Author: Zogman

Rain, Sun and Wind – 2 July 2023

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Three words to sum up today as far as weather goes. There was rain. Sometimes heavy sometimes light, but always there on the horizon. Then there were occasions sunbursts, sometimes while the rain was falling, but welcome when they appeared. Lastly there was wind for the third day recently. Gusty wind blowing in from the west. Very unseasonable weather after a Flaming June.

Scamp was out planting her new flowers. They are a white Salvia and a white Penstemon. Both in the new pot she bought (but didn’t wear) yesterday. They are now ensconced in the front garden to strengthen the barrier and hopefully prevent the Scottish Terrier from round the corner from crapping in our front grass. If that doesn’t work, then we’ll have to resort to digging pits with sharpened spikes at the bottom, between the pots or the ‘nuclear option’ – Land Mines. Anyway, for now the flower pots are doing a good job of keeping Hamish at bay. In the afternoon I swear I saw Scamp out in the front garden watering the plants while the rain was tipping it down. I now have seriously concerns about her sanity.

Later in the afternoon I put my boots on and went for a walk in St Mo’s, hoping to get some photos of some yellow Flag Irises, but was disappointed to find that they were long gone. That spell of hot weather had forced the flowering of these elegant plants way ahead of their usual blooming time. What I did find was a couple of Batman hoverflies, so called because they have what looks like the Batman symbol on their thorax. Then a Five Spot Burnet moth feeding on its favourite knapweed flower. After some discussion with myself, the Burnet moth got PoD.

Watched a crazy Austrian GP with almost half the field succumbing to five second penalties for exceeding ’Track Limits’. For once, Charles Leclerc didn’t find the wall!

We don’t have any plans for tomorrow.

 

A new month – 1 July 2023

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Finally I’ve cleared the backlog of blog posts and Flickr submissions. It took a bit longer than I expected, but even as I was downloading today’s photos, I found more on the A6000 that I had missed so I’m now up to about 1300 photos for June. That’s a personal record, I think. It’s partly down to the new phone. The results I get from it are almost indistinguishable from those on my A6000. Not quite as good as the A7iii, but it gets close when I use the RAW mode on the phone camera. Quite amazing. Truly now, the best camera is the one in your pocket.

I spent most of the morning and part of the afternoon clearing up loose ends of blogs. If any of you out there notice any mistakes, please don’t tell me, because I’m not going to do anything about them. Not long after midday I posted the final backlog blog.
Meanwhile, Scamp was doing the ironing and by the time she was finished, I was just finishing, so we could have lunch. Both of us settled for banana on toast.

After lunch Scamp decided she needed another garden tub to house her two new plants, so we walked down to the shops, got some messages and other essentials like jam doughnuts and then picked us a reasonably sized tub that Scamp threatened to wear on her head on the way home to protect herself from the rain. Thankfully the rain dried up once we left the shop. I could have gone for a walk in St Mo’s and probably I should have, but instead I came home with Scamp and did my file shifting that I usually do at the end of the month.

It had been windy since early morning and photography in the wind is difficult, so I chose to take some shots in the back garden where there is a bit of shelter from our high fence. PoD turned out to be the seed pods of the long gone Shooting Star flowers that bloomed in May. There wasn’t much more to tempt me today. Maybe I should have gone over to St Mo’s or encouraged Scamp to wear that flower pot hat and got a shot from one of those two situations … or maybe best not!

No plans for tomorrow.

 

The last day in June – 30 June 2023

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What a month this has been. Two weeks in the sun – too much sun. Record high temperatures. Torrential rain. Then cooling down. Things got so bad that the BBC weather app went crazy, gave up and just predicted temperature highs of 8ºc and lows of 7ºc for the next week. I think it just got fed up with all the fluctuations!

The furthest I got today was a couple of shots of an aquilegia in the back garden. Taken in the rain that never seemed to stop all day.

Scamp went out in the morning to meet Isobel for coffee and then June & Ian arrived there too. That was her morning and part of the afternoon filled. She made a delicious Prawn & Pea Risotto for dinner when she came back. Meanwhile I was writing, writing, writing and am almost finished. Tomorrow should see the end of the backlog. I think I’ve said that before!!

Tomorrow a new month and a new start hopefully.

Torwood and Ladybirds – 29 June 2023

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Today we drove to Torwood Garden Centre to find replacements for some of the plants that were lost during the hot weather.

We found a few that Scamp liked but bought only two which weren’t actually replacements, but it was Thursday, so that ticked a box for me! While we were there I picked up a scrap on the offside wing of the blue car. Nothing terrible, but I’ll need to get it fixed with the Smart Repair voucher I got when we bought it.

Back home I wanted to go out in the sunshine while Scamp was gardening and drove up to Fannyside looking for dragonflies. When I got there it was too windy to have a hope of catching them, so instead I went looking for ladybirds and found a compliant one sitting on a lichen covered fence post. It’s a Striped Ladybird, brown rather than the usual red and with stripes (obviously) rather than spots. That became PoD.

Scamp is out with Isobel tomorrow. I’m hoping to draw the blog catchup to a close!

Blogging – 28 June 2023

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These blogs don’t write themselves. Today the furthest I got was a walk round St Mo’s in the afternoon. The rest of the day was spent writing blog posts, selecting suitable Flickr photos from the 1,000 odd shots I’ve taken and posting both. Still only about half way through the backlog.

Just as reminder to me, here is a rough breakdown of photos taken by what:

I took the A7iii with the kit lens and the 16-35mm, and the A6000 with the kit lens and the 10-18mm. Just over 1,050 shots taken in total.
Roughly:
42% taken with the A7iii
33% taken with the A6000
25% taken with the phone

The walk round St Mo’s gave me one decent photo of a couple walking their dog round the woodland walk. That became PoD.

