Category: Animals

Dances with Wolves – 25 February 2021

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Honestly, it will all become clear

It was a lovely morning which we kind of wasted by sitting inside. We had a webinar booked with the man from Falkirk. There is the risk that listening to someone who is so steeped in his subject may turn out to be heavy in jargon and ultimately tedious. No fear of that with this twosome. Both he and his sidekick explained the intricacies of the financial world in simple terms, leavened with a fair amount of humour. He and his female counterpart would make excellent teachers.

By the time we were through and had returned to the here and now, it was almost lunchtime so we had our toasted cheese and listened to Nic the Chick twisting and turning, trying to make everyone believe she’s squeaky clean. Now I much prefer the Sturgeon to the Salmond, but neither of them are to be believed. As my pal John would say, “You know they’re lying because their lips are moving.” That sums up politics and politicians as far as I’m concerned. To clear our heads we went for a walk.

We needed food for dinner, so we walked down to the shops, via St Mo’s because the weather was still good, if not as bright as it had been earlier. Came home laden with more than we had intended getting, but who’s counting how many cakes we need?

Today’s prompt was “Wolf” and since there are no wolves near where we live, I resorted to Google to find some likely subjects. With half a dozen chosen I dumped them into Google Drive and sat down to finish today’s Sudoku. Then I dumped some kidney beans, some chilli paste and a few hot peppers in yesterday’s bolognese and voila we have a chilli for tonight’s dinner. Scamp was having fish with veg and rice, so we agreed to half the rice between us and dinner was sorted. Mine was a bit tasteless, but boy it was hot. Wish I’d bought some sour cream at the shops.

After dinner had slid down, we attempted Stewart and Jane’s waltz Spin Turn. I tried it in my dancing shoes, but the didn’t slide enough on the carpet. I tried it in my sox, but the gripped the carpet too. I didn’t trust my bare feet to Scamp’s dancing shoes, but the most help was Scamp’s count of the beats and also slowing down Stewart and Jane’s tutorial video to 75%. I even found how to use iMovie to slow the video but not distort the speech. Perfect. Well, as close to perfect as we were going to get tonight.

I’d already sorted out PoD which is some Cladonia lichen with a little moss tree making a macro garden of sorts. Looks totally alien to me as most macro shots do. It’s a miniature world of its own. Time to tackle that wolf. I glanced at some tutorials on YouTube that promised methods for drawing realistic wolf heads, but most of them were from influencers who just shout at you and then stumble through 25 minutes of ‘tutorial’ with about 5 minutes of content. After suffering a few of these, I took my sketchpad and pencils up stairs, turned the heater on low and had a good look at the wolf pictures I’d found on Google. From them I built up a framework of a dog-like head and from there stretched out some parts and reduced others until a lupine head appeared. A little bit of yellow watercolour for the eye and we were done.

Tomorrow the weather looks settled, so I think we’ll try a drive somewhere with a flask of coffee and a couple of pieces. A February picnic.

 

Sunshine for our anniversary – 17 February 2021

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Forty eight years ago we tied the knot and the knot is still tight forty eight years later.

I actually got a message from Parcel Force to give me a one hour time slot for the delivery of my new lens. It wasn’t an anniversary present. Nothing to do with anniversary. Pure coincidence this time. The time slot was for 11.45 – 12.45. Right in the middle of what looked like a good day, but of course they got the time wrong. About 10.15 there was a knock at the door and there was a parcel on the doorstep with a Parcel Force man retreating.

After opening up the big box and extracting quite a heavy piece of metal and glass, taking a few photos, just to make sure it worked, we planned the rest of the day. We had dinner to buy at Tesco and meds to collect at the next door chemist, then we might go for a spin out in a world that had colour, not simply white.

It was when we left Tesco I thought we might go to Motherwell, the Capital city of North Lanarkshire and find Baron’s Haugh which is a nature reserve and parkland where my brother was taken loads of great photos.
So … we were heading for a nature reserve with plenty of opportunities for nature and macro photography and I remembered, just as we were driving down the slip road to the motorway, that I’d left my brand new macro lens at home, because when we left we’d intended to tootle round Cumbersheugh for half an hour and there would be limited photo opportunities there that I hadn’t already made use of. Numpty.

