Blooming marvellous

I feel it's cheating to use two collages in one post, but I'm stumped as to my best blip pic tonight, and they both represent the same walk this afternoon. Said walk was important, really, because I spent most of the morning sitting down - either chatting to one of our singers who was in to practise a solo with Himself, or writing Intercessions and finishing off the required permissions for a research group looking into the heyday of Glasgow's high streets - I hate typing information on a form!

We had lunch outside, came in for a rest (it was too hot and the seat too upright to relax on) and then drove down to Toward, to walk first up the farm road and then finish off with a stroll along the Ardyne shore road. The first, between the fields, is where the extra collage comes from - the hawthorn trees and hedges are amazing just now with thick white blossom and the strangely pungent scent that reminds me of sports days at Hughenden in Glasgow, my school's playing fields, which were surrounded by hawthorn trees. I managed to identify other flowers as well (the iPhone can link the photo to the info) and we saw an enormous furry caterpillar on a sycamore leaf and a gang of smug (and also enormous) sheep sitting cocooned in some lush grass under a tree on the farm, looking mildly at us as they chewed. 

We were walking back down the hill when we saw PS Waverley emerging from the Kyles of Bute and passing Rothesay; this is the first of the four photos on the main blip. It's the first time we've seen her this summer - I look forward to a sail or two shortly. The other photos were taken along the shore - the tide was very far out and the beach stretched for ever; the second photo shows an oyster-catcher wading among the worm casts on the sand that stuck up in tiny mountain ridges at the water's edge. The other two I just like because of the distant boats and figures dwarfed by the seascape.

Now it's just midnight and I'm off to bed. Before I go, I want to say that this night is so silent that I could hear a boat on the Firth before I saw it, that the evenings were never this quiet at night before the pandemic, and that there is no silence in Kyiv where the air-raid sirens call and the inhabitants lie in the dark and pray for their defensive forces to take out all the drones and missiles headed their way.  And yes, they've made their way into my Intercessions ...