Category: Flowers

A cold day – 2 June 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Well, I felt it was cold even although Scamp didn’t seem to agree.

While she was out planting and pruning plants I was in communication with Hazy trying to fix the on-line problem. Late last night I thought I’d found the solution. In fact I’d actually found the problem, but with a bit of help from Hazy it became more easy to understand what was going on. I say that, but it took me a few hours to get my head round it properly.

I ended up leaving it to the expert and sat and read for an hour or so in the afternoon, while Hazy dug deeper into the problem and Scamp started pruning her plants into a better shape. I wonder, do all women have this innate ability to be calm in the face of adversity? Probably they do.

Got a message from one of the tea dancers for a photo of the Japanese Garden for his wife to paint. That took my mind off my digital problems for an hour or so trying to source the original.

In the late afternoon we went to Kirsty’s class to be faced with the Viennese Waltz. We’d learned part of it from Stewart & Jane a few months ago and it was doable. The tempo was suited to absolute beginners and the steps were easily accomplished. Not today and not under Kirsty’s tutelage. After a couple of circuits I was out of breath and Scamp was feeling dizzy. If you watch it on Strictly, it looks so easy and the speed is not a problem. How different it is when you try to dance it. For the first time ever, we left the class early. I don’t want to see another Viennese Waltz again.

Dinner was a pizza, a small one. Then the message I was waiting for from Hazy. She’d done most of the work required to remove most of the problems and had in fact removed the remaining bits and pieces. I really don’t know how she can do all that. Amazing. Between us we wrote out or reply. Hopefully we’ll know tomorrow what the result is.

PoD was a shot of Scamp’s Thalictrum plant. It’s a lovely plant with soft pink flowers that bob nicely in the breeze.

Thankfully we’ve just been given the all-clear by the host company. A weight off my mind!

Webmonkeys Rule!!

Maybe looking for a pair of trainers tomorrow.

A lazy Sunday gone bad – 1 June 2025

Posted on by Zogman

It started as a normal Sunday, then it deteriorated into a bit of a mess.

It rained for a while, then the weather fairies took charge and turned the taps on full blast for most of the morning. It was on and off for the rest of the day. In the afternoon I did manage to get out during a short dry spell and grabbed today’s PoD which was a shot of Fiery Tempest a brilliant scarlet red Geum which manages to bounce back from the buffeting wind that is channelled down between the houses.

Dinner tonight was Mushroom and Chicken in Pasta an invention of Scamp’s that went down very nicely with a bottle of South African red wine.

Spoke to Jamie later and heard about the preparations for the Open Gardens show down south. It sounds like a great idea at first, but there is an enormous amount of work involved.

Watched a bad tempered Spanish F1 GP. Lots of seemingly pointless crashes at high speed. Just cool down guys!

Halfway through talking to Jamie, I realised I had a worrying message on my phone to the effect that I was breaking one of the rules of the hosting company. Phoned Hazy and the upshot is that she seems sure she can fix it. What would I do without a Webmonkey?

Tomorrow, I’ll dig deeper into this morass … provided I get some sleep tonight.

The last day of May – 31 May 2025

Posted on by Zogman

How quickly May disappeared!

Usually I’m sketching and painting in May for EDIM (Every Day In May), but this year was too complicated with many things going on. Too many things, so I decided to forego EDIM for a year and de-stress a bit. I think it worked. Looking forward now to June and hoping to get good weather like we did in May.

We were up early today, 8.30am is early for us! We were heading to Brookfield at the new time of 9.45am for the rest of the summer. It was allegedly to give us more time in the afternoon for something that wasn’t dancing. I wasn’t sure it was a good idea.
Also, it was a small class, only 3 couples including us and I wasn’t sure if that was a good idea too. However it did give the teachers a great opportunity to teach almost ‘one-to-one’ and that seemed to work. It also meant the teachers had their eagle eyes on us and, as I sometimes say, no room to hide.

We survived the first dance which was an old favourite, the Charnwood Cha Cha. Lots of little bits and pieces we’d forgotten. Hadn’t realised how long ago we learned this dance.

The next lesson was Rona’s Rumba. We’d learned it in Perth a couple of weeks ago, but today we began to put things in their correct place and it started to make more sense, but it’s still a bit complicated than our usual rumba.

Just to break things up and because there was nowhere to hide, the next track was House of Bamboo. I’ve never danced it apart from an aborted try about a month ago. I tried it again and although I did fill in some of the spaces I’d created in my last attempt, but I’m still not sold on it.

