric car on charge when I got home, trying not to feel too smug.

The flying bird of the day is a Jackdaw with a friend.

Footnote: it was a Tootlepedal day of threes today as my bike trip ended being 33.33 miles and I played trios in the evening.

A cloudy forecast

Today’s guest picture is another from my friend Ada’s visit to the World War Two themed knitted exhibition at Rheged.

We got up to a lovely sunny day here, and freshly out celandine and dandelions winked at me as I walked up Jimmy’s Brae to have coffee with Sandy.

For one reason or another, I haven’t seen Sandy for a month, so it was an extra pleasure to sample his good coffee and ginger biscuits and catch up with his news.

When I got back home, Mrs Tootlepedal was busy in the garden, and it wasn’t long before I joined her. I took advantage of the fact that everything was reasonably dry for once to indulge in an orgy of mowing and lawn care. I mowed the middle lawn with the battery mower, and when the batteries died, I mowed the vegetable garden, the greenhouse grass, and the drying green with the old hover mower on a wire. Then, with Mrs Tootlepedfal’s help as raker and moss gatherer, I scarified the front lawn.

The front lawn will need scarifying again. There was time for a flower photograph or two before going in for lunch. Tulips are coming out.

Other things are growing too, including a white fritillary which Mrs Tootlepdal claims she didn’t plant.

I love that euphorbia in the left corner above. It was clearly designed by a committee.

Rather oddly, the winter honeysuckle has got a new lease of life, and I was very pleased to see that it had attracted a bumblebee today.

The forecast was absolutely adamant (greater than 95% chance) that it would start raining heavily very soon after lunch, so we resigned ourselves to an afternoon in. In the event, although it clouded over and got a bit cooler, no rain arrived and we were left twiddling our thumbs. Finally, we went out and did some more gardening until it started to rain an hour later than the schedule.

My plan had been to go for a bicycle ride when the rain stopped, but when the rain eased off, impatiently I gave that up and went for a short three bridges walk instead. It was still very cloudy . . .

. . . and it was one of those rather annoying days when it wasn’t actually raining proper raindrops, but there was quite a lot of moisture hanging about in the air for me to bump into.

I was spoilt for choice when it came to bridges, and I passed four which I didn’t cross when I came to them . . .

. . . as opposed to the three which I did cross.

My regular oystercatchers like to stand in exactly the same spot beside the river, so they were easy for me to photograph, but what looked at first like a white plastic bag floating past them turned out to be a goosander, whose constant diving under the water made him much more difficult to catch.

I could see another white lump on the gravel at the meeting of the waters when I crossed the Langholm Bridge, and closer inspection when I got to the Kilngreen showed that it too was a goosander, this time having a snooze.

There was a pair of lesser black backed gull there too, out in the middle of the stream.

The internet tells me that the male should be bigger than the female, but these two look much the same size so perhaps they are just good friends.

I walked on round the Castleholm where the racecourse rails were lying out ready to be put up for the first meeting of the new season . . .

. . . and some signs of spring were to be found.

It wasn’t getting any less damp though, so I didn’t spend too much looking around on my way up to cross the Duchess Bridge before heading home. From the bridge I could see a tree which I thought could best be described as impending.

Needless to say, not too long after I got home, the clouds cleared away, and it turned into a lovely evening.

I hoped that this might let me see the full moon when it came up later on, but it had clouded over again when I looked. Such is life.

The flying bird of the day is a mallard, seen on my damp walk this afternoon.

Visitors and verging on spring

Today’s guest picture comes from my brother Andrew. He met two Egyptian geese on his walk today.

A lot of the morning was spent preparing for the arrival of visitors for lunch, but at one point I looked out the window and saw a man wandering round the garden with a clipboard. He turned out to be from the power grid company, and was checking on where all the wires in our garden go. They are preparing to replace the lines along a neighbouring street and this will affect us.

When I looked round, I saw that our starlings were having a discussion about the matter too.

In the absence of exciting new flowers, I took a picture of lichen on our plum tree . . .

. . . though I did notice that the cowslips are produced more of their tiny blossoms.

Our visitors had been skiing on the continent, and had come back to the UK by car ferry from Amsterdam. They were on their way home to the west of Scotland from Newcastle, and called in to visit us on their way. We had a very enjoyable meal, well supplied with good food and good conversation. They were keen to get home after being away for some time, so apart from a short trip round the garden, they didn’t dilly dally after lunch.

