Category: Food

More butterflies – 9 August 2026

Posted on by Zogman

I don’t think you can ever have enough photos of butterflies.

I don’t want to rub it in, but we had rain again this morning. Not a lot of rain, but enough to let us know that it’s still around, just waiting for a chance to drop on us.

The rain came and went for most of the morning and a bit of the afternoon, but didn’t bother us. Scamp and I did some pruning of the Buddleia bushes later in the afternoon and by then the butterflies were returning to the bushes. I think the rain in the morning dampened the flowers down and maybe that accounts for the limited amount of interest from the butterflies but the bees are much hardier. In the evening all the butterflies returned, circling the buddleia plants again. I got a few photos of a Red Admiral that became PoD.

Scamp and I emptied the last of the potato bags and collected quite a few potatoes. Almost all of them were in good condition, but a lot of the soil was dry, probably from being under the Rowan tree for too long. A few of them were the size of marbles and we used a tip we’d seen on Gardeners World. We replanted two of the potato shaws that still had smaller potatoes attached. Then we filled up the pot they had been in and watered them in well. Hopefully that will produce some more potatoes, but even if they fail, we won’t have lost anything.

Dinner tonight was Cauliflower in Cheese Sauce for Scamp and Stew and Kidney for me. Dessert for both of us was Rhubarb and Strawberries a strange mixture, but really good. We only tried it because our strawberries were starting to go over. We both agreed we’d do it again. Your rhubarb was mixed with our thinner rhubarb, but both worked together, Jamie.

Tomorrow Scamp and Shona are intending to go out for the day, somewhere nice! That’s all I know.

 

Another long lie in – 8 August 2026

Posted on by Zogman

This is becoming a habit.

Unfortunately today, when we should have been driving to Brookfield for another dance lesson, we were just breaking the surface. Personally I blame the cup of Hot Chocolate I had last night before I went to bed. It always makes me sleepy. The half a bottle of Piquito Jumito we’d enjoyed had nothing to do with it. No, nothing at all.

So, it being extremely unlikely that we were going to get to Brookfield in time, we had a leisurely breakfast and planned the rest of the day. Scamp suggested that, since I’d been talking about going to Dunfermline sometime soon, we should do just that and go. That sounded like a great idea.

So it was that we walked down to The Shops where we picked up the local bus that would take us to the Town Centre and from there we would get another bus to Dunfermline. Oh, if only it was that simple, but we just missed the bus at the Town Centre and Scamp found herself trying to avoid a conversation with an old guy who was sure I was gay because I was wearing an old pair of pink trousers. Thankfully the Dunfermline bus arrived on time and we got on while the old guy went on to talk to someone else. I did feel a bit sorry for him. As my pal, Colin says, “You don’t know what they go home to at night.” I always try to remember that.

The rest of the journey was going fine until we took a detour that added at least half an hour to our journey. Why is Scotland going through a renovation boom just now? And more importantly, where is all the money coming from? However, we did finally get to Dunfermline and had a coffee and a pastry to calm us down.

We walked down to Pittencrieff Park but found that the Greenhouse was closed because of problems with the glass roof. Instead we walked round the carefully laid out flower beds. It wasn’t until we arrived back home that we discovered that the fruits of those beds, they were related to Ricin! I still made the Castor Oil Plant PoD.

After we’d taken some photos of the plants, we adjourned to Wetherspoons for Fish ’n’ Chips with a glass of wine for Scamp and a pint of Tennants for me. Then we just missed the bus home.

We seemed to be having a “Just missed it” day today as we watched the X3 disappear from the Town Centre stance in Cumbersheugh.

Despite all that, we had a good day. I would go so far as to say that I had a great day. Just a relaxing day. Thank you Scamp.

A leisurely day – 7 August 2026

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We sort of had a long lie in today but managed to wake before 11am!

After breakfast we discussed what to do with the day. It was Scamp who suggested we drive to Hamilton for a curry in Bombay Cottage and that suited me too. So off we went to Hamilton. No problems with roadworks on the M74 down to Hamilton.

The food was good and the Naan Bread was really hot. Just out of the tandoor. I had Chicken Rogan Josh and Scamp had Vegetable Shimla Bhaji. Ice cream helped take the sting out of my Rogan Josh. We were both amazed that the same person who has always served us was still there doing the same job. He told us he’s been there for sixteen years, but is retiring this year. I don’t know if he will retire. I think he’s in with the bricks.