Tomorrow we may drive up to Norwood to look for replacement plants.

A parcel arrives – 27 June 2023

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Today we were going to Stirling for the messages.

Drove to Waitrose and decided to get the messages first then go for a coffee. As usual we spent more than we intended to, but went for a walk into Stirling for a coffee to console ourselves. Loads of folk milling around taking photos. Tourists! They should be banned. Eventually the tour guide rounded them up, counted the legs and divided by two and seemed satisfied with the result. Then he shepherded them away to their waiting coach. Probably wished he had a sheepdog to help with that!

We drove home Scamp found a note to say there was a parcel waiting in the shed. It was a lovely wee blue pot with a Pleiospilos nelii or Split Rock plant from Hazy. Thank you both very much. I did think of trying to drill a drainage hole in the bottom of the pot, but the risk of breaking it was too great, so I just left it as it is.

After a few trips to the car to empty out all the bags of messages, I went for a walk in St Mo’s and it rained. That didn’t stop me getting some photos of a bunch of wild Geraniums flowering away nicely in among the grass. That was PoD.

Once the Split Rock plant, now named Nelly for obvious reasons, has settled in it will make a great subject for an inside photo.

 

Both of us out today – 26 June 2023

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Life is getting back to normal at last and Scamp’s ankles are thinning down again. Mine are still a bit fat, although yesterday’s dance class helped them slim down a bit. Also a cooler temperature here also made a difference.

Hazy phoned in the morning and we talked for a while about holidays. Our’s is just over and their’s is still to come. Also good that they now have a firm date for their new boiler installation.

Scamp was out at midday for lunch with Mags. I dropped her off at the town centre, then drove to Hamilton through torrential rain to hand over a retirement present for Marion who becomes a free agent tomorrow. Coffee with John and a chance to talk about our holiday and to find out their plans for the next few weeks. Apparently his boss will be talking to my boss to decide on a suitable date for us to go to theirs for dinner/lunch.

Back home I took a walk round St Mo’s and although it was bright sunshine now that the rain clouds have moved on, there wasn’t much to photograph until I saw this bloke sitting fishing. PoD grabbed.

No plans for tomorrow

The rains came – 25 June 2023

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More washing today.

It was one of those drizzly wet days that wasn’t quite up to deciding what it was going to do. With nothing much to do but washing, Scamp made a start in that. She also started pruning back some of the dried out plants in the back garden, in fact, both of us tidied up the plants, dead heading the aquilegia and some of the roses.

In the afternoon the rain started and just forgot to go off. I did manage to grab a few shots of Simply The Best, the golden rose in the front garden. It was looking good with its collection of raindrops. That was PoD.

Later we spoke to Jamie and heard about the trials of having people just turn up to look round your garden. This was the first of the Open Garden days jeu had signed up to and it seemed to be a success. I think they both enjoyed it.

Watched an interesting Canadian GP with the usual suspects at the front.

Finally getting round to making plans for the next day. Scamp’s out to lunch and I’m off to Hamilton.

Dancin’ – 24 July 2023

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Not Aka’s weird gavottes, but dancing with Stewart & Jane. Real dancin’!

Yes, back in the saddle again. Drove to Brookfield for an hour and a half of dancing practise. My legs are still a bit fat from water retention and not enough exercise or whatever else it is. That made squeezing them into my dance shoes a bit of a problem.

First half of the class was Quickstep. More advanced footwork this time that seemed to stick in my head after Aka and partner’s nonsense was kicked out. I’m not entirely sure that it is still there now, but I’m sure we’ll have a go at it in the coming weeks because the teachers are off on holiday for a couple of weeks, so we’ll have plenty of time (tongue firmly in cheek!). A little bit of light relief in a sequence dance after that and then a relaxing Rumba which they seemed to have forgotten that we’d learned it during lock-down. Well we two had learned it, but presumably the rest of the class hadn’t! However, it was slightly different and it was done to a greater depth. Much was made of the footwork which I thought I could do, but not with the delicacy that S&J were demonstrating. Another sequence and we were off the leash for two weeks!

More washing and ironing while I continued rebuilding blog and Flickr. I did go out for a walk to the shops and on the way found a pair of glasses with a broken leg hanging on a lamp post. That fitted nicely with a group on Flickr that is entitled TLOP which stands for Things Left On Posts. That became PoD

We had a look around the garden later to see what we’d managed to save and what we’d lost to two weeks of high temperatures and no rain. Luckily our neighbour had saved most of the front garden because he’d watered it for us, but watering the back garden had been hit and miss with our six foot fence between us, but some things look like they might survive with Scamp’s care and attention. We’ll wait and see if we get some decent rain in the next few days. Lots of pots soaking in buckets just now.

A little rain later, and more promised for tomorrow … hopefully.

Washing – 23 June 2023

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The washing machine was the star of the show today.

Cases were opened and almost two week’s washing bounced out to be categorised as:

Right away!
or
Some time soon.
or
When I’ve got time.

Scamp was organising it and I was just contributing.

I then started on the mammoth task of posting two weeks worth of photos, just over 900 I thought before I discovered lots more that had been taken on phone camera and then the final total became around 1,030. This was going to take some time. Luckily I’d started making bullet points of things to remember from places we’d been.

While Scamp was busy with the first couple of loads of washing I took the A7 out for a walk in St Mo’s and found a Latticed Heath moth. Quite common here at this time of year, but a pretty little thing. That was PoD.

Tomorrow, more of the same and wish for some rain.