Category: Flowers

Another day, another surgery – 11 November 2022

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This time it was the doctor’s surgery for my annual check-up.

That wasn’t until the afternoon. It was a dull, depressing morning, but at least it wasn’t raining. Scamp went off to her FitSteps class and I started hacking into my SSD drives. Not literally, but I wanted to see if there was any advantage to using a new method of forcing Big Sur into a partition of one of the SSDs and that meant finding some space to put the truncated version of the operating system in. Following the instructions by the author, Andrew Tsai, to the letter (for once), after a couple of hours I had the OS in place but there was no appreciable improvement to the boot speed. At least I know that now and I hadn’t spent any money finding it out. That experiment took up most of the morning.

Soup for lunch and then it was time to steel myself for what might be bad news at the doc’s. I needn’t have worried. I’d lost four pounds (lb pounds not £) since last year, my cholesterol was down my glucose levels were also down and my BP was just where it should have been. I got a gold star from the sister for being a good boy. Feeling better, I went to get the makings of tonight’s dinner which was to be Baked Haddock and Cabbage Risotto, which at least a couple of my readers have had before.

Driving back home I realised that the light had gone. It was just after 3pm and I was driving with the auto headlights on! That’s Scotland. The wind was still gust and almost gale-force. The bins that were emptied yesterday were lying where they’d fallen last night. There was no point in lifting them, because they’re top heavy when empty and would just fall down again. Worst of all, there was no point in taking a camera out. It was just too dark. Today would be an indoor photo, and probably Flooers!

The risotto is one of the easiest ones to make, because the oven does most of the work. I’d bought some tomatoes in Tesco and I thought that as the oven was going to be on anyway, I’d use it to roast the tomatoes for making soup tomorrow. In these straitened times you have to do a bit of lateral thinking at times.

One of Scamp’s Pelargonium plants became the PoD. Not the best photo in the world, but it was better that than nothing at all.

We practised the Cameron Quickstep tonight and I discovered how to make a slow-mo video on my phone, because you really need to see the steps at half speed. Also it’s quite funny to listen to the teachers’ instructions at half speed. Cleverly the app can reduce the speed while keeping the pitch of music or speech at the normal level. It just sounds a bit slurred.

Tomorrow we are booked for our normal dance class at Brookfield. It hardly seems like a week since we were at Perth!

Dance Class – 29 October 2022

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Today being Saturday we were off to Brookfield for dance class.

Sometimes the class goes well, sometimes I have a few problems, but this class was an utter disaster for me today. I seemed to be able to do nothing right. We were dancing Foxtrot. Well, the rest of the class were dancing foxtrot, I was staggering around the floor for most of the time. I just couldn’t get one part of it right. The part is called the Continuous Hover Cross and it was indeed making me cross. I’d practised it in class last week and after following Stewart with the rest of the leaders, I could do it. When I tried dancing it with Scamp, it didn’t work. We also practised it last night and after a few mistakes, it fell into place. Today it just fell. I had to admit defeat after a while. Gave up and thankfully could manage the Tango we did after the (bloody) Foxtrot.

Driving home was a bit of a slog. Even using my shortcut through the Clyde Tunnel, we were still locked into a long queue of slow moving traffic. In retrospect, I think the problem was a weekend rail strike, meaning that those folk wanting to get to the football had to drive there. Whatever it was, it meant an extra half an hour added to our journey.

The clouds that we’d seen beginning to break as we left Brookfield were joining together the nearer we got to Cumbersheugh and they’d invited all their cloud pals along too. So much so that it felt like evening was coming by about 3pm.

I did manage to get one or two photos of a beautiful rose flowering for the second time this year in the garden. It’s called Simply The Best and it’s living up to its name. It became PoD.

The prompt for today was “Uh-Oh”. So my interpretation of that was a broken egg. There is a saying that you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. Sometimes I can’t make anything without an egg catastrophe!

I remember reading somewhere “You always get a second chance. It’s called Tomorrow.” We have no plans for Sunday.

Making the most of the morning – 23 October 2022

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This morning there was light cloud, but the weather report looked gloomy.

We decided that it would be best to go for a walk in the morning while it was still dry, if not bright. Boots on for both of us, because it was going to be wet underfoot, wherever we went.

