Category: Flowers

A bit of a wasted day – 6 June 2025

Posted on by Zogman

A day when the cloud cover hinted at rain in the wind, but the deluge never really got going.

Scamp went out to FitSteps in the morning and I’d intended spending the morning clearing up my expenses, but instead I used up most of my free hour reading.

We were supposed to have an Amazon parcel delivered in the early afternoon, but for whatever reason, by the delivery time had disappeared, I had a message to say it wouldn’t be delivered until late afternoon. That sort of spoiled our day, but Scamp took it as a challenge to haul out the strimmer and tidy up the edges of the front garden. Not to be outdone, I dug out spades full of compost from the bottom of the back garden compost bin to fill up the potato bags and pail. Most of the compost was very well rotted and simply crumbled through my hands. I dug out enough of the compost to fill two potato bags and one potato bucket. That should help to produce a decent crop of potatoes later in the year.

I had a few spaces in the raised bed, so rather that leave it barren, I planted out some leeks. I’d planted some about a month ago and they were looking quite good considering they had been in the ground all through those hot days of May. I’m hoping the new planting will also begin to show in a week or two.

Dinner tonight, we agreed, would be fish and chips from the Condorrat chip shop. I walked there and on the way remembered I was going to photograph a lovely big rhododendron bush that was growing wild beside the path. I even managed to get a bee’s bum sticking out of one of the florets! PoD sorted. The fish ’n’ chips were good, but not the best I’ve ever tasted. Could do better IMO Condorrat.

My parcel from Amazon which held a pair of dance trainers arrived as we were starting our fish and chips, and after that wait, they were just slightly too short. I’ll send them back tomorrow.

Tomorrow we’re intending to go to Saturday dance class but without my new dance trainers. 🙁

A late rise – 3 June 2025

Posted on by Zogman

One of those days when we never heard the alarm clock go off.

Maybe that was because we didn’t set the alarm clock in the first place. In fact, I’m not sure we still have an alarm clock, but if we did have, we wouldn’t have heard it this morning.

After breakfast, and after Wordle et al, we drove over to Go Outdoors in Coatbridge, to search for a pair of trainers, nice cheap(ish) ones, like the ones I’d tried on and rejected in the same chain, in Kingston. It took a bit of searching, but I eventually found what I was looking for and this time I didn’t reject them. They seemed to fit perfectly for a change.

When we got back in the car I tried to set our next destination on the sat nav, which was Currys for a new tablet for Scamp. That was when the sat nav went bonkers. It decided that we were actually in France and then somewhere down Africa way. I tried switching the engine off, counting to ten and trying again, with the same result. Eventually I gave in and drove to the Currys by memory. Switched the engine off and locked the car.

We found the tablet Scamp had sourced on the internet and bought it in Currys. Then we did some shopping for something that would work for tonight’s dinner across the car park in Tesco. That should give the car and sat nav enough time to cool its wheels and settle down to work. It did. It gave us the correct directions to take us home. I’ve not got a clue what caused that mishap. It’s the first time I’ve experienced it.

I drove to Tesco in the town centre for petrol and Scamp searched unsuccessfully for a new dress, then we went home. Just got stopped and parked at the house when the skies opened and we were in the middle of a downpour. Nearly got soaked walking from the car to the house. That was the first of many such downpours today, in fact, as I’m writing this, another one is starting. Such strange weather.

Quite a fiery chicken curry for dinner that was cooled down with an ice lolly as a dessert.

PoD was a photo of a Lupin plant in the garden. I always liked the strong colours of lupins. If you find the photo on Flickr and can go back one step, you’ll find a photo of one of the London Parakeets that fly in gangs around the city.

Tomorrow Scamp and I are intending to drive to Glasgow for her scan, and after dropping her off, I’m hoping to meet Alex.

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.