The reason for Baron’s Haugh in particular was because of a FB post from one of the salsa beginners from last year, berating me for being less than complimentary about Motherwell in general. She waxed lyrical about Baron’s Haugh and we though we should give it a try sometime. We got there after only one wrong turn (sat nav hadn’t a clue for once) and had a half hour walk past one of the bird watching areas in the sunshine although the wind was cold. We were standing on a crossroads of paths and I was checking exactly where we were with the OS map on my phone when a deer ran past, then another and another. In total, four deer ran past, less than 50m away. Motherwell is certainly a lot more rural than I remember it. We walked back to the car, but didn’t see any more wild animals and drove home, agreeing to go back again, better prepared for the conditions. Isn’t it strange that it took a Polish girl about the same age as our daughter to tell us about this parkland, almost on our doorstep.  Thank you Mirka!

Dinner tonight was individual fish pies from Tesco. Sounds a bit downmarket for an anniversary dinner, but they were rather posh fish pies in little thin wooden baskets and were baked in the oven. Washed down with a very nice bottle of white and followed by Eve’s Pudding from M&S. The only thing we made (Scamp made) was bruschetta as a starter and it too was intensely tasty.

We listened to Album II by Loudon Wainwright III (Me and my friend the Cat!) and reminisced for the second time recently. A great day.

PoD was a fence post covered in ivy from our Motherwell walk.

I used coloured pencils for today’s prompt of “Violin”. Not quite what I was intending it to look like. A bit clumsy but a change from paints and graphite or ink sketches. It’s OK, that’s all I’ll say.

The other day I almost cut my hair. “… It was getting kind of long. Could have said it was in my way, but I didn’t and I wonder why …” Tomorrow I may do that thing.

As you will have guessed this is another catch up. Hopefully the last for a while.

Oh no, more snow – 8 February 2021

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We woke to a white world today.

No more piling, this was real snow and a fair amount of it too. At first the air was clear, but soon the wind dragged more clouds from the east and they began to drop their load of snow, driven along by that same wind. Soon we could watch a full strength blizzard outside the window. We agreed that it would be best to wait a while before we went out for a walk.

Later when a few blizzards had blown through, the skies cleared and the sun shone. We gave it another fifteen minutes or so before we dared to get the boots on and go for that walk. However, it was not to be a long walk today, just in case the snow returned.

We need not have worried because the snow was kind enough to stay away long enough for us to complete our walk. I did get today’s PoD which was my favourite wild flower, the Cow Parsley holding little pockets of snow in its talons. The sun shining through the trees gave a bit of dappled light to brighten up the background and the wind was calm enough to prevent too much movement. I used the old Sigma 105mm macro lens for it. It’s more or less a manual lens now. It has no internal motor, so cannot autofocus which is a great disadvantage for a macro lens. However, it still takes exceedingly good photographs for its age. It’s definitely Old Glass.

Back home and after lunch which was Scamp’s minestrone soup, with lemons (!), I started to rough out today’s sketch for which the prompt was “Puppy”. The first rough looked good and assured me that I could do this. I’m not a great fan of dogs which is what puppies grow up to be, so I’m told. Cats I’m ok with, but not dogs. But that’s why I enjoy I enjoy drawing from lists on groups like EDiF and 28DL. It forces me to face my demons, even if the demons are puppies. The thing to remember is that you’re not drawing or painting a fluffy puppy, you’re just drawing a shape and shading it to give some 3D appearance to it. I liked the finished result.

While I was puppy drawing, Scamp was baking. She was making a Sticky Toffee Pudding. I did help out a bit. I was in charge of liquidising the dates and water mixture that would go into the pudding. It looked absolutely disgusting. However I must say that the finished article was worth all that messy stuff. Probably not the least fattening food I’ve eaten, but it was disgustingly good!

