Blooming marvellous

I had a slightly extra long lunch break today while the sun was out, because I'd spent all morning madly writing appraisals, then realised I'd used the wrong form.  I was too tired to care.

I planned to do a collage of garden flowers today.  The first of my big orangey-red poppies has just come out and a couple more are about to burst open.  The little pink roses on the big bush are also emerging, and of course there are plenty of small wild poppies in yellow and orange.  Some of my peonies with their huge scarlet blooms were drowned in last week's rain but I poked some canes into the ground and tied this one up a bit to help it see more sunlight.  In the end I liked this one enough on its own to blip.

The rest of lunchtime++ was spent attempting to refurbish an old front derailleur I bought for Mirabel to improve the gear changing.  I scrubbed it clean and polished the metal and greased the pivots and everything.  Only this evening did I unhappily discover that the clamp bolt for the cable doesn't work because the metal has cracked.  So that was a waste time and money.  Maybe I can fill the thing with epoxy metal and re-drill it.  I cleaned up the original modern one and discovered that the limit screw wasn't working properly, which was why it wouldn't shift the chain onto the inner chainring very well, so I made it work properly.  Once reinstalled and correctly set up, the gear changing was perfect.  Some more supple tyres might be nice but I think I am very close to having Mirabel how I like!

I've also now backblipped Tuesday's entry.

Thanks to @BikerBear for continuing to host Flower Friday.  In fairness, what with two days off this week and entirely too much work, I hardly know what day it actually is.