Shining below dark trees ...

Escaped the midden that our house has become in the aftermath of returning from Malta and made time for a quick late afternoon ramble through Benmore Gardens. ( I know: I'm always going there - it's just that every time there's something different to delight.) The landscape couldn't have been more different from the virtually treeless limestone of Malta, and the river ran brown and swift as we crossed the arched bridge into the gardens.

We noticed this wonderful rhododendron as we came down the hill after the sun had set other than on the tops of the hills beyond Lock Eck - it was as if a fire had been lit among the dark trees. Birds were singing all around us, and suddenly we heard the seven-beat drumroll of a woodpecker ...

I shall catch up on all your blips soon - I'm currently so tied up in things that it's all I can do to post my own, but it can't go on for ever ...

Can it?