Although we had our walk in a snowy landscape this morning without any of the white stuff falling from the sky, during the afternoon it made up for that with continuous blustery blizzards. Tonight it’s continuing to drop more snow on us. I’m really glad we’re not intending to go anywhere tomorrow.

A day for recharging batteries – 31 January 2021

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After the biz of yesterday, we both agreed we needed a slower pace today.

We did think of going out for a walk in the morning, but although it was bright enough, it was cold and there was a scattering of snow on  the ground, so we talked ourselves out of it. I think I might have eaten just a little too much yesterday, so a light lunch was called for. On Friday I’d bought half a sourdough loaf I don’t really like sourdough bread to eat on its own, but toasted it is delicious, so we had scrambled egg on toast.

Feeling a lot better, I settled down to documenting yesterday’s highlights. My usual readers will probably have read all about it by now. Scamp was pruning the greenery that was covering some of the blooms we got yesterday and that made the display look even better. With photos and blog posted, I decided it was safe to go for a walk in St Mo’s. Nobody had moved from their parking spot today and I was loathe to give up my space and have to park by the side of the road when I got back from somewhere more interesting than St Mo’s. Besides, I’d left it a bit late and the light was already fading.

<Technospeak>
I walked round the pond, then out through the woodland looking for likely subjects. I wanted to try out a new focusing method on the Sony, called “Back Button Focusing”. I’d read about it before, but it seemed a bit complicated to set up although most photogs seem happy with the results. Basically, you nominate a button to be your focusing button and remove the shutter button’s ability to refresh focus. Then you can take your time focusing using the back button and when you’re happy, press the shutter to take the photo. It only took me about ten minutes to set it up and it did seem to work as described. I took some photos using it, but couldn’t work out how to return the setup to the camera default where a half press on the shutter sets focus. I decided the light was fading too much and I was almost sure I had at least one shot on the card that would make PoD, so I set off for home.  It had indeed worked. Most of the photos I’d take were solidly in focus. After re-reading the instructions I found the magic button on the camera that would not only return it to normal service, but could be used to switch on the Back Button Focusing again. PoD turned out to be a monochrome leaf dangling pitifully from a branch with new buds starting to form. The old and the new.
</Technospeak>

After yesterday’s overindulgence, tonight’s dinner was a much pared down affair. A simple Spaghetti a la Carbonara. It might have been even better if I’d cooked the spaghetti properly, but it was edible.

Dancing class tonight centred on the rumba routine we’d been learning and I’d been dreading. We had a practise before the class and it was going fine until the music started, then it went to pot. However by the end of the lesson it was looking and feeling much better. I actually enjoyed it.

Spoke to JIC and found out that Vixen now has an injured shoulder, caused, according to JIC, by her having two speeds, Full Ahead and Stop. After being out walks with her I can understand that.

A gentler G&T each tonight and an early(ish) bed again. Temperature is already heading towards zero. More snow predicted for tomorrow, the first day of February and the start of the 28 Drawings Later challenge on FB.

The Bin Man and The Girls – 25 January 2021

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Today I was a bin man. Not for us, but for my niece, although a few of our empty bottles went along for the ride.

Our niece was having problems getting her rubbish collected and she asked me to help her out. It wasn’t really a problem. She’d done all the hard work of sorting into different bags. I was just the transport to the council skips. For once there was no queue and no need to check proof of residential status. Just an “Ok buddy. Go right in.” Shona had done a good job of sorting all the paper, cardboard, general waste and glass. All I had to do was chuck the bags in the skips, empty the paper in the bins and the cardboard into the hopper for the crusher. Then the good bit, smashing the bottles in the big steel boxed with the rubber seals over the openings. I just love that smashing sound. Someone once told me that it’s only men who have a fascination with bonfires and throwing anything into them that isn’t bolted down. The same is true with water. Women want to walk beside it. Men want to throw things into it. Apparently it’s the same with recycling centres. Men love throwing empty bottles into those boxes to hear the smash. It’s some primal instinct.

