Grey Dagger

Another busy day!

We started early with a bike ride. I even wore my yellow top to bring luck to Bradley. As it happens it wasn't lucky for me, we'd just done the second down hill of the route when my front tyre went pop-hiss and then flat very quickly. We then had a 4.55 km walk home. At least it happened on a slight uphill at low speed and not the 56.6 km/h on one of the down hills...

Rather than have breakfast when we got back we went to our little orchard to do some cleaning and strimming - it's looking good. After that we went home for a late breakfast.

I replaced my flat front tyre - which was okay it was just an exploded inner tube. Then we pruned our green gage - which is rather large and hasn't been pruned much by the previous owners who planted it.

We then had some ice cream and red currants while we watched a Brit win the last stage of Le Tour and then see a historic British 1+2 for the overall position! Woot!

Once that was all done we went back to our orchard to prune the plum and damson there and remove the apples (the trees are still young and we want them to grow another year before we collect fruit).

Back at our house it was time to check the quince in the front garden. It has some kind of fungal blight so I had to remove a lot of leaves and it will need a fungicidal spray again or it's not going to do very well. Having taken pictures all along in the end today's blip came from the quince. I found three large caterpillars having a snooze on it. As it needs all the help it can get they we moved to a near-by ornamental quince. My book says they are Grey Dagger (Acronicta psi) and pupate into a boring grey moth.

I've still got a mountain of ironing to get through, I'll need a polka dot shirt if I get through it tonight and dinner to make...

Next week looks like it's going to be nice too, so we should be able to bike to work without getting drenched. Things are looking up.

EDIT: Just noticed that I'm now past first anniversary of being on blipfoto, and you can quickly see last year's blips...