It wasn’t a long walk. Just down to Broadwood Loch, over the dam past the exercise machines and back past the shops. Around 6000 steps all told. We didn’t hang around much and I only took two photos, that’s how dull it was. We did stop at the shops to get some veg for dinner and a very nice piece of rump steak for my dinner. Scamp was having salmon instead of meat. By the time we reached home it felt like there was rain in the wind and just after lunch it was definitely raining. I’m glad we decided to go out while it was still dry.

Just before it got too heavy I went out and took a few shots of the fuchsia plants that hang in a basket on the fence. There was just enough sunlight to pick out the raindrops on the flowers. That became PoD.

I spent a while fiddling with the settings on the SSD that was now taking the place of the internal hard disk drive of the iMac. I did one upgrade that brought the version number up from 11.68 to 11.7. That seemed to make a big difference to the stability of the drive. The speed difference from using the hard drive is immense. Lightroom takes between 3 and 4 minutes to boot from the hard drive. Today it took 14 seconds. That’s over a ten fold speed increase. There are lots of other areas where things are working a lot smoother too. Still not totally settled on the new technology, but it’s working well for now.

Today’s prompt was ‘Boogers’.
As another sketcher with the nickname “Mydoghasnno.se” says, different places have different words for the mucus that must be removed from our nostrils. In the US they may be Boogers, but in Scotland they are Bogles and the more liquid varieties are Snotters. The bloke I drew is obviously an expert Bogle hunter.

Spoke to Jamie and heard about the cost of repairing a roof in a listed building. It’s a lot more than I’d have thought, but Jamie seemed to accept it as a reasonable price and with winter coming, it has to be done. Glad to hear they are getting some much needed rain.

I’ve never been much of a political animal, but the events of last week with Liz Truss resigning after 45 days as PM and Boris attempting a comeback are the stuff of pantomime. Unfortunately, it’s real.

Tomorrow we may go and visit Margie … in hospital.

Back in the old routine – 22 October 2022

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We were off to Brookfield again after a three week layoff.

Dull foggy morning with the threat of rain, but we were off to dance class, and that lifted our spirits, even mine. According to the messages that were crossing and recrossing the ether last night it appeared that there would only be about four couples coming to the class. That’s a nice number, but it means there’s nowhere to hide!

The road was unusually busy this morning and the fog that had faded out as we reached Glasgow thickened again as we drove out of the city again. The land is fairly low lying there and we could see pockets of fog all around. Strange weather.

We were first into the hall and we saw the teachers final practise for what was to come in a week or two. There were four couples to start with, then another arrive and another. So it wasn’t as small a class after all. We started with what was a new sequence dance for me, but not for Scamp, the Blue Angel Rumba. It seemed it was new for quite a few folk and took a while for everyone to get to grips with it. Next was the Foxtrot which we knew quite well, at least the first half of it we knew quite well. The second half, the back end as the teachers called it, was cloaked in mystery for me. We did, however make a decent fist of the first half. That dance took up almost an hour of our allotted time. We finished off with a couple of relatively easy sequence dances. Then it was time to head home into the rain that had developed from the fog. As we got nearer Cumbersheugh the rain tailed off and, I’d like to say it was a lovely day after that, but it wasn’t. It was just dull and miserable. Dreich was how one of the ladies in the class described it, and if fitted perfectly.

PoD was a quick photo of a rose in the garden that’s just starting to produce its second flush of buds, Lady of Shalott. Taken in the rain, if you look closely you can see the streaks of the falling rain drops.

Prompt for today was ‘Heist’. It was getting late when I started it and it’s not as glamorous as an American heist with guns blazing and tyres screaming. This is a more sedate British heist.

No plans for tomorrow.

Going for the messages – 19 October 2022

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It was a bit dull this morning. In fact it was a lot dull this morning, so we postponed our visit to the Far East again and went shopping instead.

We went to Waitrose in Stirling. Not quite so glamorous or as interesting as our intended destination, but a more practical one. As usual we parked in the Waitrose car park and walked up to the town. I wanted to have a look in Waterstones for a book. The one I’m reading feels like it was written by a twelve year old. Scamp wanted to exchange a top she’d bought in M&S in Inverness. We went our separate ways and I didn’t find any books that interested me, or that I was willing to part with £18 for. £18 for a book? And that was after four quid off. That would make it £22 for a book I’d probably read in just over a week. No thank you. I’ll buy it in Tesco for £10 and get more enjoyment out of it because I got it cheap. Scamp met me at the book shop, quite happy because she’d exchanged her top for a cardigan with stars on it. We went to Costa for coffee and shared a pastry, then went back to get the messages.