A chance to dance the new quickstep took us into the details of dancing a Fish Tail. The little details make this dance worth trying again and again. By the end of it, I was more secure in my dancing of this shape I’ve tried sometimes successfully and often unsuccessfully. It needs work.
A couple of sequence dances finished a strange morning at Brookfield.

Drove home half intending to go the M74/M73 route, but then decided Kingston Bridge would be more sensible. In the end, Kingston won, and it was the right answer.

The rest of the day can be summed up in two words “It Rained”. We had been warned by the weather fairies that there might be Thundery Rain. Although we didn’t see or hear any actual thunder, we did hear the rain and it was heavy.

In one of the dry spells I took the chance to shoot a couple of flowers. A bloom from Gertrude Jekyll got PoD, with my Peony Karl Rosenfield a close second. I had one flower from it last year, but this year I have at least five flower heads. A beautiful flower and one of my mum’s favourites. I hope she likes it.

No plans for tomorrow, but the weather doesn’t look promising.

On the mend – 30 May 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Scamp went off to FitSteps in the morning and left me to my own devices for an hour.

I started writing these blog posts and trying to put the right stories with the correct days. Not as easy as it sounds with a heid full of sawdust!

Early in the afternoon I went to collect my meds and got some shopping done in Tesco, just to make sure I could actually think straight again. I’d squirted more salty water up my nose and was definitely feeling a lot better.

I even went for a walk with the A7iii and the long Tamron lens to St Mo’s. Captured today’s PoD which was a couple of Meadow Cranesbills wild flowers. Also available is a shot of six newly hatched cygnets on the pond.

Dinner last night was Chicken Milanese with potatoes and cabbage. Delicious! Scamp made it, of course.

We may be going dancing tomorrow.

Loaded with cold – 29 May 2025

Posted on by Zogman

A dull day, just got that little bit duller for me with a stuffed up nose and an annoying cough.

  • Scamp packed me back to bed and went off to do some shopping.
  • I did as I was told for once and had an extra hour of snoozing.
  • Felt better after a shower and a few squirts of the magic Sterimar decongestant.
  • I even managed a PoD which is a wee posey of flowers in their glass vase.
  • Early bed tonight after another shower and another dose of magic.
  • It works!
  • You won’t be surprised if I say I have no plans for tomorrow!

A dull day – 24 May 2025

Posted on by Zogman

  • After a lazy morning, we intended to go to the Lavender fields, but after some investigation we found that they weren’t open for another two weeks.
  • Instead, Neil drove us to the Lavender fields cafe where we had lunch.
  • We spoke to one of the gardeners at the cafe who had once lived with a man from Glasgow, but left him because she couldn’t understand a word he said. Cheek!!
  • Neil made Turkey Pilaff for dinner.
  • PoD was a rose from Hazel’s front garden.

Hot again today – 21 May 2025

Posted on by Zogman

A day that started with 14ºc but which did have a few sprinkles of rain to cool us down.

It wasn’t a day for doing much or for going anywhere. Most of the work we were doing was in the house for a change, at least it was cool there. I couldn’t be bothered going over to St Mo’s for photos, so restricted myself to photos of the bees on the rhododendrons and a few from the aquilegia that are beginning to set seeds now, although there are plenty of flowers on them yet. Both the flowers and the seedheads are good subjects for photography.

In the afternoon, Scamp treated us to a glass of Pimms and dinner tonight was another variation on Neil’s Chicken Rice. This was the third meal we’ve had from the chicken we bought on Sunday!

The sprinkles of rain we got wasn’t as heavy, nor as long lasting as we’d hoped, but the weather fairies are adamant that there will be heavy and more prolonged rain next week. Let’s hope they have it right this time.

No real plans for tomorrow.

Where has the sun gone? – 14 May 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Woke this morning to grey skies and a mistiness all around. Wondering what suddenly happened to Spring.

Scamp was out in the morning for a catch-up with the rest of the witches. (For ‘catch-up’ read ‘blether’). That left me with a morning to fill.

A little reading filled part of the time and a bit of shopping filled another part. It had been recommended to me that I should perhaps get my hair cut, or tidy it up at least. I took these suggestions onboard and drove over to one of the many barbers. For the first time in ages I had to wait to get my locks shorn. Usually there are plenty of hairdressers lurking in the back shop, but not today. They must all have been making the most of the sunshine that had appeared around lunch time. Job done and £10 lighter of pocket I drove home.

