Category: Flowers

Another day too good to waste

Posted on by Zogman

Up fairly early and out for a walk in the woods.

Scamp drove us to Drumpellier where we joined the conveyer belt of folk out for a walk in the sunshine. It really was a beautiful day and there were literally hundreds of people in the park, all carefully socially distant. How many times have we walked on that same conveyer belt but never investigating the woods? What an opportunity lost. This was our third trek into the cool shade of the trees. Lots to see if you look. Today we saw a Jay. Years since I’ve seen one with its bright blue band on its wings. Almost got a shot of it on the wing and looking as if it was heading straight for me, but it was out of focus. I did get a static shot of it and, although you can see the blue stripe, you can’t quite see its head because it was in shadow. Pity. We walked on and tried a new path, but found it just lead on to the road backtracked and found a path we’d been on before. Followed if for a mile or so then chose a new one, just to see where it went. It turned out to circle the cricket pitch we’d found last time. From there, all the paths were ones we’d already investigated. Walked back to the car and stopped for an ice cream on the way. The place was even busier now. There was even a bloke busking to a pre-recorded backing track. Never seen that in Drumpellier before. He didn’t seem to be making much.

Back home and after lunch Scamp got the folding seats out and set up in the sun. It seemed a sensible way to spend a warm afternoon on the last day of May. The month started with us driving down to Irvine to go to the first High Tea of Peter’s two day birthday. Along the way it had been a month of stretching our wings, getting gradually further away from the house and the walks round Broadwood, although the weather hadn’t always been great. Wettest on record some said, but it was dry today and the sun was out and I was listening to Rebus on my headphones.

Later I went out for a walk because I wasn’t sure I had any decent shots from today’s walk and could hardly believe that there were two dragonflies circling the small pond the boardwalk crosses. They were busy making more dragonflies, so paid no heed to me, but were far too far away and too fast to catch with a camera. I did see a couple of damselflies too, but they were too skittish, probably avoiding the bigger dragonflies. The best shot I took was just a branch of May blossom. It looked ok.

Dinner tonight was a salad with tuna pasta and curry rice which was just ok. Scamp had boiled the rice earlier and I added the curry powder and some curry paste, but it didn’t taste like I expected. However the pasta was lovely and worked so well on a warm day. We sat outside for a while to soak up some extra rays, but I nearly fell asleep and we retired to the house to tidy up and for me to get started on the last EDiM drawing of 2021.

Today’s prompt was your computer mouse. Rather than draw my usual mouse I drew an old corded mouse. It works when no other mouse will. It’s not as flaky as the Apple Magic Mouse 2 and it doesn’t use batteries that fail when you really need them, like the Logitech ones. There’s a place for old tech, even these days.

Tomorrow we’re hoping for another good day and we’re hoping to get out for a walk.

Driving and meeting old friends – 22 May 2021

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We couldn’t decide what to do today. We did think about going up the east coast to Kirkcaldy, but then thought better of it because today was a Saturday it would be busy. Instead we waited for the postman.

The postman brought a big parcel for Scamp. She already knew it was coming so it was not a big surprise. Inside was a long green box with a recipe and ingredients to make a cake. JIC gave me the present of a bread making subscription for Christmas. It’s been great, encouraging me to bake breads I’d never have tried otherwise. Scamp’s green box contained a similar thing, but for cakes instead. I did think, after I bought it, that it was a bit cheeky, sending a brilliant baker like Scamp a baking kit, but I’m hoping that, like me she’ll discover interesting cakes to bake. Ones she’d never have considered without that little push. Also, hopefully, I get to taste the results!

With the parcel opened and the on-line signing up done we set off for Bishopbriggs to get another USB drive to back up my photos on. It’s part of my complicated back up regime for ‘easy’ retrieval. It always amazes me that every time I go to buy an external drive I can get twice the storage space for the same price I paid for the last one. It’s something akin to Moore’s Law (Google it).

It was at the retail park that we bumped into Mhairi and Robert who used to go to Salsa with us. We spent a good twenty minutes discussing the effect of the pandemic on small businesses like theirs, some good and some bad. Good to speak to folk we hadn’t seen for a long time, years, in fact.