On the way to the town I had taken some photos of wild flowers growing unkempt and uncared for in two planters behind the multi-storey car park. They had been planted there some time ago and then forgotten about. There were red poppies, blue cornflowers and a yellow flower I didn’t recognise. Red, Blue and Yellow the three primaries! I wasn’t totally happy with my photos, so on the way back to Waitrose I took some more, being a bit careful this time with the focus and composition. The second lot were definitely better.

We bought loads more stuff that we’d intended, but that’s often the way, especially if it’s a shop you don’t visit every day. Tesco is an expedition every day or two and definitely at least once a week. We both get to know were everything is, so we don’t look too hard at other things. Anyway, loaded the car and drove home for lunch.

The dull morning had turned into a dull afternoon. I was processing the morning’s photos when I noticed a message from Adobe to the effect that there were new versions of all my software, BUT they were not compatible with the version of my operating system. I knew this was coming, but didn’t realise it was coming so soon. A check with Apple confirmed that support for Catalina (my OS) would terminate in November 2022. That would mean I’d have to upgrade both laptop and desktop to continue getting updates. That’s a big job.

<Technospeak>
Tonight I installed the upgrade onto a bootable SSD backup of my system and about half an hour later I had a shiny new machine. It’s always a good idea to test a new OS by installing it in an external drive, preferably a fast one like and SSD. That way you can play test it and see if there are any problems. So far it seems to work, but it will need some further investigations before I do the full upgrade.
</Technospeak>

The prompt for today was a fairly simple “Ponytail”.  Rather than overthink it, I took it at face value and drew a ponytail.  Nothing clever, just a line drawing in ink of a picture I found on Google Images.  NOTE: No ponies or their tails were injured in the making  of this sketch.

That was about it for today. No dance class in Cumbersheugh this week because Kirsty, the teacher, was ill. Hoping to go to a tea dance (a REAL tea dance with tea and cake) tomorrow.

Roses and lunch – 15 October 2022

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We’d intended going in to Glasgow today, but …

We really had intended going in to Glasgow on the bus today, but half way to Condorrat I realised my watch was still charging in the house. By the time we went back, we’d missed the bus, the only bus for an hour. The best thing to do was to have lunch, but then I mentioned to Scamp that I’d seen one of the roses she loves in Torwood the other day. That changed the whole complexion of the day. We would drive to Torwood for a rose and grab a spot of lunch while we were there.

There were a host of roses in the garden centre and thankfully they had her rose too, Sheila’s Perfume. She’s had one for a few years now, but she transplanted it last year and it never made any decent growth this year. Just to insure against the original rose being lost in the winter, a second one wouldn’t go amiss. That was the theory, anyway. The fact that another rose in the garden would never go amiss wasn’t in her head at all …! For the new rose we needed a pot, but we had enough compost at home to give it a good start. With plant and pot bought, I put them in the boot of the car and we had that spot of lunch.

First I had to drag Scamp away from the knitwear that attracts ladies of all ages like moths to a flame (some of them do get burned!) Lunch for both of us was a Tuna Toastie and half a Tipsy Cake each. Nothing very tipsy tasting in the cake. More rum essence than real rum in the cakes. Strangely, for a little tea room in a garden centre, their coffee is made with real coffee and tastes like real coffee too. Impressed. On the way out, that flame was still attracting the lady moths, but Scamp resolutely passed it by and we drove home.

Back home, Scamp was set up with another coffee and a good book, but I needed a PoD which turned out to be a picture of a bunch of rosehips framed in branches with wicked looking thorns. Pretty to look at but you’ll rip yourself to shreds if you try to pick them. That was the only decent photo of the day.

Dinner tonight was going to be a fish pie from M&S, but that has been postponed until tomorrow. We had a pizza instead. Then it was time to watch Strictly. I did watch a bit, but concentrated more on getting a decent score in Angry Birds. Matt Goss really needs to go and seek some medical help. I don’t think his head is securely fixed to his body. One of these time it will come clean off. I hope I’m there to see it. There seemed to be a dichotomy in the acts I did watch. Half were wonderful and clever. Half were dangerously bad.

Found out today that Isobel has Covid. She’s had it for about a week and is still positive. She sounds terrible on the phone according to Scamp. Hope she gets rid of it soon.

