Hup's a daisy

For the second day in a row, we found ourselves in the village and port of St Margaret's Hope on South Ronaldsay. I know what you're thinking... and, yes, tea and cake were involved. This time we were in the company of Sian (from Life on a Small Island blog), who had journeyed over from Graemsay to visit Our Lass during her convalescence. St Margaret's Hope is known locally as The Hope, and sometimes referred to as the even shorter T' Hup. After a pleasant lunch at Robertson's Cafe, we wandered the short distance to a community garden next to the Marengo Centre. 'Marengo' is not your typical Norse-derived place name, as the above link explains.

Whilst the ladies pottered around, discussing 'Bake Off', identifying plants, chatting about 'Strictly', helping each other negotiate stone steps, musing over 'Poldark' and other life-enhancing topics, I busied myself with taking photographs. This being Orkney, I hadn't anticipated there being much in the way of colour, what with it being Autumn and all. And Autumn seemed to have arrived after the previous day's glorious weather. But I was wrong...

It would appear that my phone is a better entomologist than I am. I was trying to take a photograph of a hover-fly, but my phone decided that a different, and much smaller, insect was of more interest. I'm not sure whether it is a species of sawfly or scorpion fly, but it's definitely a female.