On the way back we stopped at Lidl in Kirkintilloch, hoping to get a bottle of Hortus Gin. Unfortunately they only had the flavoured varieties and I wanted the plain and simple one. What amazed us when we arrived was the queue to get in to the drive-through at McDonalds. Who, in their right mind, would queue to get a hamburger that’s never seen any ham? Maybe the clue is in that phrase “in their right mind”. How many of them have actually tasted real meat? We drove on to Kilsyth where there were ample supplies of Hortus and no Mickey Ds. Obviously much more sophisticated tastes in Kilsyth

Back home we went for a walk in St Mo’s and just managed a glimpse of the new cygnets. They were off with mum and dad to get some food over in the reeds at the far side of the pond. I’m guessing it was their equivalent of a walk to the shops. I hadn’t really managed a decent shot today, so I bolted on the macro lens and photographed the Strawberries and Cream Aquilegia that sits at the front door. Beautiful flower. Instant PoD.

We had a practise of the Cha Cha tonight. Who knew it was so exhausting? Then to cool down we did a couple of Rumbas. Things fell apart and tempers frayed when we tried the waltz with its Stewart’s clumsy addition of a spin where there shouldn’t be one. We agreed to continue on to the Catherine Waltz. Then to save bloodshed we put the living room back into a living room again rather than a dance floor and a war zone!

Yesterday’s sketch has appeared and its title is Spice Jars. I don’t know where it could have been hiding 😉. Today’s prompt was Dice, so today’s sketch is titled Lucky Sixes!

Tomorrow looks wet. Some baking may be done by one or both of us.

Right on time – 20 May 2021

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It was promised for 11am and at 10.50am the first drops fell

Today was dry when I was making breakfast around 8.30am. It was cloudy and it was dull, but it wasn’t raining. I checked my weather app around 10.15 and it was predicting rain at 11am. Later I went out to photograph today’s PoD which is an anemone which is sitting on the back step and when I looked closely there were raindrops on the petals. Two quick shots and that was enough for me. They looked sharp and there wasn’t any reason to hang around. Went out front to collect the empty bins, Thursday being bin day, and when I was coming back in it was definitely raining. I checked my watch and it was 10.50am. Rain arrived right on schedule. Fifteen minutes later it was coming straight down. Glad I got those two shots when I did.

The rain did go off again for a while, but in the afternoon we went to Calder’s garden centre to get a plant Scamp had liked the look of earlier in the week. She didn’t have time to buy it then, but she got it today. When we came out of Calder’s it was raining again. To be fair, all of the foregoing was predicted by the weather fairies yesterday and for once it came true.

That was about the end of our activities for the day, although our electricity went off for almost an hour just before dinner time. We’re in a warning listing with the electricity company and we always get an automated call when something like this happens. They were predicting a two hour delay before it would be connected, but the lights came back on after an hour. Luckily we both had fairly well charged laptops so we could continue to play games and fritter away some time without power, but without internet it was a different story. Scamp was resourceful and used her phone’s hotspot to save off the work she was doing to the cloud. It’s amazingly useful to have a decent phone and a bit bandwidth to do stuff like that nowadays. Who’d have thought twenty years ago that power like that would be at your fingertips.

Strangely I was just about to download the new Lightroom/Photoshop bundle when the outage happened, so it’s not installed yet, in fact it isn’t even downloaded yet. Maybe tomorrow.

Today’s sketch prompt was for a corkscrew. I drew the Waiter’s Friend we keep in the drawer in the kitchen. Probably the best corkscrew I’ve ever used . So simple and easy to use. A true design classic. The problem with classic pieces is that everyone knows what they look like, so your sketch has to be fairly decent. Mine is reasonably accurate, but not exact. It looks like the real article and that’s good enough for me.

Tomorrow we may go shopping to Stirling or Falkirk. We’ll maybe toss a coin.

First day of Level 2 freedom – 17 May 2021

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Freedom for Scamp and freedom for me.

Scamp was off, with the rest of the witches, to Annette’s new house in Bonnybridge for the first get together since August. I didn’t even have to drive her there, that was James’s job. Once I’d waved her off, her freedom started, and so did mine.

While she was settling in to her Prosecco, I was wandering round Tesco, buying some razors, shampoo, shower gel and also some long life milk to put into the food bank bin. That salved my conscience and used up another of the vouchers we get every month for doing our Covid research test. Half of what we got would go to the foodbank and half we could keep. That was our unwritten rule and we’ve stuck to it fairly well, I think.

