Water, water, everywhere

Saturday was wet. Very wet.

This was the view just outside Portpatrick, at the corner of the Dunskey B-road turnoff, water flooding off the hill onto the road.

Flood

On arriving home, I discovered a drain outside the gate was unable to cope with the sudden rain, and a gutter-load of water was flowing in a channel down the driveway, pushing gravel through the gate.

It took half an hour’s shovelling gravel to persuade some of the water to flow into a flowerbed the other side of the fence; in the meantime, the garage was flooded about 3in deep.

A couple of days later and the scale of damage caused is clear; while the driveway is now arguably better than it was before, roadside embankments have obviously suffered

Collapsed embankment

as has the road surface – the erosion from gravel and dirt flowing over tarmac is quite severe:

tarmac road surface showing serious erosion due to

St Ninian’s Scottish Episcopal Church, Portpatrick

St Ninian's Scottish Episcopal Church, Portpatrick

The building’s diminutive size lends a certain quaint charm to the idea of people coming here to worship, hence the vintage style processing on the photo.
Unfortunately, it also means the maximum seating capacity is only about 30.
The folks were pleasantly welcoming, but services are either Matins or stuck in the 1929 liturgy for some inexplicable reason – even worse than the 1970 version.
The most offputting thing is the fuss made (both written in the pew-sheets and announced) that there will be a `gathering note’ at the start of the hymns. What they actually mean is the building is too small for any kind of instrument of its own and the bought-in CD was made by a company that didn’t understand how to correctly accompany hymn-singing (with a proper introduction and consistent tempo, no such note is required). The resultant boom-box karaoke cacophany is just ghastly.
The church is part of a trio of charges around Wigtownshire. Services are Sundays at 10.30am if anyone’s interested.

Sunshine

image

Today is not a day like this, so I thought I’d post this as a reminder of what gorgeous sunlight on a pleasant warm evening feels like.

An Afternoon’s Changes

We spent the afternoon pottering around the garden.

First, the fencepost on which the external road-visibility mirror is mounted got repainted a nice shade of green:

external outdoor road visibility convex mirror

We planted several tomatoes and made a start on some potatoes:

and some bedding plants – lobelia to flop over the sides of planters:

and some more petunias:

and there’s still a load of veg and herbs to be going on with:

 

Such domestication. The garden is gradually beginning to look more ready for whatever the summer growth-spurt brings!