Today’s guest picture comes from my sister Caroline. It shows part of the botanic garden at Southsea on a lovely day recently.
We had to be up and about quite smartly today, as we had to be in Canonbie before half past nine for our Covid booster injections. We were seen promptly, given the jabs, and sent on our way without any ill effects. This left us with plenty of time in the garden when we got home. Mrs Tootlepedal settled down to serious work in the vegetable department, and I wandered around taking pictures.
An orange geum, a Japanese azalea, some rowan flowers and another euphorbia were all looking good, I thought.
I went in to make coffee and checked on the birds. Siskins and redpolls were to the fore again.
Rab, the roofer, appeared with scaffolding and a team to put it up, and set to work while we had our coffee.
We went back out into the garden while the scaffolding was going up. I mowed the front lawn with such care and attention that the mower’s batteries ran out before I had finished. That sort of thing never happened when I had a push mower.
I had time to look at a few more flowers . . .
. . . before I walked up to the town to meet Sandy at Pelosi’s cafe.
A lady, Elizabeth Phillips, had visited Langholm from Edinburgh in the early 1970s and had taken a lot of pictures of the town and its people. She has recently died, and her nephew has digitised the slides that she left, and he has presented copies of over 200 of them to the Langholm Archive Group. Sandy has started to put them onto our website already. Martin and his wife were on their way from the south to St Andrews today, and stopped off to visit the town and meet Sandy and me on their way.
We are very grateful that they thought of us, because the photographs will be a good addition to our collection. After a good chat, they set off for a walk round the town to explore, with the intention of taking a picture or two from the same places that Elizabeth had taken them 50 years ago. Sandy and I went home.
The scaffolders had finished by the time that I had got back. They will start the repair next week.
After lunch, we went back out into the garden, where Mrs Tootlepedal continued to do useful work and I lent an occasional hand. After a while, she went in to watch the Giro, and I took my new pair of walking shoes out for a test.
There were wild flowers beside the track as I made my way up to Meikleholm Hill . . .
. . . but not much of a view when I got on to the hill, as it was another rather murky day.
There were cattle on the hill, so I had to take a steep route to the summit to avoid them, but it was dry underfoot and my new shoes worked well, so once I had got to the top of Meikleholm Hill (860ft) I continued on to Timpen (1068ft). Because this is sheep country, wild flowers on the hill are very scarce, but I did see a good lot of tormentil which the sheep don’t eat for some reason, and the subdued light made them easier to photograph than usual.
Normally I would be spoiled for views from the top of Timpen, but in spite of it being a warm and calm day, the light was terrible . . .
. . . so I didn’t linger, and headed down from the top to join the road near Craigcleuch.
The road verges were full of wild flowers, including a lot of Pyrenean Valerian, which is spreading round the town. It is a bully and its large leaves shade out the competition and leave it dominant.
I fear for the other wild flowers which I saw today.
I didn’t go all the way home along the road, but took the path through the woods down to the Duchess bridge. The sun had come out by this time, and the path was looking at its best. I saw germander speedwell and yellow pimpernel, along with wild garlic and rhododendrons. A gap made by fallen trees gave me grand view across the river.
The path from the Duchess Bridge to the Scholars’ Field, was lined with a mass of flowers.
My walk was only four miles long, but the combination of open hill and sunlit woodlands made it seem longer as I had so much to look at on my way. A few views would have been nice, but you can’t always have everything that you want.
I was welcomed home by honeysuckle on our roadside hedge.
After a cup of tea, followed by a cheery zoom with my brother and sisters, Mrs Tootlepedal and I went out for a five mile bike ride ’round Potholm’. The sun had gone in again, but it was warm and calm still, so we had a good outing with a view over the valley of the hill that I had just walked over, and a look down the River Esk at Potholm, when we crossed the bridge there.
A late meal of smoked haddock kedgeree rounded off the day.
The flying bird of the day is a sparrow, getting an unfriendly welcome from a siskin.
Footnote: our flat roof over the dormer window was damaged in a gale earlier this year. Rab, who was working re-slating the other side of the roof at the time, nailed it down temporarily, and has now come back to to a permanent repair. We were very lucky that he was there at the time of the original damage.