Next thing to was to post my next lot of sketches on Facebook. I’d worked out a method that would get pictures and text on the site quite quickly and for some reason, the computer gods were looking down and smiling today because it worked. Two tasks completed.

Next was today’s sketch with the prompt “Your favourite brushes and pencils”. Asking for your favourite brushes or pencils is like asking who your favourite child is. At present my pencil of choice is the Palomino Blackwing soft. The brushes I use most are my Robert Simmons, Saphire 6 and my Daler Rowney Sword. They all sit so neatly on my brush holder, a gift from my thoughtful daughter. That was my task, to get all of them into a sketch, then add colour. The result, you can see here! Three down.

After lunch I took some photos of the American Cowslip (Shooting Star). It flowers every May and once the flowers are past the whole thing disappears, reappearing in the spring with a rosette of green leaves from which the flower spike starts to grow. According to some sites, the plant only lives for about five years. We’ve had it for three years now, so it’s probably in its prime. Let’s hope it lasts more than the five years. Photo taken and processed. PoD selected and number four ticked off.

In between all these tasks, I listened to more of The Reluctant Assassin, had my lunch and generally lounged about doing nothing. It was great fun.

I was just finishing off the painting when I got a text requesting a taxi to Bonnybridge. Took the shortest route which took the longest time because the schools were coming out and that meant all the local roads turned into carparks. Despite that, I arrived at the house on time, and at the same time as Jim, one of the other witches’ husband. We found the four witches and a very acrobatic dog in the summer house in the back garden. We weren’t even offered any of the cakes or sandwiches that were on display. Maybe they were for decoration only!

Back home the long way that was quicker, much quicker than the route I’d taken to go there. It seems that Scamp also had a good time. Lots of catching up done and plans made for the future. Maybe we both need our freedom days.

Tomorrow Scamp is out in the afternoon again, this time to take Margie to tea at Calders. I’ll find something to do, I’m sure.

 

 

Dull, dull, dull – 13 May 2021

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White sky this morning. No texture in the clouds, just milky white

At least it was dry and it remained so all day. The furthest we got was a walk down to the shops and back. Apart from the ‘messages’, Scamp got some Bizzy Lizzies for her Wanderella planter that hangs by the back door. She did get some last week too, but they turned out to be too big for the holes in the planter and were used up elsewhere. These ones were much smaller and fitted perfectly. I got some chocolate limes to which I’m addicted. Tonight I divided them up into bags of five. When I go out for a walk I allow myself one bag. When they’re done, that’s it until the next day. If I put ten in the bag, I’d just eat them all without thinking about it, that’s why I limit myself to five. Not much chance of a walk in St Mo’s today though.

Last night I found a tick. First one for ages. Today I found another. That’s the walk in the woods at St Mo’s off the list until the first hard frost, because the ticks don’t seem to like the cold. Neither do I, but I hate ticks and that makes the cold bearable.

<Technospeak>
Apart from slapping Germoline and TCP on the tick bites, I found time to delve into the old NAS drive’s hard drive. I found that if I booted from a Linux distro (a live Linux installation on a USB stick) on the Mac, I could access the drive. All the files are still there on the hard drive, but the drive is formatted to Linux and can’t be read on a Mac or PC. What I didn’t know was that I could drag the files from the old NAS drive on to an NTFS (PC) formatted memory stick and load them on to the Mac. I wanted Office 11 for Mac and that was in the downloads I’d stored on the old NAS. It worked! Well, it almost worked. The new Mac is running Catalina and it doesn’t allow you to open any 32 bit apps. Office 11 is a 32 bit app. Game Over. Apparently I can still get Office for free by connecting to iCloud. A bit cumbersome, but it might work.
</Technospeak>

In the afternoon I did a bit of photography in the garden and that’s where today’s PoD came from. It’s a Strawberry & Cream Aquilegia with a Spirea bush behind. That was in the hour or so of sunshine we had today. I managed to get a few shots of plants just coming in to flower. Good to see it.

Today’s sketch was to be A Close Up View of Something. I chose the pliers of the multi-tool I drew earlier in the week. Lots of lovely detail in the mechanics of the tool which allows the jaws to open and close, but to fold away again when you’re finished. Cleverly designed.

I forgot to post a photo of the Challah bread I made. As you can see we really needed to test it, even before I could get the photo taken. It’s just as nice today.

No plans for tomorrow. Scamp and Veronica are out in the morning, so I might get some painting done.