This left me with the opportunity to go for a bicycle ride in conditions that were warmer and much calmer than yesterday. I took my push bike round my familiar Canonbie circuit.

The recent rain has filled up the field ponds.

It was another grey day, so I was pleased to find that there are things to look at in the verges now on days that don’t have good views. I saw celandine, dandelions, wood anemones, and butterbur on my trip today.

The butterbur seems to like poor soil that has been dumped, and there is a large patch of it which appears every year on stony ground just beside the Canonbie bridge.

Even using my electric bike, yesterday’s ride over the hill in strong winds had been quite strenuous, and my legs weren’t very enthusiastic at all today. I was more than happy to stop for a rest and a handful of dates on the bridge over the Esk at Hollows.

I did eventually get home, and found that Mrs Tootlepedal had been busy in the garden, transplanting geraniums. The clerk of works had been supervising her too.

A cup of tea and a piece of lemon drizzle cake restored my energy levels, and I went out into the garden to see if I could catch some more starlings flying upside down. I had no luck with that, and took some hopeful flower pictures before going back in.

The erythroniums liked the weather today, and many flower heads all round the garden appeared as if by magic.

A blackbird perched on the greenhouse and reflected on life.

My final picture of the day, taken through a window, showed a jackdaw checking to see if there was more moss to take out of the front lawn. We have plenty to spare.

The only flying starling that I saw today was the right way up.

Footnote: our visitors are in the process of getting solar panels of their own. They are probably going to use the same firm as we used, and they were very impressed by the neatness of the battery system, and by the fact that even on such a dull day, our panels were generating enough electricity to provide free power for our lighting and cooking.

Regional variations

Today’s guest picture comes from my sister Mary. After collecting all the mail today that the Post Office had failed to redirect back to her home address after her exile, she felt the need for some colourful serenity, and visited Kenwood.

After another morning here where the temperature dipped to near freezing in the garden as we got up, we had a day of mixed weather, with clouds, sunshine, and occasional rain rotating through the day, but with the brisk and mean wind being a permanent feature.

There was no rush to get out into the garden, but once we were fortified with coffee, we faced the chilly breeze and got to work. Mrs Tootlepedal wrestled a rambling rose into shape on a fence, while I cleared moss off a back path. I had a clerk of works supervising my job.

The cold weather has put a crimp on growth in the garden, but there are some plants trying their best . . .

. . . and a fritillary had lifted up its head to see what is going on.

This took us up to lunch, and after we had eaten, I considered my options while sparrows had a ritual dance on the lawn, perhaps trying to keep warm.

It was cold and windy, but there were occasional splashes of sunshine. The forecast suggested that most of the showers might pass us by, so in the end, I plucked up my courage and took my e-bike for a ride up onto the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve.

Needless to say, it started to rain lightly as I got ready to go, but I went anyway. By the time that I was halfway up the hill, it looked as though the rain might have disappeared up the Ewes valley.

However, this was a delusion, and by the time that I got to my first goats . . .

. . . the rain was coming back down the Tarras valley.

As I pedalled up the other side of the valley past another goat . . .

. . . the rain caught up with me. It was at my back but as it got heavier, I did consider turning round and running for home. However, on reflection I realised that this would involve cycling straight into the wind and rain, so I headed on up the hill. Conditions got a little better as I passed the Black Grain . . .

. . . and by the time I got to the boundary between Dumfries and Galloway and the Borders region, it had stopped raining.

Looking behind me, where the weather was coming from, things look quite promising . . .

. . . and although it looked very gloomy on my road ahead . . .

. . . I hoped that if I didn’t cycle too fast in the strong wind, the bad weather would outrun me. This proved to be good thinking, and I had a spell of glorious sunshine as I came down the hill . . .

. . . and into the village of Newcastleton.

I used to go with Sandy to a camera club held in this Village Hall. It looked very cheerful today, and searching on the internet, I found that the church building which fronts the village hall to-day was built by the Free Church of Scotland in 1853. It has been run as village hall by the community since 1956.