Not long afterwards I got a call from Scamp to say that she was ready to be collected. I drove up to the new retail park and we went shopping there for some beer and cakes. I’d bought the sensible bread and bananas earlier for my lunch, but I didn’t complain about these extra essentials.

I couldn’t really be bothered with walking over to St Mo’s today, so took some photos in the garden. I pulled up the ‘whirly’ clothes pole and that gave me the much wider view of the garden I’d been looking for. Later, with the clothes pole replaced, I took some close-ups of the Golden Torch rhododendron flowers. Its name says “Golden Torch”, but it looks pink and white to me. Scamp tells me it will change from pink to yellow later in the flowering period. Those flowers got PoD.

Dinner tonight was pasta with the remainder of the orange and rhubarb jelly as dessert. Delicious with a dollop of ice cream. (The jelly, not the pasta).

Tomorrow we may be going to a tea dance.

Another warm day – 11 May 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Today was hot, but with heavy cloud at times. Actually, it was a nice warmth without the heat of yesterday and with a gentle breeze that yesterday lacked. There was actually just the hint of a threat of rain that never quite materialised.

It was a day that encouraged a lazy man like me to consider doing a bit of gardening. Gentle gardening, mind you. Nothing too strenuous, and with easily achievable targets, like potting up my chilli plants and helping Scamp to plant her home grown sweet peas and build a sort of plastic mesh to encourage them to cling to and pull themselves up with. I even found an old solar powered sprinkler for the bird bath that still worked, and gave tiny little splashes now and again.

Later I took the A7iii out with the Tamron lens and a Lensbaby Sweet 35 to St Mo’s to search for damselflies, but again there were none to be seen. Instead,I concentrated on some Hawthorn flowers and focused on one Buttercup in the grass of St Mo’s to use the Lensbaby’s strange distorted view of the world. The buttercup shot got PoD.

Dinner was a chicken breast done in the oven and served with a salad that was delicious. I don’t particularly like pomegranate seeds, but the light scattering of them in that salad worked wonders. There was a hint of Simonne’s excellent salads there. I’d say they were on a par with each other.

Pudding was a rhubarb crumble. Not our own growing, but hopefully it won’t be long before we get a second pulling of ours too. The ginger in the pudding was just right for me. Pure Goldilocks pudding!

Spoke to Jamie and heard about his week’s holiday. Such a pity that when we were sweltering in the sun up north, down south they were putting on extra layers and a pair of gloves. The wind coming in from the North Sea was to blame. Hopefully there will be gentler and warmer days ahead.

Tomorrow I believe we may be going shopping, probably just for essentials.

More problems – 10 May 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Another hot day.  Today we reached over 20ºc although there was a lot of cloud too.

Last night I had a big problem with the iMac. I was attempting to work through my usual procedure of writing the blog on an app. After the blog is written I usually select all the text and then open my app for posting the blog and drop the text into a window that opens. Yesterday the app wouldn’t open. It just gave me a message “403 Forbidden”.

No matter what I did, I got the same message. Finally I went online and read some gobbledegook instructions that I couldn’t understand. I did think of trying some of them, then came across the fix. All the person wrote was “Just leave it. It will sort itself out.” By now it was 11pm and I was tired and panicking just a bit, so I did what the writer suggested. Shut the computer down and went to bed. I slept better than I’d thought I would, and in the morning I switched the iMac on and everything was running normally. I don’t know who you are, but thank you for that helpful suggestion.

Later in the morning we drove over to Brookfield for our regular Saturday morning dance class.  It started with a Line Dance called House of Bamboo. Now I hate line dances, and I’ll add this one to that list. Next was a Melody Foxtrot. A much gentler and better written sequence dance.

Next we were straight into a new Quickstep. I stumbled through it and eventually made some sense of it. Again, not my favourite, but much better than the line dance. I don’t think it’s as good as the other quicksteps Jane has devised.

We did a Sweetheart Rumba which took two tracks before everyone was singing from the same hymn sheet. Then it just fell into place.

Drove home over the Kingston Bridge almost without stopping. It was just one of those days when the traffic ran perfectly.

I walked down to the shops later to get the makings of tonight’s dinner, but the shelves were very bare and I phoned Scamp to ask if a cook-at-hope curry would suffice and she agreed it would. Late on a Saturday afternoon is not the time for food shopping.

We sat in the back garden for an hour or so tonight with a G&T each. As I’m writing this, Scamp is watering the garden. Only fair, I did it on Thursday.

PoD was a photo of a Rhododendron called Nancy Evans, taken in the garden.

No plans for tomorrow