 

We went shopping – 9 May 2021

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In the morning we went shopping for chicken and fruit and stuff.

I was a bit of a mixed bag of weather today. Some light rain and a few gusts of wind, but overall, quite a good day. We went shopping in the morning, just down to the shops with a walk around St Mo’s for me flung in for good measure. That’s when I got today’s PoD. It was a wee daisy sitting up proud against the sky, with a dandelion flower as supporting act. Walking across the boardwalk I got caught in one of those April showers that come in May. It was heavy, but only lasted for a few minutes. Just one circuit of the pond, then it was time to go home for lunch.

Later in the afternoon I went for a second bite of the cherry and found a great swathe of small white flowers. I couldn’t remember their name at first, but knew they was related to Oxalis, then the name came to me, Wood Sorrel. They were interesting, but not as interesting as the Daisy and Dandelion combination from the morning. It wasn’t until I was looking at the photos of the Daisy that I noticed a big straggly ‘dust bunny’. Dust bunnies are small dark dots on a photo and are caused by dust particles on the sensor. This was a bit of hair or a fibre from a jacket. It was easy to remove from the sensor, but the picture took a while to clean up. I’ll probably need to clean the sensor tomorrow to remove any residue.

Dinner tonight was courtesy of Scamp and was Chicken Chilli Pot and although the promised heat was turned down, it was tasty and there’s more left for tomorrow’s lunch.

Dancing tonight started with the Catherine Waltz. We seemed to do well enough to be awarded a ‘pass’. Next was a Cha-Cha and I found it hard to keep up with the music. I’d eventually managed to put together all the parts in the right order, but my feet kept going in the wrong place and too far behind the music! Lastly it was the Midnight Jive which I’m beginning to get to grips with. An exhausting hour.

Spoke to JIC later and hear all his news for down south. How strange it must be to go in to work one day a week and work from home all the rest of the time. I find it hard to come to terms with things like that these days, but for those who need to do it, it must be an even stranger feeling.

Didn’t quite have enough time for today’s sketch but I’m hoping to catch up with the work tomorrow. That and also the sketch for tomorrow, plus, of course the PoD. So glad I don’t have to go in to work, even for one day!

We needed some rain for the garden – 8 May 2021

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Today we got it.

We went out for a walk in the morning when it was just a drizzle that was falling from the sky. If we’d gone out half an hour earlier we’d have had a dry walk, but then again, if we’d gone out half an hour later we’d have been soaked. We just got a little bit wet. Came home, had a coffee and sat and watched the rain. I hadn’t taken one photo on the morning walk. I just hoped it would dry up later and I’d get the chance to capture some photons.

Lunch was Tortellini fairly fresh stuff, soft and tasty. Not like the dried pasta variety which never really softens properly until you boil it for ages, then you lose all the stuffing. Like most things, it’s worth the extra to get good pasta. Struggled with Lightroom after lunch. I don’t know what the problem is. I blamed the virus killer I installed, but now I’m thinking it’s the update to Mojave (MacOS 10.14) that Lightroom doesn’t like. There are some folk writing on the InterWeb about it and I’m beginning to think it’s true, because the new laptop is running Catalina (MacOS 10.15) and it just refuses to allow Lightroom to install on it. Perhaps Mojave was the thin end of the wedge and it just causes problems for my long in the tooth, old Lightroom. Such a pity, because up until now it has been bombproof. Still, nothing lasts for ever.

Finally I gave in. The birds were singing, which is usually a sign of a dry spell. I put my boots on and grabbed the camera. Scamp was hard at work preparing a rhubarb pie and a small apple pie to go with tonight’s dinner which was Giant Fish Fingers, New potatoes and Marrowfat Peas. I did get some photos on the new Oly. My favourites were the Cowslip flowers with the raindrops still fresh on them and one of them got PoD. Actually the rain was still falling, but I didn’t mind it much. I stood watching the swallows dive and spin around St Mo’s pond catching insects on the wing and occasionally just skimming across the surface of the pond, presumably catching them as they hatched and lay defenceless on the surface film. Fascinating to watch, but pointless to try to catch. That’s not to say I didn’t try.

Dinner was as excellent as I hoped it would be and, even better, there’s more rhubarb pie for tomorrow. The two of us scoffed the apple pie between us. Some of Scamp’s best pastry skills on show today with a light, crisp pie that tasted as good as it looked.

