Progress!

I fear I'm being a bore about my meconopsis, but can't resist this composite of the stages it went through today, from when I was washing up after breakfast (it's just outside my kitchen window) to the moment I came home from a good long walk, at about 5.30 this afternoon. The top left shows the earlier stage, with its flower-casing split wide open but part still adhering; the other three are of what it became during the day, culminating in a not-too-successful attempt to show its bright golden centre. What you can see, however, is the wonderful pink bit where the petals join the stem ...

Such a quiet, drizzling day brought the midges out in force, so that when I went a walk - a new one for me - with my pal this afternoon, we had to keep moving so that they didn't find us. But it was strange how even a temperature of only 11C seemed reasonably mild without any wind to move the air around, and we even had some late brightness that brought it up to 14C.

I did hear from both my boys today - one in Austria, one in Leipzig, both on work trips - that the temperature in the near continent was 32C. I could do with just a little of that ....