Park gate

I was on a mission to check up on the coot chicks in Maxwell Park since I hadn't been there for ten days or so and I wondered how much of their yellow and red spikey hair would be left. Springwatch informed me that their colour richness  indicates their birth order, this informs the parent who needs first pickings which seems the opposite of how most birds go about things. There were no chicks to be seen, plenty of adult coots, moorhen and the usual sparring mallards. It was unusually breezy so perhaps they were just holed up somewhere amongst the yellow flag irises.
As I was leaving the park at the junction of Springkell Avenue and St Andrews Drive I noticed the iron work on the somewhat rusty and in dire need of a coat of paint, park gates. A discernible thistle. I particularly liked the range of greens. In Gaelic there is more than one word for green, and if it refers to the sea it becomes gorm, blue.
I came home the long way round via the small pond in Pollok Park. That is the extra blip today, after all the wind the surface was covered in rhododendron leaves and shoots, from a distance it looks like lilies with the promise of extravagant flowers to follow. I shall have to go to Rouken Glen to see those. Another mission beckons, but after the weekend, when despite the disruption to peoples routine the weekends are definitely busier in some places.