Caterpillars innumerable ...

We came home for the weekend today - there's no longer an assistant organist, so ... - arriving in the middle of the afternoon, having left much of our stuff behind, including the bed-linen, so we'll jolly well have to go back again soon! (Awful lot of present participles there - I know.) It meant less of a scamper to get away: that's still to come. It was chilly in Edinburgh - 13ºc and drizzling slightly; 17º here. I'm doing all this meteorological stuff to get in an explanation of my title, which comes from the Psalms: words which I actually uttered loudly, with the addition of expletives, when I saw my flower pots, one of which, containing nasturtiums, was positively creeping with the things. I'd removed them all, squashily (with a rubber glove on) when I noticed that the mystery shoot that had been growing rapidly in what was supposed to be a pot of pansies had reached a foot tall and was clearly not a pansy. Out with it, I thought, and reached across with my left hand to pull it out.

It was a nettle. A NETTLE. How it got there I'll never know, but now, 8 hours later, my fingers and thumb are still on fire. 

Other than that, it was rather jolly. We decided we needed a wee walk down to the sea to relieve the stiffness of the drive, and marched off along the lane, where we hailed our friend Jim in his garden. Before we continued, we had been commanded to come back when we'd finished walking and join him and his wife, my pal Margo, for apèros in their garden. 

This was as jolly as it has been in past years - not maybe as warm as we'd have liked, but this time we had a lit chimenea to huddle round. And dinner was rather late, and was an experiment which turned out rather well: pasta with roasted cauliflower, breadcrumbs, garlic, onion, anchovies and tomatoes, with lots of parmesan...

And now I'm absurdly late because of someone taking a pot shot at Trump. Truly the world is an awful place just now - and it may be the making of a second presidency for that man. 

Photo is of the evening sky, with a mini-rainbow in the east among increasingly amazing pink clouds. Cool, huh?