Glad!iolus

I'm glad I have a flower to offer this Friday. There hasn't been much on show in the garden recently. I was surprised to see these, I left it rather late with the planting of the corms. And since then they have had no attention at all. But, this afternoon I found a couple in bloom, and several others with tightly-furled buds about to open and disclose themselves in their true colours.

I was expecting the plain-vanilla that my Aunt used to grow ( she nearly put me off the whole genus), so this frilly, flirty pink bloom was a lovely surprise.
There was an arty maroon/mauve one too. I wonder what the rest will be.

We were just about out of bed and compos mentis this morning when the phone rang and the man who trims trees for the electricity supply company rang to ask if it was alright for his squad  to come today. TM managed to stutter yes, and when are you coming. We're here!  was the breezy answer.

So the power lines are no longer in danger of being engulfed by our over-enthusiastic trees, and, even better, these guys do a bit of forestry on the side, so to speak, and will hopefully come sometime in the next month and do a bit of timber extraction and trimming for us before we disappear entirely.

The day's exercise was a walk up by Smailholm Tower. One day I'll be there when the sun is in the right place. But the clouds were magnificent today, so I'm putting one shot in the extras - I have a lot to use up.