Category: dragonflies

Crossing Paths – 11 July 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Today I was going for coffee with Fred and Val at 12.30. Colin was otherwise engaged.  Scamp was going for coffee with Annette at 1.30.  Inevitably our paths would cross.

Since we were both going to the same place at about the same time I offered Scamp a lift because her Wee Red Car needed two new back tyres.  That was also on the list of Things To Do today.  While she went off to window shop, I went to meet the boys.  As usual we had a wide ranging, free and frank discussion of topical matters.  That and a book exchange.  Found out from Val that John Walsh had died and his funeral had been yesterday.  Such a funny guy, John.  He gave me a lot of pointers when I was trying to be an author, away back in the late ’80s.  I never did sell anything, but it was good fun trying.

We were just getting ready to leave when Scamp and Annette arrived, so that put, as they say, ‘The tin lid on things’.  We left them to their toasted teacakes.  Val and Fred headed for home via Tesco and I went straight home to get Scamp’s car and drive down to the Village where I was lucky enough to arrive at a quiet time and got to be next in  the queue.  Took my camera away with me and went for a walk around Cumbernauld Old Church.  I really like this building and it has a very interesting history.  Just search for Cumbernauld Old Church on Google and be amazed at the history right on our doorstep.  I took some photos, but even the 14mm lens wasn’t wide enough to get it all in, so I had to resort to the tried and tested method of taking a bundle of shots and reassembling them in Lightroom.  Wandered back and found the mechanic just tightening up the wheel nuts on the Wee Red Car.  Parted with the £80 for the two tyres and was on my way after about 40 minutes from arriving.  Drove home and was walking down to  the house when Scamp appeared from round the corner.  “Inevitably our paths would cross”!

Switched cars and took the Red Juke out for a run up to Fannyside to look for dragonflies.  Didn’t find any, but it’s early days yet.  I just thought that the warm, clammy weather would have brought out the insects a bit earlier than normal, but that wasn’t the case.  Took a few landscape shots, but really wanted to do a time lapse of the passing clouds with the new camera.  I simply couldn’t find the setting.  I knew it was in the five menus and the eleven sub-menus.  Eventually drove to Tesco to buy today’s dinner which was Breaded Salmon on a Bed of Mash & Peas.  There was a fair bit of garlic in it too.  I hadn’t realised quite how much until Scamp opened the kitchen door a few minutes ago and the anti-vampire scent wafted through.  I’ll be amazed if you can’t actually smell the garlic from this blog post.  The dinner was really good by the way, although one of the ingredients looked a bit strange “A slice of crusty bread with the crust removed”.  Now, excuse my ignorance, but isn’t that just a slice of bread?

After dinner I fed the six frames of Cumbernauld Old Church into Lightroom and it made an almost perfect panoramic shot of the building and that became PoD.  I also found the setting for the time lapse.  Just in case you ever need it, it’s in menu 1, the last item on the list.

Tomorrow we may go visit the Riverside Museum in Glasgow.  Travelling on the bus.

 

Will it stay or will it go? – 21 May 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Remember the big green plant with the spotty leaves Scamp bought yesterday? Well today it was going back … or was it?

To start the day I wanted to create order from the chaos of my painting room. It needed a good clean out and today was going to be the day for it, despite the blue skies outside and the sunshine outside and partly because Scamp was outside, planning!

After about an hour putting stuff away where it should have been and failing utterly to throw anything out except my old bike boots, and even they are not certain to find their way to the tip, the room did look better. I found the top of the chest of drawers again after a it had been reported missing a few weeks ago. That’s when Scamp came up and told me she was taking the big green plant back. According to the website you had 28 days to take things back. It was too big and was not going to fit in the place under the window she’d intended putting it in. I told her perhaps that 28 day rule didn’t apply to plants and was intended for hardware. She wasn’t to be turned from her path, so she phoned the garden centre and was assured that, Yes you could return plants. So it was settled the big green spotty plant was going back. We stood and looked at the place it was sitting among the other plants she’d arranged in the new space. I didn’t think it looked all that out of place, but we’d forgotten that there was a large unmovable Magnolia Stellata standing in the corner and perhaps she was right the green plant was too big. That’s the I had the light bulb moment. We were looking at the plant, in its pot, standing on the ground. When it was planted it would drop in height by about 200mm (8” in old money). Ah, that made a big difference. Hmm, I could see a sea change happening. Maybe, just maybe it would be alright after all. Her final decision was that we should plant it and revise our decision after a year, or at least a few months. Of course we couldn’t take it back then, but we could just dig it up and dispose of it.