A short dance practise tonight just to make sure we can indeed perform the Catherine Waltz to music. I’m sure that’s my problem. Dancing it without music doesn’t seem to be a problem, it’s when we try to keep to the soundtrack that things go wrong. Hopefully tomorrow’s class will show us to be faultless.

Today’s topic for EDiM was Eyes, Ears, Nose, Hand or Feet. I chose Hand and made a mess of it. I know I left it too late, but I finally got the grip of it by making a fist of it!

Tomorrow, hopefully there will be less rain and it won’t stay all day. A little dry time would be good, weather fairies. If you’re listening.

 

Driving through the rain – 3 May 2021

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Taking Scamp for her second Jag.

It has been a horrible day as far as the weather is concerned. It’s been raining since about 11am. It was actually raining before that, but only a light drizzle, but by 11 o’clock it was getting into its stride and it was being chased along by a gusty wind. I was working at the computer for most of the morning, checking out what had happened to the blog last night. It seemed from the email I got from WordPress that there was a glitch in the theme I use on the blog, either that or in one of the presets. I updated all the presets but the problem persisted. After I updated the theme, the problem disappeared. I’d visions of me having to call in the Web Monkey this morning, but all seemed well. I also took the time to post the first two sketches for EDiM in Flickr. I usually post them in EDiM in Facebook, but I think I’m personna non grata there after having an argument with the admins last year. Not to worry, Flickr it is this year and possibly Instagram too if I get the time.

After lunch we got ready and braved the weather to get to the car then we were off to East Kilbride. The rain was non-stop and sometimes it almost overpowered the wipers in their superfast mode.  The satnav chose a strange route to the vaccination centre and then dumped us at a T junction with a message to the effect that ‘you have reached your destination’. I chose to go right and right was right for once, the sports centre that had been commandeered was just over the hill. Dropped Scamp off and went looking for a space in the tinycar park. Not one to be found. Drove into a housing estate across the road and found a space there almost right away. Less than ten minutes later I got the call from Scamp to come and collect her. Almost thirty minutes to get there and it was all over in ten! At least it’s done now and we’re almost covered. Drove back through the same heavy rain which is still falling as I write this.  More worryingly, driving through East Kilbride, the rain turned to sleet.  Thankfully we only have rain here tonight.

Back home I struggled to get three carrots painted in watercolour. Working with tube paint is totally different from using pans. The liquid, or semi-liquid paint is much stronger than the pans, it doesn’t need scrubbed to break through the tough skin that forms on pans, but it does tend to be a lot more messy on the palette. I’ll try to persevere with it for at least the first week. Carrots will be posted tomorrow hopefully.

There was no opportunity to get an outside shot today. I tried photographing one of Scamp’s Grape Hyacinths on the back step. I was sitting inside, of course. I’m not that daft! This was about 7pm and the light had gone, despite the fact that sunset wasn’t for another hour and a half. I gave up on that with grainy images. Finally, I chose to photograph one of Scamp’s carnations, a cut flower bunch that sits on the window ledge in the kitchen. This was a 10sec exposure on a tripod at ISO 125. That was just an ‘aide memoire’ for me for next time. The resulting photo was the 5,000th I’ve taken with the Sony, since I got it last year!

Right, it’s been a terrible day and I’m going to bed to wake refreshed tomorrow because tomorrow is Star Wars Day! No plans other than getting pictures done and photos taken. That will be enough, but a walk in the dry would be good too!

We asked for rain – 27 April 2021

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Today that rain was delivered.

The delivery took all day to complete, well at least I hope it’s complete although there could still be some of the smaller parcels of rain waiting to be dropped off in the next few days.

Scamp was off walking with Veronica again today. This time it was an anti-clockwise walk around Broadwood Loch. It was a bit wet, but that didn’t put off these hardy adventurers. While they were out I listened to a bloke telling me even more about catalogs in Capture One and then I cleared up some of the rats maze of cables that lie on the dining table to trap the unwary. They are now sorted into Micro USB, Mini USB and the catch-all, Assorted cables.

When Scamp returned we had lunch and afterwards she did the ironing and it was my turn to get wet. I took the Sony for a walk in the rain. Once round St Mo’s was enough today. By that time I had five photos and was wet through. Although, I did have my new leather boots on and my feet were dry for the first time this year on a rainy day.

