Month: August 2026

More Butterflies – 3 August 2026

Posted on by Zogman

This time it was a Painted Lady. The butterfly that starts in Africa and can end up in Alaska. Not all in one flight and in some cases it’s a different butterfly that takes over from the first one … it’s complicated. If you’re interested, search the internet for it.

Today we were going shopping at Waitrose in Stirling. It was a “Long and winding road”. The street we live on was having a makeover. That meant, although we wanted to go right at the end of the street, instead we had to drive through the car park of the football stadium, round the stadium itself then back on to the main road again. After that the devious road menders had closed off the road that would normally have taken us to the motorway … but not today. Instead we had to go a circuit of Cumbersheugh to get back to the motorway. I suppose it made sense to the folk who designed it, but for us it was a pain in the backside.

We did get to Stirling quite easily after the initial problem. Scamp was thirsty so we had a coffee and shared a pastry, then filled a shopping trolley with goodies. I got a nice bottle of gin that was reduced by a fair bit. Scamp got a bottle opener she fancied and a couple of bottles of wine. One because she’d had it before and liked it. The other because it had an interesting label. Why not!

We drove home and found yet another way that would take us back to the house without going anywhere near the football stadium. We had been places today that we had never seen in years. It was a learning experience – Every day’s a school day!

It was a dull day. No butterflies to photograph and nothing that even remotely made we want to go out. What we had done was to pick up a Charlie Bigham’s Butter Chicken for Two. A lovely dinner in about 30 minutes. Yes, we know it’s not good for us, but it tasted like it was!

We watched an episode of University Challenge in the evening. Then Scamp wanted to watch a special edition of Gardener’s World and I started typing this.

Hopefully tomorrow won’t be as complicated as today was. I hope you understood at least half of it!!

 

A Butterfly Day – 2 August 2026

Posted on by Zogman

Beautiful day for butterflies. I counted fifteen butterflies congregating on the buddleia bush in the garden.

The day actually started with some joker trying to reverse a lorry and connected ‘chipper’ along a path that was never meant to carry such a wide load. After a bit of an argument I convinced him to disconnect the ‘chipper’ and push it down to where it should have been and then drive the lorry round to the wider road further down the estate. Then we discussed how to repair the tree he had damaged. After that the ‘boss’ and I worked out that the best thing to do was to cut part of the tree branch down. With it done, we shook hands on it, but some of the minions were still making noises. Scamp and I went back to breakfast.

For the rest of the day, Scamp was happily working on the garden. She had a vision of what she wanted to happen and I was glad to let her get on with it. I must admit that she has made an excellent job of clearing up the garden. It’s not quite finished yet, but a lot of work went into making it look much better than before.

I was busy taking photos of the butterflies that had covered the buddleia bush. About half a dozen different types were flying round and through the buddleia flowers and my favourite was the Comma with its easily recognised ‘Cut out’ on its wing. The most amazing one was the Painted Lady which migrates from Africa and mainland Europe to the Uk, and in this case to Scotland. This is the first time I’ve seen one.

Spoke to Jamie later in the day and heard about the exorbitant price for their water bill. I’m glad we live in Scotland!

Tomorrow Scamp and I are probably going shopping. What fun!

Dancin’ – 1 August 2026

Posted on by Zogman

On the first day of August

It was a busy morning with traffic on the road, probably from folk coming home from holiday and others on their way out. Once we got past Glasgow airport the traffic reduced. Today we were back in Brookfield and dancing old dances. Some were more successful than others. People, including us, were still having problems with Rona’s Rumba. Jane was making changes to the routine but, as someone said, there are too many turns both clockwise and anticlockwise. I can understand that Jane has devised the dance for a friend who passed away, but you sometimes have to stand back and look at the routine. That’s all I’ll say.

It wasn’t my best day. I was complaining about everything. I have no excuse for it, just one of those dance days when things get under my skin and I can’t do anything right. We danced quite a few routines that, normally we’d work our way through without any problems, but today they just didn’t work. Most of it was my fault. Probably best to forget today and come back fresh for the next dance.

For once we drove home over the Kingston Bridge and kept the wheels turning all the time. It’s not often I’ll say that. The weather was variable today. Cloudy one minute and in sunshine the next. Not to be trusted, though because Scamp was complaining about little showers of rain when she was working in the garden later. We both worked on an old tree that’s been growing next to the wall in the back garden and between us I think we’ve given it a good short back and sides today. Our ‘Brown Bin’, the garden waste bin was almost full with one bushy tree.

We had three butterflies changing places round the Buddleia bush in the garden. One of them, a Red Admiral, finally settled on a plant pot and I managed one photo of it before it flew off. That photo made PoD.

I spent some time rearranging my Lightroom catalog, something I’ve been meaning to do for months now. Hopefully it will be a more logical way of working this year.

Dinner tonight was Mac ’n’ Cheese and although it was a bit salty, it tasted great. Scamp was cooking, of course!

No plans for tomorrow so far.