The rest of the day was spent gardening. We put up the pea netting and planted the half a dozen pea plants in the raised bed. I think that’s the raised bed effectively full. The leeks are thickening up nicely, the calabrese is growing well not that we’re killing off the slugs that were attacking it and the kale is settling in nicely. The whole garden is looking good. We even measured out the area for the proposed raised bed / planter for the front garden. It’s probably too big for one single planter and I’m suggesting two beds, each 2m long by about 1.5m wide. It’s still in the sketchy ‘back of a fag packet’ stage. When we move on to Inventor and AutoCad it will become more ‘real’.

We were watching the BBC news at lunchtime when the picture froze on the TV and after a few seconds showed the ‘fault’ screen with a number to call if the program did not return. I phoned. Apparently they were “… receiving more calls than normal and the waiting time is 20 minutes”. The recording went on to suggest we phone back at the quiet time between 2pm and 4pm. It was 2.15 at this point. Not only was the TV disrupted, the broadband was dead too. Without broadband we are helpless these days. You need it to get the number to phone to report that your broadband isn’t working. Also, as we live in a ‘shadow area’ not very well covered by 4G we have to go outside to use the mobile phone to check what’s wrong. Eventually, after half an hour, service was resumed. You never miss the water ‘till the well runs dry!

Went out to St Mo’s for a walk in the sun and to take some photos later in the afternoon. Took a few macro shots, but that’s all. The best one of the buttercup got PoD. Saw two dragonflies, not damselflies, but dragonflies while I was out.  That’s most unusual in May. While I was out Scamp cut the back and front grass and also hoovered the downstairs. I know she reads this, so that’s why I’m saying “Leave some of it for me”. Delegation is the name of the game.

Today’s sketch topic was Something You Collect. So, Weemen (Minifigs) or cameras? Why not both? So that’s what I did. Not my best, but maybe I just need to settle down with it for a few days. That’s what’s happening with the liquorice allsorts sketch from yesterday. It’s growing on me.

Tomorrow, of course, is hopefully dancing in the afternoon and also perhaps at night.

On the Beach – 20 November 2018

Posted on by Zogman

We’ve been left. We’ve been right. Today we went straight ahead, across the road and down to the beach.

Paddled in the sea and walked right. Sea was cold but not as rough as the day we went to see the airies.

Walked up through the holiday houses and continued left into Puerto del Carmen and found the post boxes, loads of them! Posted the cards.

Stopped for lunch (burgers with chips) washed down with a beer and a G&T respectively in The Galleon II. A decent Irish pub. Earwigged a conversation between two ‘nice boys’ sitting behind. Watched the yachts sailing past far out in the sea, disappearing then reappearing behind some decorative trees.

Bought some stuff to take back home to the cold country. All the cheap shops are owned or run by Asians!

Back at the hotel Scamp sat and read by the pool and I went to get more photos. Most interesting was a locust and an unconfirmed sighting of a Shrike. I’m beginning to think that the ‘dragonfly’ I was was in fact a locust. They make the same clattering noise with their wings that a dragonfly makes and are just large enough to be mistaken for a small dragon.

Dinner was in the Mexican restaurant at the hotel. It was just ok. The strangest thing I had was Chicken with Mole sauce. The Mole sauce that the chicken is coated in is made from paprika and dark chocolate. Very strange how the sweet spicy sauce works with the chicken. Quesedilas were good to. Afterwards we got an inside seat at the bar with no problem. Not so many German voices now, more English and Irish.

Played UNO and I think I won, but not by the margin Scamp achieved last night.

Tonight’s ‘Acrobat’ show was poor. Two guys who were the acrobats and a girl whose job was to shout “Woo!” at random intervals. Her specialty seemed to be dropping hula hoops. One of the guys was a ‘strongman’. The other did the best act of the night inside a giant hula hoop, looking like Da Vinci’s Vitruvian man.

Sat listening to a singer who thought she was better than she was, accompanied by a good guitarist. Had one dance. Other dancing couple had one dance too. I don’t think the singer wanted us there disturbing her concert. Good luck with the singing career dear, just don’t give up the day job.

Sat on the balcony with G&Ts watching the stars.

Dragonflies, Porridge and Lentil Soup – 21 September 2018

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Although not in that order.

Scamp was feeling a little under the weather this morning so I let her sleep on and got up and made some porridge for me. It’s a long while since I’ve had this Scottish breakfast. You can tell it’s the Scottish version if it comes unsweetened or even with added salt. Only sassenachs have honey / sugar / syrup on their porridge. Me? I take it as it comes. No salt and certainly nothing of a sugary nature. I make mine with oats, and milk. Boiled in the microwave for 2 minutes and 20 seconds. I find it funny, the looks I get, when we go on cruises and I add salt to my porridge. That look of horror from the english who don’t know any better 😉
After an hour or so, I took up her light breakfast. No porridge of any kind for Scamp. I was pleased to see her looking a lot better than yesterday.

