Posting pretty things ...

I'll start again with the photo above, as it was taken just after breakfast. I was looking out of the front door just because it's the sort of thing I might do in the morning and then not do for the rest of the day - we conduct most of our comings and goings via the lane at the back - and I noticed how my garden and my neighbours' are both fine examples of what plants flourish in this neck of the woods, both blazing with the colours of different azaleas and pieris (what's the plural, I wonder...). This particular azalea makes me think of a wedding dress, with its big, tender, creamy-pink blooms; this year several of them were torn off by last week's wind and the bush as a whole has far fewer blooms than usual. I can't remember if I was a tad fierce with my pruning last autumn ...

My day was spent in online chat, reading in the sun, starting yet another sourdough loaf and enjoying a lovely walk along the shore road to the south. We watched quite a large group of black cattle suddenly wheel and begin to gallop towards a distant burn where the edge of their field abuts another, with another herd in residence. We met people we only ever meet there, and chatted. We ate enormous salmon fillets for dinner and attended online Compline. And then - joy! - we watched another episode of Spooks, one I don't recall ever seeing.

And all the time, like a background song, there was the virus and the political advisor and a growing disbelief about the willingness of some people to accept, to turn away, to think we shouldn't make a fuss.

Enough! I'll post a photo taken on our shoreline walk as a contrast.