With that done I drove up to Fannyside to see The Girls. The sheep, some white, some black who live in a field up there. The last time Scamp and I were there, the sheep stood for ages, like statues, watching us. Today they were more interested in their lunch which the farmer had just served. I took their photo anyway, because I knew they expected it. Nice backdrop of the Campsie Fells and their light covering of snow with cloud shadows giving some added 3D effects. On the way back I stopped to grab a shot of an old ruined farm which, according to the OS map is Jawhill. It’s very picturesque and would be even more so if it wasn’t for those bloody wind farms behind it, two different ones. Blots on the landscape.

Stopped at Tesco on the way home for food. Veg for soup and also milk and bread. When I got home, and after lunch, Scamp went out on a foraging mission armed with her shopping voucher from the Office for National Statistics and Oxford Uni. We had decided that we’d both use half our money to buy food for the local food banks and half we’d keep. Seems only fair. She returned looking pleased with herself. Half of her first payment now gracing the food bank donation box in Tesco. My turn later in the week.

It was Burn Night tonight and it’s traditional in this house to have Haggis, Neeps (which my spellchecker doesn’t understand) and Tatties (which it does!). So that was dinner sorted. Scamp was cooking. I was footering about with today’s photos. ‘The Ladies’ won PoD as I knew they would and should.

It started snowing about an hour ago and it’s still hard at it. I expect it will be mostly gone by tomorrow because it’s forecast to turn to rain later, but then again, they might get it completely wrong. We can only wait and see. If the weather is decent we might go for a walk.

The Ladies – 15 December 2020

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Parcels to send today. Going down south by different routes.

Parcels loaded into the car this morning and off to post them. One going by Royal Mail because the postman knows where our son and his wife live. One going by DPD because they are cheaper. It’s a race then. Which one wins. Which one gets there quickest. We’ll find out later in the week, hopefully.

With the heavy posting done, it was time for a drive into the wilds. The wilds of Fannyside Moor. It was a beautiful morning with blue sky and just a little cloud or two. Once we got there we just sat in the car and listened. Listened to nothing. Just the distant sound of the occasional car running across the moss. That’s the peat moss, the moorland road across the peat moss. A single track road with passing places in the middle of the Central Belt in Scotland. Not ten miles from Cumbersheugh and it’s a single track road with passing places. This is the 21st century isn’t it. Anyway, we sat and listened to the radio for a while and then let the silence rule us. Perfect peace.

When we got out we found a bunch of ladies standing watching. Lady sheep, that is. Some black and some white, but all waiting and watching. Sheep have this disturbing way of looking at you that makes you think you should really turn round because something may be creeping up on you from behind. They also look as if they’re sizing you up, challenging you. Actually, I think they were just waiting for the farmer to bring their lunch. I took some photos and we walked down the road a way. Took some photos of an old ruined farmhouse and then came back. They were still there, the ladies. Still watching. Still waiting. Took some more photos and they all drifted away, bored with the show.

Drove home for lunch and Scamp went to visit her sister while I filled my birthday pen and started on the pile of unwritten Christmas cards. I got halfway through them when Scamp returned. I’d had enough of that for now, so I grabbed my camera and went to bolster my collection of photos. I needn’t have bothered. It was too late and the rain came on. I get the feeling it just waits for me some times. Came home and had a look at the photos, but as I suspected, they weren’t worth the bother. Went back to finish off the cards.

I don’t usually approve of the ‘one size fits all’ catch up ‘what we did this year’ stories that used to be all the rage at Christmas, but I decided that this year had been such a momentous one it was worthwhile cataloging it. If for nothing else, it showed our friends that they are not alone. We’ve all had a terrible year. Some worse that others, but nobody got away lightly in 2020. I’ll include it in some of the Christmas cards, just to keep folk in the loop.

Tomorrow we pay another whack of money to Royal Mail when we have to buy the second dose of stamps for this load of cards.

