Larch roses

We had another beautiful day of warm sunshine, lulling us into a false sense of security before the rain tomorrow afternoon followed by snow on Monday and Tuesday! However, we made the most of it. N repotted his bonsai and I did some gardening before I went for a walk with J. We walked to the nearest postbox a mile away and spotted all sorts of interesting things on the way there and back.
My main photo shows a couple of female flowers on a larch tree which is just coming into fresh green leaf. (Larches are one of the few deciduous conifers.) When fertilised, these will become the small cones of the larch later in the year. When they are this beautiful pink colour they are called "larch roses" which seems a very suitable name.
J had a letter to post and this made us look more closely at the post box (extra). We noticed that it had no royal cipher which we thought a bit unusual so I Googled the history of post boxes when I got home and found the following:
"In 1954, after it had been pointed out that Elizabeth II of England was only the first Elizabeth to reign over Scotland, the cipher was not used in Scotland. Letter boxes were made with just a Scottish Crown on instead." So there you are. I never knew that.