We discussed whether to go somewhere else or just go home afterwards, and settled for going home. Again, we were on the right road to just drive our normal route home without any roadworks, but many people seemed surprised that the road ahead was closed.

In the afternoon we went for a walk around the front garden. One of Scamp’s favourite rose bushes isn’t doing very well, We’re not sure what the root problem is, but a lot of the leaves are covered in big holes and others are discoloured. I think she might write to one of the companies that have supplied the bushes in the past and find out what we should do with it. For today, we cut the plant back by about a third in the hopes that it will give it a jolt. Also it is nearly time to give the roses a second feed. That may help too. If all else fails we’ll do a more drastic cut in the end of spring.

Today’s PoD really came from yesterday’s shots. It’s from an old broken wall across from the house with leaves hanging over the cracked brickwork.

Hope Jamie and Sim enjoy their friend’s wedding.

Tomorrow should be dance day. Hopefully it will be better than last week.

A much cooler day – 6 August 2026

Posted on by Zogman

Today we were on our way to The Fort, well, it was actuallyMorrisons which is close to the fort itself.

We were going looking for Potatoes, because our last lot had far too many eyes (all the better to see you with). I think Scamp thought we could maybe have stopped at the fort to a coffee, but one look at the length of the queue to get a parking place put an end to that idea. So it was back home after Morrisons.

Back home, Scamp was determined to get the front grass cut. I didn’t think it was badly needing cut, but what do I know. I was the labourer, moving the pots around when needed and not a lot else. We both thought it was going to rain, all the signs were there, but for some reason the big black clouds passed us by.

Later in the afternoon I put my boots on and went over to the Shops looking for a bargain or two and came home with a few things. It was strange to see the crowds of folk all desperate to get a parking place at the fort, but back home there were hardly any queues. Scamp suggested it was because the kids would soon be going back to school and there would be a demand for new shoes, blazers and jerseys and our nearby shops didn’t sell much in that line.

Dinner tonight was yesterday’s Fish Risotto for Scamp with Mince ’n’ Tatties for me. Both food groups were being finished off to make room for fresh food and veg.

I did a bit of experimenting with a month’s lot of photos last night and found that I could get the screensaver to work properly again. Someone who had posted online suggested that maybe the screensavers were being hidden, ready to be removed in the next version of Adobe. This might indeed be true, because the software that controls the screensavers is buried deep in the bowels of Castle Adobe. That would be a sin. A bit more work today made it work the way it was supposed to, thankfully.

PoD today was a much worked photo of Geranium Rozanne after it had been dunked in various buckets of messy stuff. I quite liked the finished result.

No plans for tomorrow, but maybe lunch somewhere?

Overslept – 5 August 2026

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I had decided to go to bed early last night. But that didn’t happen. We didn’t wake until well past 9am, and then we had a late breakfast, we didn’t really want to go anywhere. A cold wind was blowing along the back of the house and it wasn’t really making me want to go for a walk.

Instead of going for a walk, I had one last attempt at speaking to a human about my painful right foot. I was amazed when a lady answered my story, asked a few questions and said she had referred me to our local health centre to take it further. Hopefully I won’t have to wait long to have it looked at.

Although we hadn’t had much for lunch, I suggested could we have a Fish and Cabbage Risotto for dinner except we didn’t have any cabbages, so I grabbed a camera and my waterproof jacket, just in case and walked down to the shops. With the roads still being dug up, it was almost as quick to walk to the shops as to drive. Besides, I might have missed some beautiful butterflies, even on a blustery day. I didn’t, but I got the cabbage and some frozen spinach which we are beginning to enjoy and got a photo of a Cow Parsley seed head that became PoD.

Let me explain last night. Scamp had been watching a program about Geoff Hamilton who was a garden expert on TV about 30 years ago. I watched it for a while then went off to write the blog and the photos. I’d just finished when Scamp was talking about what was worth listening to on the BBC Proms. She said two things, ‘Respighi’ and ‘Pines of Rome’. I don’t know where I heard it first, but many years ago I was doing something in the house and half listening to the story of the Pines on the radio. Then when I heard it played by a full orchestra, I was hooked. The story is about the centurions returning, exhausted from a battle and arriving as heroes to Rome. It’s very etherial, almost ghostly music that builds and builds as you get dragged into it. That’s why we didn’t get to bed last night until about half past eleven. Fantastic music. I think Scamp thought I was taking the Mickey to begin with, but realised I did really like this music.