We had an easy morning and after lunch Scamp instructed me in the noble art of making Lentil Soup. I’ve made soup before, in fact I’d half intended to make Tomato Soup for tonight’s dinner, but I’ve never attempted soup using the time honoured “a handful of this and a pinch of that and just about this amount of water”. It’s what my mum used in her cooking and what Scamp’s mum used too. I’m more a ‘time and temperature’ person, working to millilitres and grams where possible. Anyway, the soup turned out too thin, so I had to add “Just about a handful more lentils.” Then it was fine. I also made some bread using grams and millilitres, and felt so much more in control.

With the soup thickening and the bread proving, I walked over to St Mo’s to get some photos in the afternoon sunshine, because today we had sunshine almost all day. A bit of a breeze, but nothing like the gales we had midweek. PoD was the black dragonfly resting on the boardwalk over the mashes at St Mo’s. I used my usual method of taking a shot, moving closer, taking a shot, moving closer etc. Except, my final shots were taken at almost 1:1 and the dragonfly hadn’t even twitched. Maybe it was exhausted or maybe it was doing what dragons seem to do, sizing me up.

Came home and had soup and bread for dinner with a recovering Scamp. She does do a good lesson on soup making.

Tomorrow if the weather fairies are correct, should be a decent day, so we may go out for a run in a shiny clean Juke. Where, is open to suggestions!

Ladybirds, Spiders and Mini Trees – 31 August 2018

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All in a days walk for me.

Scamp was out with the witches today for lunch, a late lunch where drink would be taken. Gentlemen were not invited, they were the taxi drivers. We know our place.

I painted for a while in the peace and quiet of the house and sort of improved yesterday’s Inktense disaster. It’s still a work in progress, but the acrylic paint does give a depth that the Inktense couldn’t quite achieve. I added another layer to it tonight after the initial layers had dried and liked the contrast that was created. You may never see it, it’s really a development sketch if I was going to be po faced about it. I’m sure there will be other iterations before it is ready for canvas and oils.

There are really disruptive roadworks with four phase traffic lights down at St Mo’s school this week and they are causing a lot of bother. Because of that I delivered Scamp to the restaurant before starting on the painting. While the painting was drying, I took the Duke out through the roadworks again to fill it with petrol and also to get some photos. I drove up to the back of Fannyside and found a little dragonfly sitting on the grass. Unfortunately the shots weren’t too sharp, so they will never see the light of day, I fear. Then I saw a long legged spider and a white spotted, orange ladybird having a ‘Mexican standoff’. It was a bit of a toss up, but the ladybird won the day. Just across the road I saw the fencepost with the miniature trees growing out of it. No doubt they had grown from seeds dropped by birds or seeds excreted by birds.

I was just walking down the road when I checked my phone and found that my three hours of peace and quiet were at an end and Scamp was requesting her taxi.

That was a good day, with good weather, painting, photography and a little bit of nature too.

Coming Down – 27 August 2018

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Returning to normal today. No security checks, no check-in required, but it was raining.

Warning, this paragraph may contain Technospeak
Scamp went to buy Tesco, or at least that’s how it seemed, considering the weight of the shopping bags I carried in. While she was there, I posted the backlog of photos on Flickr. One of the great things about Lightroom is that you can export three or four days of photos as a catalog from one computer and import them into another. Not only are the photos imported, but any adjustments you’ve made to them are imported too. Another feature of Lightroom is the ability to geotag photos using the ‘Maps’ panel. You just drag and drop the photos on to the map and Lightroom automatically adds the location info to the files. That’s a feature I hadn’t used until today.
Technospeak all gone!

My contribution to the day was watering the slug nematodes into all the exposed earth I could find. I’m sure one wee woman thought I was completely aff ma’ heid when she saw me watering the flower pots just after the rain had stopped. It would have taken too long to explain to her that I was watering in microscopic worms that would kill the slugs and eat their eggs and that the best time to do it was after rain. It would have taken too long and it wouldn’t have changed her opinion. The coarse rose I bought ’Dahn Sarf’, as Ray would say, was a bit better than the normal medium rose, but still not really coarse enough. However it did the job and that’s it done for this year. We’ll see if those microscopic assassins have done their work next year DV.

Since we were going to salsa later than usual, I had enough time left to go over to St Mo’s and capture a pretty red dragonfly, but you’ll have to look on Flickr for that, because I decided that PoD should be a landscape view of the park. Just a little gentle adjustment to brighten it up a bit because, although the rain had stopped, it was a bit dull today.

