Snowberry

The Snowberry bush was covered in Speckled Wood butterflies and bees in the sunshine yesterday.  Today it's about to rain.  The bees are still feasting but the butterflies are hiding.  So here is a little ginger-haired Carder bee.  The bush often flowers into the early winter and the insects go crazy for it when it is the last nectar available, so maybe I will get another chance for a late butterfly.

I've almost forgotten that I should have been on a boat on the Danube this week.   We would have been in Vienna today.  The trip was an itinerant music festival.  We were due to stop twice a day at a palace, a castle, a church or a monastery alongside the river for a concert of music by Beethoven, whose 250th birthday it will be in December.