Frustrating blipping

This has been the most annoying day, Blip-wise. Coming home from Edinburgh we took the short cut through Glen Lonan from Taynuilt to Kilninver. Seeing the usual herd of Highland cattle I thought I would try for a Blip of the beautiful little pure white calf, but when I turned on my Nikon DSLR I got the message 'For', which I later realised meant 'Format'. Well, obviously formatting a card loses all the data, so instead I replaced the card with the partially filled card from my compact Canon and took 30 or 40 pictures, creeping slowly, as seemed sensible, into the herd of cattle with young.

When I tried to download the images on to my computer at home I was surprised to see that the card was empty! Everything gone - I've never seen that before. So it was emergency Blip time, 6pm and getting gloomy, but a useful Rhododendron barbatum just down from the house gave me an opportunity, even though not a great image.

Rhododendron barbatum is a beautiful species from the Himalayas. I've seen it there myself, have walked all morning through forests of it, red stems glowing in the sun. This picture clearly shows the characteristic hairs on the leaf petioles. We have a huge one down in the Lower Garden which probably dates from the 1920s - the one in the picture is one of my planting.

So now I must return to Glen Lonan and the white calf, or you won't believe me!