Salsa tonight was a one hour class with a silly wee Rueda move a bit like the despicable Enroscate  and a reprise of various moves we’d been doing over the last four or five weeks. Knee survived, but it was giving me gyp all through the class. Maybe have to go see David on Wednesday, Tuesday being his day off, as Scamp reminded me tonight.

Tomorrow looks dry, so I may take the Dewdrop out for a run.

The Long Arm of the Law – 20 August 2018

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This morning I was up and out early, very early for me.

Picked up June just after 8am, then picked up the (im)patient, Shona, then it was on to the M80 and a fairly clear run into Glasgow until Robroyston where traffic started to queue up. Actually, I was surprised we hadn’t run into more traffic earlier, but I suppose the workers were already in work and the school run doesn’t usually involve motorway driving. Got parked fairly quickly and easily, sent the mum and daughter off on their travels and settled down with a good book, Becky Chambers – Record of a Spaceborn Few. Strange SF, but really enthralling. I’d only been sitting a few minutes when I saw Scamp’s text -“Remember to look for the coffee shops.” Cryptic, but I knew what she meant and went in search of the coffee shops.

It turned out to be just the one coffee shop, an independent with a large frontage. Got a very decent take-away Americano and a packet of biscuits and went back to the comfort of the car.

Soon afterwards the twosome returned with smiles on their faces. It was a different doctor Shona had seen and he had pronounced her fit and ‘normal’ whatever ‘normal’ means. Anyway, that was the result they were hoping for and puts her back in the queue for the operation she’s been waiting for. He also suggested she had “white coat syndrome” as so many of us have.

Back home I got ready and took the Dewdrop out for a run, having stuffed a poly bag in my rucksack on the chance that I found some brambles along the way. I did and came home with just over 400g of berries and a bruised knee where I’d fallen down a banking in among the brambles. It was a good run, although one knee was aching and the other one was grazed and bruised. Today’s PoD came from that cycling visit. A wee dragonfly perched on some builder’s rubble on a fly-tip site.

After dinner we went to Glasgow to find that the parking charges had gone up and there was no 6.30pm class any more. That’s what happens when you miss one week of salsa. Today’s move was Lizzie and for once I managed to get it right.

Came home and checked in with police 101 to tell them we were available to hand over the footage from the dash cam. Just after 10.30 two polis arrived and had a look at the footage on the computer and agreed that as there wasn’t much damage to the car and none to the occupants, it was unlikely the matter would go to court. Breathe a sigh of relief. Still not totally settled yet, but I should know the final result by the end of the week.

Tomorrow? Going in to Glasgow to get my hair cut and probably cut mats for the painting and the two photos for the flower show.

Just another Monday – 2 July 2018

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Woke early and couldn’t get back to sleep, so started the blog reconstruction.  That gave Scamp an extra hour or so in bed because it looks as if she’s picked up somebody’s cold in the recycled air of the bus yesterday.

Thankfully I’d a couple of blog posts written on the Linx 12×64 that were ready to post. Written on Live Writer, the best blog composer on any platform, it was an easy job to post it. Since the last two days of the cruise were sea days I wasn’t willing to pay the exorbitant price for the Maritime WiFi, so I saved the files and posted them when we were back home. Then it was down to writing a few more of the blogs from the bullet points I’d written while at sea. Catchup is the name of the game here.

After that, it was the inevitable trip to Tesco to refill the fridge, the vegetable rack and the fruit bowl.

A quick trip to St Mo’s got a few pictures to use and the dragonfly shot became PoD. While I was there I put on my Fireman Sam hat and doused a smouldering fire in the woods. What idiots thought it was a good idea to build a fire in pine woods when everything was tinder dry. I sometimes wonder if the numpties here just switch off their brains in hot weather to avoid the overheating.

That was about it for the first day back home. No dancing tonight as we didn’t know the whereabouts of our salsa teacher and I for one didn’t fancy the alternatives! Instead we watered the garden again and the refreshment seems to be working. Still hot here.

Probably more of the same tomorrow

Zoglets Everywhere – 10 June 2018

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They may be Frogs or Froglets to some, but to me they must be Zoglets.

The day didn’t start well with pain in my knee, but once I was up, showered and with a couple of paracetamol in me, I felt much better.

<Technospeak>
This bit is very complicated, so just keep your eyes closed when you’re reading it JIC. Right. Last night I made a backup of the Linx before it got a chance to install the Spring Update. After that I allowed it to do the update, as if I had a choice! It was taking hours. Two hours in, it had done less than 20%, so I halted the update process by doing that old trick of holding down the power button for ten seconds. I connected up the magic usb memory stick and the backup drive, booted to the memory stick and reinstalled the May backup which doesn’t have the overload of the downloaded Spring Update (SU) and left it there.