Today’s prompt was “Armadillo”. I chose The Armadillo in Glasgow. Originally it was called the Clyde Auditorium but as with so many structures in Glasgow it was becoming better know by its nickname “The Armadillo”. Now it’s officially the SEC Armadillo. It was completed in 1997 and is meant to represent a series of ships hulls.

Tomorrow we’re off to a tea dance in the Lantern House in the new Cumbernauld Academy. I won’t like it. It’s not my school.

The day that never really got started – 3 October 2022

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Just one of those lazy days.

A typical Monday. The furthest we went today was Condorrat to post two cards. One was a birthday card and one was an anniversary card. Both cards going to the same address. On the way home I took the usual diversion round St Mo’s while Scamp went straight home.

I might as well have gone straight home too. There was nothing to see in St Mo’s, well nothing interesting anyway. A couple of photos of spiders that didn’t quite make the grade, but a pretty little Purple Vetch did get PoD. It’s a member of the pea family, but don’t be tempted to eat the peas, they’re poisonous.

Today the prompt asked for ‘Bat’, singular. Being a generous kind of person I thought I’d draw two different bats, one of the flying variety and one of the baseball persuasion. Mostly drawing in ink with an underlay of pencil lines and a little bit of watercolour to, well, add some colour I suppose!

We’re hoping for a better day tomorrow. A little splash of sunshine would be nice, but rain is more likely. Scamp has an appointment in the morning with Isobel and both Scamp and I have an appointment later with a needle!

Entertained by Margie – 28 September 2022

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This afternoon we went to visit Margie.

Margie is one of Scamps friends. She is a ray of sunshine on a dull day, and today was a dull day. As usual our conversation ranged over may subjects, taking in, on the way: The difference between a Carry-out and a Take-away, what a Boogie is and how you’d draw one and the horrors of hospital food, especially Gravel Hotpot. No, not Gravy, Gravel, apparently that’s what it looked like! Three hours gone in a flash. What an entertainer. She’d have made an excellent stand-up comedian when she was younger.

We drove home and we should have stopped at the shops to get some spinach to add body to the pesto I was going to make for dinner. If we had, I might have remembered to get some pine nuts, because there were none in the cupboard. But we didn’t and the pesto tasted fine with the spaghetti without the spinach and the pine nuts.

I spent most of the evening wrestling with, and swearing at, the Samsung website. Badly written and riddled with error codes. I eventually gave up when it crashed just as I was about to buy my new Samsung Galaxy S22 Plus phone after struggling, and failing to get the 0% finance deal for some undisclosed reason. Your code worked perfectly, Jamie, as did trading in Scamp’s old unused Huawei phone for a healthy discount. I tried talking to ‘helpers’ on Chat, but they were as useless as the website. I think it might have been an omen. Keep the phone you’ve got. You don’t need a new one.

Today’s PoD was a grab shot of some carnations sitting on the kitchen window ledge. It was dull and gloomy by the time I was taking the photos and the final result was a grainy as a sand dune, but thankfully ON1 came to the rescue and removed all the digital noise without altering the flowers too much. At least something worked today.

Off in to Glasgow tomorrow to meet Alex, hopefully and talk some technospeak with him.

Pencil to paper – 20 September 2022

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It should have been brush to paper, but I didn’t get that far.

Scamp was out to meet Annette this morning, but for tea, not coffee because Calders has the reputation of serving the worst coffee in the world, so tea is a safer option. I had the morning to myself and started on a sketch I’d been meaning to get down on paper for months. It’s just a house and garden and it should have been easy, but in the past I just couldn’t get the perspective right. Today was no exception, at least until I tried using a grid. It’s a trick that I’ve seen others use and have scoffed at. I actually taught it as a means of scaling up a drawing for a while. Now I taught myself how to use it, and it worked. Admittedly, now I have the grid lines to cover up, so the painting that I anticipated being a watercolour may turn out to be an acrylic. Today, I’m just happy with the sketch.

After I ‘finished’ the sketch – you never really finish a drawing or a painting, you just reach a point where, as Whistler is alleged to have said, “I do not intend to do any more to it”. When I reached that point, I left the sketch unfinished for the day and decided to do something useful instead, so I cleaned the shower. It’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. That’s probably a quote too. I’m sure I’ve heard it somewhere before! With my good deed done for the day I waited to see if Scamp was coming home today, or perhaps waiting until tomorrow. She arrived bearing rolls! And not just any rolls, ‘Well Fired Rolls’. Crisp, crunchy rolls. I forgave her late arrival.