This was the highlight of my trip as far as the weather went. It soon clouded over, and I found myself battling with a strong cross and occasionally head wind as I went down the Liddle valley to Canonbie. Ironically, in the same way that it had stopped raining when I had passed from Dumfries and Galloway into the Borders region, now it started raining again as I passed from the Borders region back into Dumfries and Galloway. How I laughed.

I cheered myself up by thinking that the strong wind would blow the shower through quite quickly, and this turned out to be true. I was grateful for any shelter from the wind that I could get in the Esk Valley on my way back up to Langholm from Canonbie. I wasn’t inclined to stop to take any pictures in the wind and the rain, but when the sun came out as I got near to home, I stopped to note that the dog’s mercury has just made an appearance in the hedgerows . . .

. . . and that the old main road gets narrower every year as the verges grow in.

Mrs Tootlepedal had finished gardening and was busy baking when I got home, so I had a walk around the garden while she was busy. It is good to see new buds on the apple, and what flowers there are that are out were enjoying the sunshine.

The winter heather looks ready to last until summer!

We had our regular early evening zoom with my siblings, and they seem to be having much the same weather as we are, with the cold wind calling for hats and gloves when outdoors. We may get a warmer, calmer day tomorrow as a welcome break before we revert to the wet, cold, and windy weather.

Many readers may well have spent anxious hours wondering whether it is possible for starlings to fly upside down. I think that today’s flying birds of the day answer that question definitively.

Clocks forward, weather back

Today’s guest picture comes from my friend Ada. She visited an exhibition at the Rheged Centre in Cumbria. It is a knitted and crocheted display telling the story of life during WW2.

The clocks may have leapt forward overnight in anticipation of spring, but the weather gods had not got the message, and we woke up to a really foul day of very strong winds and heavy rain.

We had to put on our wellies to walk to church, and Mrs Tootlepedal’s small umbrella blew inside out as soon as she left the house. She went back in to get a stouter brolly, and that blew inside out too. Luckily as she went round a corner she caught a gust coming in the opposite direction, and it blew the brolly back into shape. It’s an ill wind as they say.

It was a late church service this week, and it was almost time for lunch by the time that we got home. The rain continued over lunch, but there was a momentary pause in the early afternoon. A pigeon mooched about on the lawn . . .

. . . but disappeared as soon as I went out for a look around.

If we could get a decent day, the tulips are waiting to come out . . .

The erythroniums are not rushing.

The recent run of chilly mornings has not helped the magnolia at all. It is scarred by the experience.

I peered at a lichen on a slab . . .

. . . and went back in as the rained started again.

I spent the rest of the afternoon peering hopefully out of the window from time to time, wondering whether a short walk might be feasible, but if the rain eased off for a moment, it returned in force a minute later. I might have put up with the rain, but the wind continued to whistle round the garden, and it was as cold as it was yesterday. I stayed in.

The skies eventually cleared for a while . . .

. . . but as it was half past seven by this time, even the appearance of a cloudy duck swimming across the sky . . .

. . . couldn’t make up for a wasted day.

I did spot a passing rook when I was out in the afternoon, and it is the flying bird of the day.

Hiding from the wind today

Today’s guest picture comes from my Somerset correspondent, Venetia. She visited Forest Lodge at Wincanton, and found time to sit beside the water and take this picture especially to send to me.

She must have had kinder weather for her visit than we had here today. It was sunny enough in our garden, but it was pretty chilly and a really vigorous and biting wind made the thought of sitting outside impossible. Our neighbour Liz, who had been for a walk, described it as one of those winds that doesn’t bother to go round you, it just goes straight through you.

Mrs Tootlepedal sensibly did her morning gardening in the shelter of the greenhouse.

I did wander about the garden once or twice, but nothing new had arrived to catch my eye, so I went back indoors and caught up on some reading.

After a while, as an alternative to freezing in the garden, we jumped into the car and drove down to the garden centre at Longtown, where Mrs Tootlepedal bought two sorts of compost and some farmyard manure. We called in at the bike shop on our way down where I bought some new dark glasses, and at the Co-op on the way back where we topped up our food supplies. It was a very productive outing.

I spent quite a lot of time after lunch not going bicycling. I did think of going bicycling, but we had already had two very strong and sleety showers of rain in the morning, it hadn’t got any warmer, and the wind hadn’t got any less breezy. Under the circumstances, getting cold and wet on my bike for two days running didn’t seem very attractive, so after dithering about for an hour or so, I went for a well sheltered walk to the bird hide.