No plans for tomorrow. Not yet, anyway.

Best laid plans – 4 August 2026

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I had three things to do today:

  1. Drop off a sample at for the docs to poke and probe into.
  2. Book the MOT for the Blue car.
  3. Send a message to the Podiatrist.

I managed two of them, which is quite good for me. The first one was easy until I realised I’d left the sample pouch at home. Now, bear in mind that about half of the roads in Cumbersheugh just now are blocked for two weeks. I lied earlier in the week about it being three weeks. Well, what’s a week between friends? So now I had to drive through the a whole load of speed bumps to get back to the house to pick up a plastic bag. Then I had to drive round again and overt the bumps to deliver it to the sample box in Medical Centre. Task 1 completed.

Drove on to the very end of Cumbersheugh and booked the car in for MOT and promised it a scrub and polish if it behaved itself at the MOT place. That was easy!

Tried twice without success to describe a problem I’ve got on my left foot. It feels like I’m walking on broken glass, just like Annie Lennox if you remember her. I couldn’t just phone the podiatrist, because for this whole week they open at 9am and close at 1pm. There is only one podiatrist and there were already 7 people ahead of me in the queue. By the time I filled in the page explaining my problem it would be well into three figures. No, I decided to go the slow way, and type up my problem, except you only get one line to do the explanation. What am I going to say? “I HAVE A SORE FOOT THAT CRUNCHES WHEN I WAL” There is no room to finish the sentence! North Lanarkshire at its clumsy best!
I gave up. I may try again tomorrow. I might get lucky. Two out of three isn’t bad.

Really heavy rain shower in the afternoon, just as I was considering a walk in St Mo’s. It must have lasted about 20 minutes, then it tapered off and after a while, the sun shone. I did get out for a walk and grabbed today’s PoD which was a Valarian plant with a tiny little green spider dangling from it. I liked that one.

Scamp made Saag Paneer Kedgeree. Delicious, if a little bit hot. Needs some tweaking, but worth trying I can photocopy the instructions if anyone wants it. It’s got a sliced, boiled egg, Hazy, but that’s not a game changer. You could just miss it out, or Neil could.

No plans for tomorrow.

 

More Butterflies – 3 August 2026

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This time it was a Painted Lady. The butterfly that starts in Africa and can end up in Alaska. Not all in one flight and in some cases it’s a different butterfly that takes over from the first one … it’s complicated. If you’re interested, search the internet for it.

Today we were going shopping at Waitrose in Stirling. It was a “Long and winding road”. The street we live on was having a makeover. That meant, although we wanted to go right at the end of the street, instead we had to drive through the car park of the football stadium, round the stadium itself then back on to the main road again. After that the devious road menders had closed off the road that would normally have taken us to the motorway … but not today. Instead we had to go a circuit of Cumbersheugh to get back to the motorway. I suppose it made sense to the folk who designed it, but for us it was a pain in the backside.

We did get to Stirling quite easily after the initial problem. Scamp was thirsty so we had a coffee and shared a pastry, then filled a shopping trolley with goodies. I got a nice bottle of gin that was reduced by a fair bit. Scamp got a bottle opener she fancied and a couple of bottles of wine. One because she’d had it before and liked it. The other because it had an interesting label. Why not!

We drove home and found yet another way that would take us back to the house without going anywhere near the football stadium. We had been places today that we had never seen in years. It was a learning experience – Every day’s a school day!

It was a dull day. No butterflies to photograph and nothing that even remotely made we want to go out. What we had done was to pick up a Charlie Bigham’s Butter Chicken for Two. A lovely dinner in about 30 minutes. Yes, we know it’s not good for us, but it tasted like it was!

We watched an episode of University Challenge in the evening. Then Scamp wanted to watch a special edition of Gardener’s World and I started typing this.

Hopefully tomorrow won’t be as complicated as today was. I hope you understood at least half of it!!

 

Dancin’ – 1 August 2026

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On the first day of August

It was a busy morning with traffic on the road, probably from folk coming home from holiday and others on their way out. Once we got past Glasgow airport the traffic reduced. Today we were back in Brookfield and dancing old dances. Some were more successful than others. People, including us, were still having problems with Rona’s Rumba. Jane was making changes to the routine but, as someone said, there are too many turns both clockwise and anticlockwise. I can understand that Jane has devised the dance for a friend who passed away, but you sometimes have to stand back and look at the routine. That’s all I’ll say.