Today I booted that May backup. I don’t know what went wrong, because I’ve used this backup before, but everything went screwball. Restarted again and reinstalled last night’s backup with the SC taking up 10GB of extra disk space. As soon as I booted Windows asked when it should do the upgrade. Ach, to hell with it. Just do it. I’m pretty sure you can downgrade again, almost sure. This upgrade went much quicker. The whole thing was over in less than 2 hours. After I’d answered all the questions with NO, the system worked fine. I’m now toying with the idea of deleting the 19GB of ‘Windows.old’ that is Microsoft’s own backup, just in case something does go wrong. Perhaps, because of all the hassle so far, I’ll just leave it. Ok Eyes Open time JIC.
</Technospeak>

Planted my last two seed potatoes today in an enormous black bucket today. They’re meant to be ‘earlies’, just not that early. With that and with a bit of cutting and pruning I was finished with gardening for today.

Scamp chased me out, telling me to go out for a walk for half an hour. I took her at her word and went over to St Mo’s for a walk. That’s where I found the Zoglets. There must have been hundreds of them wandering around. That wasn’t PoD though, the dragonfly took that award. Surprisingly, it was the exact same dragon as yesterday’s PoD! What’s the chances of that? I did feel better after the walk. When you’re just sitting about in the house, aches in you knees seem to be there all the time with you. When you’re out walking, you’re too busy looking around you to notice the nag in your knee. Well done Scamp. Well done too for dinner tonight. Sea Bass with Broccoli and New Potatoes. Can’t go wrong with that, especially cooked by an expert.

Tomorrow? Hospital for Scamp in the morning. Scamp out for afternoon tea later and I’ve got the results of my blood test after that. Finally, we’re hoping to go dancing at STUC. Phew!

Nematode Nemesis – 8 June 2018

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Slugs and snails beware. The end is nigh.

A package dropped through the letterbox today and in it were two boxes of Nematodes. One to treat the garden and hopefully eradicate the slug infestation and another to do the same for vine weevil. I’m not sure we have vine weevil, but I suspect we have and I know for certain that we have more than our fair share of slugs. I don’t really mind the shell carrying snails, but I hate slugs. The instructions on the box said to keep them in the fridge. I said no thanks and put them outside in the bin that holds the fertiliser and compost bags.

I took some photos of the Ladybird Poppies, macro, of course, and it was one of those that became PoD. Also on the agenda for today was putting up a frame for the peas. I’d bought the wood yesterday and also some woodscrews. It’s a pain having to buy these things, but like I said yesterday, I don’t have access to these materials and consumables any more! The frame wasn’t too difficult to erect and screw in place. The netting was a bit more of a faff, getting it stretched across the frame and clipped in place with staples and cable ties. Even after all this work, the bloody minded pea plants wouldn’t hang on to the netting. The ungrateful things just hung there for a minute or so and then dropped back to the ground. After a bit of delicate weaving of the tendrils, they eventually got the idea. I think I must have planted dim peas.

<Technospeak>
I spent the afternoon clicking and typing away at the new Win10 machine, trying to get it to create a macro to allow me to log on to my blog. I can do it on the Mac using a macro created with Keyboard Maestro, but there’s nothing like that app in WindowsWorld. You have to resort to some cryptic code in AutoHotKey to get anything like the same result. I finally managed to adapt a piece of code I found on an internet forum, but it only works with Internet Explorer. It’ll be another afternoon of swearing before I can get it to do the same on Firefox. Finally when I shut down the PC it wanted to do an upgrade. Now is that different from an update? Who knows. Maybe when I switch on the computer today everything will be different. I doubt it.
</Technospeak>

A walk across St Mo’s later cleared my head and gave me some photos of dragonflies and also a couple of coots feeding their scraggy little red headed young.  A cool breeze at times, but still a beautiful day.

After dinner it was time to deal with the pesky slugs. Dissolved the contents of the nematode packet in a 5 litre bucket of water and stirred frantically. Removed 500ml (ish) into the watering can and diluted it to 5 litres of slug nemesis. Tried to water it over the raised bed with the rose, but found that the rose was too fine. Had to remove it and just pour it on. Repeated this round the plants and pots in the garden until the bucket was empty. I should have watered it in later, but it was getting a bit cool, so we left it to nature, it’s supposed to rain tonight.

Tomorrow we may go to Stirling to look for cheap trainers for me and lunch for us.