I was thinking of retiring my old MacBook Pro. It’s twelve years old and beginning to fail. The card reader stopped working years ago, but plug in replacements are cheap to buy. It can’t be upgraded (legally) past OSX 11. The iMac is currently running MacOS 14 and there are another two levels available above that for newer machines like the iMac. I could do an illegal upgrade, and may yet do that, but you never know what little nasties you’re squirting into your system as a result. Finally, the touch pad is now beginning to fail and the second replacement battery is losing its power rapidly. I had a look to see what was available and was surprised to find there’s nothing anywhere in the Apple range that uses the tried and tested Intel chipset. Apple are only producing machines with their own M1 chipset. I read a few reviews from sensible sources and they were not at all complementary. Biggest problem seems to be that the machines run well with Apple apps, but less well, or not at all with the majority of commercial, non-Apple apps like Lightroom. I don’t want to go to a Microsoft machine, but maybe needs must … Difficult decisions.

Today’s PoD was a bunch of Cowslips growing in the wilderness (ie, the bit the council don’t cut and call a ’wildflower garden’) in St Mo’s. Thank goodness the Sony and its lens are weatherproof, which hopefully means waterproof too!

A half hour of dance practise tonight rubbed some more of the rough edges off the Waltz, Tango and Rumba and went some way to building the Bossa Nova too. We did finish off with a Salsa, but Oh my Goodness, the amount of stuff we’ve forgotten in just over a year! We need to get to some Sunday Socials once normality returns!

Tomorrow we may hasten that normality by taking a run in to Glasgow. Just to see if we can remember what shops look like!

A day of comings and goings – 20 April 2021

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Arrivals and departures.

First arrival was along thin cardboard box addressed to Scamp. The postman didn’t want to damage it by pushing it through the letterbox, so I took it from him at the door. It was the April delivery of flowers for Scamp. Part of her birthday prezzy from JIC and Sim. Just like last time the flowers looked dry and wilted but this time we had more faith in the clever preparation and packaging. Scamp also knew how to feed them and water them after the surprise of the last bunch. This one was a mix of Asters, Snapdragons (which my mum called Map Maps), Stock, Solidago and Bupleurum. The last two, we had never heard of before. They were all immediately trimmed, watered and fed and are standing proud in their place between the piano and the display cabinet. One very happy lady is Scamp!

Next visitor was the DPD man to pick up my box of lenses and a camera. Handed over the box, he stuck on a ticket and gave me the other half of the ticket as a receipt. They’re now on their way to Brighton.

Half an hour later the third visitor was a lady bearing another box, this time for me. On the strength of the offer from MPB I’d bought myself another camera. Not ‘YET’ another camera, JIC. One went out today and one came in. The camera mountain remains at the same height. This is the updated version of the camera which was travelling to Brighton. An amazing box of tricks it is too. It can do summersaults while juggling three balls and walking on a tightrope. I’m still working my way through the user’s manual, wishing it came as an audio book! By the way, I’m about two thirds of the way through What Abagail Did That Summer by Ben Aaronovitch. It’s read by Shvorne Marks. I’m getting to like the idea of someone telling me a story!

As well as all that, Scamp had been for a walk to Condorrat to post a birthday card. I’d dusted half the surfaces in the living room, taking great care to place all the Bus Stop Ladies back in their respective places and giving the wee green snake that hold my brushes a gentle rub over too. I’d also been for a walk in St Mo’s and got today’s PoD on the way back – taken with the new toy, of course.  I think it’s a Berberis thunbergii.  The leaves are beautiful in autumn. When I got back, Scamp had just finished clearing out the spice rack and had found jars in there dating back to 2005! Quite a lot of jars went in the bin today, as you can imagine.

Dinner tonight was a Scamp speciality, a prawn stir-fry. Nothing fancy, just things from the fridge and freezer that should be used up. That’s the best kind of meal. It was lovely.

We had a run through of the Bossa Nova tonight to ensure that I don’t make a complete fool of myself on Sunday. Although I wouldn’t say it was the smoothest practise we’ve had, it is beginning to flow a bit better now. Counting seems to help me. Just as long as I don’t do it out loud!

Tomorrow may be a better day than today which started wet and just became dull after that with the threat of more rain if we didn’t behave. If it’s good tomorrow we may go for a walk somewhere other than Cumbersheugh.