It was very sunny when I walked up through the oak woods passing vibrant forsythia at the start and good looking gorse at the finish.

I had worried that I might have left my visit to the bird hide too late to see many birds, but we are past the spring equinox now and the days are getting longer. There were birds at the feeders from the moment that I arrived to the moment that I left twenty minutes later.

Siskins were at the niger seed before I had even sat down . . .

. . . and two great tits, a blue tit and a coal tit were searching for seed at the feeder nearby.

I put a bit more seed in that feeder, and put some peanuts in the disguised feeder in the tree stump as it was empty. This brought an immediate response.

The siskins were joined by goldfinches . . .

. . . while chaffinches waited in a tree beside the hide . . .

. . . to get their turn at the peanuts.

It was a busy place, and after taking a couple more pictures of very active siskins . . .

. . . I put my camera down and just enjoyed being a bird watcher for a while.

The forecast had suggested that there might be showers in the afternoon, but it stayed very sunny, both while I was in the hide, and on my way home.

Having come up through the woods, I went back down to Skipper’s Bridge by way of the road, and this gave me the opportunity to enjoy more lichens and some sensational moss.

It was getting a bit chilly by this time as the sun was getting lower in the sky, so I didn’t dawdle on my way back along the Murtholm.

I was stopped in my tracks however by a huge bank of wild garlic shoots as I went along the riverside path before getting to the park. I look forward to seeing the flowers and smelling the smell.

Our own garden is a bit short of colour at the moment, so I took the opportunity to add a little colour to this post by stealing a look at two of our neighbours’ gardens just before I went in. Credit goes to Liz and Hector.

It was nearly time for our evening meal when I got back, and Mrs Tootlepedal made a delicious swede, leek and broccoli bake in a lightly curried cheesy white sauce. It restored my energy levels immediately.

The clocks go forward tonight, so I’m going to try to get to bed early for once.

The flying of the day is one of the bird hide siskins.

Footnote: While I was dithering about not going cycling, Mrs Tootlepedal shifted all six of the heavy bags of stuff we had bought at the Garden Centre out of the car and into their designated spots. She correctly believes that doing a little weightlifting will be good for her health. I am quite happy to sacrifice my health chances by letting her do the work.

A rousing finale

Today’s guest picture comes from my brother Andrew. Camellias are still flourishing in his neighbourhood.

After some overnight rain, we woke up to a brilliantly sunny morning here, and if it hadn’t been for that persistent and chilly wind, it would have been almost warm too.

I had a look round the garden in the morning between coffee and a visit from the very nice lady who looks after my feet, and found two sparrows in a bush by our back gate.

When my feet had been looked after, I used them to take me up to the town to do some shopping. If you could ignore the wind, it really was a lovely day.

When I got back to the house, I noticed two visitors in the dam.

They may hold the key to the disappearance of almost all the frogspawn in our pond while we were away. I don’t hold grudges though, and I was pleased to see them. With luck, we may have some ducklings to photograph soon. I went in and got my duck camera and took a few close ups.

On my way back onto the house, I looked at two very different euphorbias and an upstanding daffodil, unbowed by frost, wind, or rain.

Mrs Tootlepedal had been enjoying coffee with her ex work colleagues at the Buccleuch Centre, and when she got home we went out into the garden.

While she did the sort of things that gardeners do, I sieved some compost and put it on a flower bed ready for her to distribute.

I noticed the first cowslip of the year nearby.

Our neighbour Liz popped with some news, and while we were talking there was a great commotion above our heads. What seemed like hundreds of jackdaws had taken to the air. I couldn’t get them all into one shot.

The sky clouded over after lunch, and the forecast said that the chance of showers was 70%. However, after I had had a dry cycle run yesterday with a worse forecast, I thought I would chance my arm again, and went for another pedal on my e-bike.

I sensibly put my wet weather gear on though as I settled down to another battle against a strong and very chilly wind.

I didn’t dilly dally taking photographs, hoping to get back before any rain arrived as I went round my familiar Canonbie circuit. There were plenty of threatening clouds about, but I decided not to take a shortcut home and pressed on down to the bottom of the Canonbie bypass. I was rewarded when I got there by a sharp shower of rain, including some rather painful hailstones, and this followed me up the road for six miles.