After lunch which was filled rolls for two, we went for a walk to the shops. We needed milk. We didn’t need Chocolate Cookies or a Bakewell Tart, but we got them anyway. When we got home I saw the red Californian Poppies that nod their head in the border looking bright and cheerful in the sunshine. The first shot went a bit bonkers because the camera decided that 1/800th of a second was a reasonable shutter speed rather than the 1/125th I’d asked it to use. That turned the bright red poppy into a dull dark red blob … however, maybe if I did a bit of jiggery pokery in Lightroom … ?
So that’s what I did. A bit of jiggery pokery in Lightroom, then in ON1 2022 and then back in Lightroom again for a final sprucing up and I had a PoD!

While I was engrossed in the post processing, Scamp was having a field day, digging up plants. Unfortunately she dug up what must be a long time favourite of mine whose real name is Astilbe but my mum always called it Spirea, because the man who gave her the first plant called it that. Strangely, one name for it is False Spirea. Thank you Mr Nelson. Anyway they are now all dug up although Scamp did spare one plant which is now in a pot. Yes, I know they were invasive. Every year we cut them back, only for them to return the next year, but they had pretty pink flowers. I’m sure they will come back again … twice as strong.

The uprooting caused a bit of an argument and I went out for a walk to cool down. When I returned I got stuck in to making the dinner which was Haddock & Prawns with Fennel. It’s meant to be Cod, not Haddock, but it tastes equally good with either. One of the best ones I’ve made. It must have been the anger that concentrated the taste.

Later we agreed to differ on the Astilbe question and watched The Hotel and were amazed at the mess people leave in their hotel rooms We were equally shocked at the hours the staff work. It might make me more forgiving when we go on holiday and don’t get five star service in a four star hotel.

No plans for tomorrow. No painting and no digging plants up.

An early rise – 15 September 2022

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A voluntary one.

I’d had breakfast, but couldn’t find a book I wanted to read. The sun was shining although the temperature was just crawling into double figures, but I made up my mind to head out to get a photo of a climbing frame in a children’s adventure nearby. The reason for the photo was this week’s Flickr Friday requested a photo of a “Tower”. There is a tower, a rope climbing net and a slide on the climbing frame, so I reckoned it fitted the bill. There was also a lot of graffiti and a telephone number from an eighteen year old girl who was desperate for love. She must have been desperate, because there was a 17 scored out and replaced by the 18!

I took a few photos with the ultra-wide lens to accentuate the height of the structure, but wasn’t happy with it. To give the sun time to clear the surrounding trees, I took a walk in St Mo’s. There wasn’t much to see. The sun hadn’t cleared the trees here either so the cold blooded dragonflies would need to wait a while for it to warm their bodies and wings before they could fly properly. By the time I’d walked back to the ‘tower’, the sun was warming its eastern face and I got today’s PoD.

While I was doing some post processing of the PoD, Scamp left to meet June and Isobel. After I was satisfied with the photo and posted it on Flickr, I planted some basil seeds. Our basil plants are looking a bit straggly and will need replaced soon. Why buy basil plants from the supermarket when you can grow them right through the winter in the house?

Lunch today was a piece ’n’ banana for Scamp and a Cornish pastie for me. It was Thursday and Scamp had said she wanted some pansies to replace the violas that had flowered non-stop all summer, so I drove to Calders to get some for her. There was only one tray of Peach Pansies left in the garden centre, so I took them. Apparently Christmas is just around the corner. It looked like an articulated lorry had dumped all of its load at the garden centre. Boxes of jolly Santas, cheeky elves and reindeer, so many reindeer! That’s not to mention the lights and decorations, so I won’t mention them. Heavens, it’s the middle of September and we’re being suckered into buying Xmas tat already!

I drove home and made easy haddock risotto. Easy because the oven does all the hard work and as usual it worked perfectly. Nothing to do with me, I just follow the recipe and it works every time.

Tonight we had another dance practise.  A more in-depth one that the last two.  Trying to get the ‘slows’ and the ‘quicks’ in the right places and at the right time.  This ballroom dancing is not anywhere as easy as it looks on TV.

Miles and miles of folk queueing to get in to see the Queen’s coffin lying in state in London. Three miles, possibly four waiting to file past. If it brings the some solace then it’s a good thing.

Tomorrow Scamp is intending going to exercise class in the morning. I’ll exercise my right to stay at home.