Tomorrow looks wet for most of the morning and early afternoon. What fun today was, though. I wonder if those sheep are still standing. Watching, Waiting.

An almost wasted day – 12 October 2020

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Today was wet.

Not thumping down torrential wet, more a smirr that strengthened to a drizzle, then returned to a smirr again. Almost turned itself off to catch the unwary before continuing again as a slightly heavier drizzle. Look, just give us a soaking and be done with it, but no it was lazy rain.

I was struggling with the Sony website today. I have never seen such a convoluted piece of badly written HTML. Ok, Hazy I hear you, nobody uses HTML any more, but the coding on that site is horrendous. Captchas, don’t talk to me about Captchas. Those infuriating “Prove you’re not a robot” nine picture grids where you have to identify ‘crosswalks’. I live in Scotland you moron, we don’t have crosswalks. We don’t even have happywalks these days. Eventually got through the maze of crosswalks, bicycles, school buses and traffic lights, only to be told “There’s been a problem”. No kidding, a problem eh? On this magnificent piece of artistic code, there’s been a problem. The only reason I was there was to download a shitty app that didn’t work because it needed another piece of code that it wanted me to download after I’d signed into another webpage. What, and go through all that Captcha nonsense again? I think not. Sony I know none of your grunts are reading this, but you really need to employ humans to do your coding. The monkeys you have just now are simply messing you about.

There, that’s got that out of my system. By the time I’d given up on Sony and had lunch the clouds were lifting, literally, the clouds outside the window were lifting. I went out to buy some milk and got today’s PoD on the way back as the sun came out. It’s pretty good, but it would have been better if I’d remembered to set the ISO back to a reasonably 400 rather than the 6400 I’d been using for practise earlier. Still, it shows the power of a full frame sensor. Every year I promise myself I won’t shoot the golden leaves we get in autumn. Every year I give in to the temptation, and so it was this year. Low, warm coloured sun just lights everything up and I’m lost in it.

Sketch prompt today was ’Slippery’. I almost gave up and did my own thing, because I’m beginning to hate these vague prompts. Too airy fairy for me. However for another day I stuck to the script and drew a frog. They don’t come much more slippery than a frog, unless they’re an MP. I think I prefer frogs. You know where you are with a frog.

That was about it for today. Tomorrow I hope we’ll go out somewhere for a walk in the autumn sun and I’ll forget about Captchas and the ISO will be set to something sensible, maybe even Auto, and we can enjoy the light. Before that, I’m booked for coffee with Val.

The hill that keeps giving – 12 September 2020

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That’s how Sim described it and that’s how it felt.

After breakfast and coffee JIC drove us in to Kirby Steven. Walked through the town and then up the hill past the cricket ground in beautiful sunshine, then up, up and even more up we went round the quarry and eventually finished up beside a field with two alpacas, or maybe they were llamas. I didn’t know the difference. They made this really strange whistling sound, not at all like any of us expected. We declared at that point that we had reached our target for the day and headed back down, down and further down that hill. walked back through the town and then drove to the Coop where we bought supplies for tonight’s dinner. I’ll remember it as having the slowest self-service till I’ve ever used.

Back home and after lunch we recovered from the exercise of climbing that hill. Later I made veg chilli although I’d forgotten to get kidney beans. Everyone was complimentary, but I think it was the consolation prize.

Watched Netflix at night on JIC’s new Roko stick.

Out on the bike – 30 August 2020

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With a little fruit picking too.

One of those mornings when you wake early and can’t get back to sleep, so the best thing to do is get up and have breakfast. That’s what I intended to do, but instead I took breakfast back to bed and read for an hour. After that there were dishes to do (in the dishwasher) and washing to do (in the washing machine). With the machines doing all the grunt work, I settled down to read the news on my phone with a cup of coffee and a catch-up with Scamp still in University-city, St Andrews. Hung out he washing, although the complete absence of any sort of breeze meant it would take the clothes a long time to dry, despite the warm air temperature. Not to worry, I’d plenty of time.