Fortunately the rain never got very heavy, and when it stopped and the sun came out . . .

. . . the brisk wind immediately began to dry me out, and I was cheerful enough to throw in another larch flower picture on my way back home.

I was pretty well dry by the time I got back, though I was cold enough to be very glad that I hadn’t chosen a longer route.

I only took one flower picture in the garden before I went in to get warm.

Refreshed by a cup of tea with Mrs Tootlepedal, who had been able to get some more gardening in before the rain arrived, we were ready for the regular zoom with my siblings.

In the evening, we wrapped up well and walked along the road under a starry sky to attend the concert that we almost went to by mistake yesterday.

The Langholm Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society (first production in 1923) has morphed into the Langholm Musical Society in a sensible effort to be more appealing to younger members. This transformation seems to have already been very successful because a very large cast of all ages had been assembled for what was billed as A Musical Spectacular, a programme of staged songs from a range of musicals. The result was a most enjoyable evening with a sextet of very competent musicians underpinning some very good singing from a good rage of soloists and the tout ensemble. The sound engineering was very good. I look forward to seeing what they come up with next year.

The flying bird of the day is a starling who carelessly let one of our electricity lines get in its way.

Up and down

Today’s guest picture comes from my brother Andrew. He saw this fine flower bed on a walk a couple of days ago and tells us that it is supposed to be in the shape of France.

There was a marked absence of any feeling of spring in the weather here when we got up this morning, because although it was sunny, it was also below freezing. It did warm up quite quickly, but it only got as far as 7°C, and as there was still a brisk wind blowing, the ‘feels like’ felt quite wintery. The sun didn’t last.

After a leisurely start to the day, I put a cold morning to good use by making nine pots of raspberry jam as 2 kg of frozen raspberries had just been delivered to our door.

Once the jam was made, I went out into the garden to see how the flowers had coped with the frost.

The general verdict was ‘not too badly’, although the early flowers on the magnolia were showing brown patches.

I had a look at the weather forecast over lunch, and the rain radar map had our entire area covered in light rain for the whole of the afternoon. However, trusting to my own eyes, the cloud cover in real life didn’t look too bad, so I got into my winter cycling gear, put on my rain jacket, and went out for a pedal on my e-bike.

I was very pleased with the choice of e-bike, because the wind, as well as being cold, was strong enough to call for two levels of electrical assistance when cycling into it.

I had had to pump up my back tyre, and I was a bit worried that I might have a slow puncture, so with that and possible rain in mind, I didn’t want to get too far from home and did three repetitions of the seven mile trip up to Wauchope Schoolhouse and back to the town. I pedalled as fast as I could up to Wauchope Schoolhouse into the wind with electrical assistance, and then pedalled as fast as could downwind back to Langholm with no help at all. In spite of the cold, it was good fun.

I stopped alongside the river in the town on each trip.

The first time, I saw two oystercatchers.

The second time I saw the two oystercatchers and a gull which had joined them.

On the third and final visit, I saw two ducks.

Otherwise, I concentrated on getting home and out of the cold as quickly as I could with one exception, a check to see if I could find any larch flowers on my last trip down to the town. It turned out that I could, and as they came with added lichen and a nearby gate, I thought that it was a well worthwhile stop.

In spite of the chilly conditions, Mrs Tootlepedal had been busy in the garden while I was out, preparing a trench along the fence for some new planting, and cleaning the glass on the greenhouse.

She had had a busy afternoon, because she made a large pot of Scotch broth as well, and then cooked a really delicious chickpea and bacon bake au gratin for our evening meal.

I had a walk round the garden before my post-cycling cup of tea and slice of lemon drizzle cake. The morning frost had been forgotten.

A chaffinch had found a snack on the lawn . . .

. . . and pigeons were courting on the wires overhead.

We had our evening meal promptly because I had booked tickets earlier in the day for a concert at the Buccleuch Centre for an evening of songs from the shows from our local musical theatre society. Very fortunately, Mrs Tootlepedal looked at the tickets before we set out, and found that I had unintentionally booked for tomorrow night instead. We are hoping that pleasure deferred will be pleasure enhanced.

The light wasn’t conducive to catching good flying birds, so a chaffinch and a pigeon are sharing the honour of being flying bird of the day together.