It wasn’t my best day. I was complaining about everything. I have no excuse for it, just one of those dance days when things get under my skin and I can’t do anything right. We danced quite a few routines that, normally we’d work our way through without any problems, but today they just didn’t work. Most of it was my fault. Probably best to forget today and come back fresh for the next dance.

For once we drove home over the Kingston Bridge and kept the wheels turning all the time. It’s not often I’ll say that. The weather was variable today. Cloudy one minute and in sunshine the next. Not to be trusted, though because Scamp was complaining about little showers of rain when she was working in the garden later. We both worked on an old tree that’s been growing next to the wall in the back garden and between us I think we’ve given it a good short back and sides today. Our ‘Brown Bin’, the garden waste bin was almost full with one bushy tree.

We had three butterflies changing places round the Buddleia bush in the garden. One of them, a Red Admiral, finally settled on a plant pot and I managed one photo of it before it flew off. That photo made PoD.

I spent some time rearranging my Lightroom catalog, something I’ve been meaning to do for months now. Hopefully it will be a more logical way of working this year.

Dinner tonight was Mac ’n’ Cheese and although it was a bit salty, it tasted great. Scamp was cooking, of course!

No plans for tomorrow so far.

Out to see the doc – 31 July 2026

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Or at least the doc’s assistant.

It was time for my annual checkup, or my MOT as some folk call it. Dropped Scamp off at Tesco for her to make her way along to Costa where Isabel would be waiting for her. I drove on to the doc’s surgery and signed in. I was way too early, but that didn’t bother me, I had my iPhone and it had my Sudoku puzzle on it, so I’d have something to do.

A while later the automated voice called me to speak to the sister. It was quite a positive discussion. I knew there were a few things I needed to do, like losing weight. The sister wanted to do a PSA test and a blood test too. I’d been lucky enough to get the tests in quickly before the bloke who takes the samples away for analysis left. Better to get it done quickly. After that and after answering all the sister’s questions and after she answered all of mine, we had a plan of action to put into place next week if there are enough free spaces to get an appointment. That was my morning done and dusted, so I drove home and had a well deserved coffee and waited for Scamp.

As it happened, when she arrived we discussed what we’d been doing in the morning and had lunch. Then we solved the Wordle and all the rest of the puzzles that keep our brains active. In the afternoon the rain started and it looked like I wouldn’t be going for a walk, but later the sky cleared and I did manage a short jaunt round St Mo’s and got today’s PoD which was the seed pods of a Gorse plant, although every time I look at it, it looks like a wolf! Too wild an imagination.

Scamp made Chicken Milanese which is a chicken breast that’s had the living daylights beaten out of it. I imagine calling it “Chicken Milanese” describes it better than my example! Whatever you call it, I thoroughly enjoyed it with potatoes and a lovely ratatouille, or “Rats” as Scamp describes it.

We relaxed to Gardeners World for an hour in the evening. Actually, not a bad day.

I think we may be going dancing tomorrow.

Another warm day – 30 July 2026

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Scamp was taking Shona to have a tooth removed. Rather her than me

I took some time to myself and read a few more chapters of my latest book, The Midnight Train by Matt Haig. Strange book, but I’m only about a quarter way through it. I want to find out where it goes, but am not in a hurry.

When Scamp returned she started a conversation with Jackie and not wishing to earwig, I put on my rain jacket and put three new windscreen wipers on the blue car. What a difference that made. Wish I’d dine it weeks an ago. With that done, I drove up to my favourite photography spot to get some wild sky photos. It was quite cool up on the moors, but I did get a few photos I liked.

I drove home and after I’d been brought up to speed with Jackie’s comings and goings and Murdo’s possible need for a new cataract op Scamp made dinner. Salmon, Potatoes and Corn on the Cob. Very nice, I really enjoyed the salmon slice, Scamp.

Tomorrow I’m booked for my annual checkup and as usual, I’m not really looking forward to it. At least it’s going to be in my usual place and not in the main surgery.

We are hoping the wildfire down near Dunwich burns out soon, or the wind changes direction.

PoD went to a landscape that brightened up my day.

Oh yes, and Shona did get her tooth out without too much trouble.