I took the Dewdrop out for a run, but as well as my usual camera in the rucksack, I’d a couple of poly bags to collect some brambles. Now, you may know them as Blackberrys and argue that it’s the plant that’s the Bramble. If that’s the case, then you’re probably not Scottish and definitely not Central Scottish. Here it’s the economic language. Why have two names for what is essentially the same thing. The bushes AND the fruits are Brambles. That’s it settled. Those wee black berries (note the subtle difference that space makes) were in much shorter supply than I’d anticipated and it took me some time to find a good fruit bearing bush, but eventually I managed to pick just over 300g of black fruit.

While I was out I noticed a whole host of swallows congregating on the overhead lines and wondered if it’s almost time for them to make their annual migration to warmer climes.  I also wondered, as I have before, how they know it’s time and if they can sense the change of the seasons much more accurately than we mere humans can.

I’d only been home for about 10 minutes when Scamp arrived. We compared car journeys and weather, then it was time to make dinner. Tonight we were having Veg Chilli with just about everything that wasn’t bolted down going into the pot. After some delicate adjustments to the spicing and the condiments we settled down to a fairly tasty chilli. No recipe was needed or recorded. Sometimes that’s the best way, unless you want to make a second lot sometime in the future, then you’ve to try to rack your brains to remember what went into that great chilli you made ages ago. Maybe one of these days I’ll write it down, but I doubt it.

Watched the Ferraris having a terrible time at the Belgian GP with, maybe, a little snigger. Also watched George Russel escape unscathed from what could have been a very nasty accident when a wheel from another car came bounding towards him at a reported 125mph (how do they know what speed the wheel was travelling at?).
Other than that it was a dire day for Ferrari and a great day for Mercedes and Hamilton in particular.

That was about it apart from sampling another new bottle of gin with the addition of a grapefruit slice to spice things up. PoD was a picture of three cows in a field composed using rule of thirds and PoD because I liked it.

Tomorrow we have no real plans.

Dull and damp – 22 June 2020

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That just about sums it up for today.

Scamp was feeling a bit a bit queasy in the morning and only had a very light lunch. She didn’t feel like going anywhere, but that wasn’t a problem because the morning weather was dull leaden skies and a fair smattering of showers.

We needed milk and bread, we also needed to get out of the house. A walk in the fresh air would do us the world of good, so we walked to the shops. Not surprisingly the rain had ensured that there weren’t any big queues with the possible exception of Home Bargains which always has at least a few folk queueing. I think people queue up outside it after the doors are shut and locked at 6pm. It just seems to be what you do outside this great retail experience. We weren’t going there. We just nipped into The Food Warehouse, or Iceland as you will know it and got the essentials. That means bread, milk and chocolate biscuits. Walked back home and although we’d been prepared for one of the showers that had bedevilled us all morning, we never saw a single raindrop.

Back home I decided I’d risk a walk to St Mo’s and got today’s PoD which is either a ‘toadlet’ or a ‘froglet’. I’ve yet to find a good way of telling these amphibians apart. Saw quite a few of them making heavy weather of their crossing from one side of the path to the other. Given that the stones they are navigating through, and over, are bigger than them, it must have been an exhausting journey. Most seemed to make it across safely.

Back home, Scamp was feeling a bit better. A gentle bit of retail therapy works wonders and if this Lockdown is teaching us anything, it’s that we need to take our time. Dinner was plain fare. Just spaghetti with a tomato sauce.

Today I made the decision to abandon the list and paint or draw something that interests me for a change. There are only a few days left in the list anyway and about fifty percent of these lists are just copied from the previous year, so I wasn’t missing much. Today I chose a walk we did on the bridlepaths around Baldock with JIC and Sim many years ago. It’s from a photo and dates from 2013. I remember that day well. I painted it in watercolour on watercolour paper that Scamp gave me for Christmas. This the first thing I’ve completed using it and it’s much nicer to paint on than the sketch book I’ve been using.

Don’t know what we’re doing tomorrow. It rather depends on the weather and how Scamp is feeling.