Category: Garden

Out to lunch – 15 April 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Taking Shona to belated birthday lunch today.

Just before midday we picked up Shona and drove the mile or so to Nonna’s at Dullatur.

The place was empty, but then it was only 11:50 and it didn’t open for lunch until 12:00.

Starters were Focaccia for Scamp and I to share while Shona had Chicken liver Paté

Mains were Scallops and Black Pudding for Scamp, Courgette Spaghetti with Zucchini Crisps. I had Penne Salsiccia

Desserts were Tiramisu for Shona and Sticky Toffee Pudding for Scamp and a pot of tea for me. Scamp criticised the Sticky Toffee Pudding and I felt there was too much cream and salt in the Penne Salsiccia. Other than that, it was fine. Service was slow, but the place was filling up by the time we left and there seemed to be only two people on the floor and possibly another two in the kitchen.

It was a lovely day. We had a window seat and a view over the golf course watching all the golfers walking and driving their golf buggies full of their golfing bats.

We dropped Shona back at her house after lunch and she was still in time to collect Ben from his carers.

Back home, Scamp was out gardening for a while and I had an afternoon snooze! Later she took me on a guided tour of the garden and I took some photos of the Stellata Magnolia which is almost in full bloom. One of the flowers made PoD.

I’m hoping to meet up with Billy Kent tomorrow at Starbucks – I might order tea, rather than a Starbucks. At least you know what’s in tea!

Rain at last – 13 April 2025

Posted on by Zogman

We had been promised rain today and it actually came as predicted!

There wasn’t much rain, but enough to wet the ground and give the plants in the garden a drink.

Rather a changeable day which was mainly dry but with occasional heavy showers, especially later in the evening.

After tidying the kitchen and the living room after Saturday’s dinner guests, there wasn’t really much to do except, perhaps watch the water falling from the sky for a while.

Later in the day I took the A6500 out to St Mo’s to look for some photos. Yesterday, I’d set the aperture and shutter speed to manual and had forgotten to reset them. Today, for some reason, I set the ISO to 100. That meant that a lot of todays photos taken in between the rain shower and in bright sunlight were overexposed and too light. It took me about an hour after I got home to see how I’d done all that. Once all the settings were back to normal, Lightroom dealt with the overexposure quickly. The PoD was a bunch of flowering cherries and the overexposure coupled with a wide aperture accidentally provided exactly what I wanted in the flowers. Sometimes things just work.

Spoke to Jamie in the evening and told him the 3D jigsaw he and Simonne had given me for my birthday was underway. The base is now complete and ready for the tree to grow in it.

Watched the Bahrain F1 GP and apart from a few interesting passing manoeuvres, it was the same old, same old.

Tomorrow we may have shopping to do – just the essentials.

Rail cards and Butterflies – 9 April 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Scamp was trying unsuccessful to solve a rail card problem on a dull Wednesday morning. Dull? Is this the end of the good weather?

She had purchased mine, and thought she’d cleared the hurdles put in place by Railcard.co.uk, but they didn’t like the way she’d done it. Allegedly she could fix the problem at any rail station, but that would only get her a one year, paper card (is that an oxymoron?), not the two year one she’s always had. The person in the ticket office suggested she phone Customer Services. So not the easy fix she was promised. We drove over to Tesco and got bread and milk and some odds and ends.

Back home Scamp phoned Customer Services and had to answer all the questions she’d answered yesterday. Name, Date of Birth, Address, Size of big toe (LEFT FOOT). You know what it’s like, we’ve all been there. Then the person she was speaking to, possibly in a different country, had to go and check with “Her Team” (she didn’t say if they wore Green shirts or Blue ones). Five minutes later she returned to say she had to complete the questionnaire again to pass on to the “Team” and someone would contact her within the usual ‘Ten Working Days’. It was all a bit of a faff. Why is life never easy?

With all that done, it was lunch time and that meant half a Ginsters for me and a piece ’n’ egg for Scamp, and the sun had returned to a blue sky. Later Scamp decided the sun was warm enough in the corner of the garden to sit outside and read. I put on my boots and went over to St Mo’s looking for Flora, Fauna, Animal or Insect life. I found no fauna, a very few flowers, but there were animal tracks and there was a Peacock butterfly, sunning itself on a log. So that was one insect in the bag (digitally). I took that as a sign to head for home.

Quick and easy dinner was Giovanni Rana pasta with olive oil and grated Parmesan.

The following description is for my reference, but feel free to read it if you’re interested.

I needed to transfer some of my photo files from the iMac to hard disk (NTFS). My iMac won’t read or write NTFS drives now – don’t know why. The MBP can read and write to NTFS. Here’s how I managed to ‘easily’ copy the files from iMac to the NTFS drive.

  1. Power up the iMac the NTFS drive and the MBP
  2. Ensure that the MBP can ’see’ the iMac
  3. Connect the NTFS drive to the MBP.
  4. Search the iMac for the NTFS drive on the MBP.
  5. Drag the files that I’m looking for from the MBP to the NTFS drive

If all is well, the MBP becomes the conduit between the iMac and the NTFS drive. Today it worked perfectly. About 15GB of data copied in just over 9 minutes. Happy Bunny!

PoD was the Peacock butterfly.

Tomorrow, I’m informed that we may need some ‘Messages’!

 

 

Another beautiful day – 7 April 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Scamp wanted compost and agricultural grit for the garden, so we went looking.

We drove to Torwood to see if we could find some. We found all the compost and the bags of grit, but Scamp wasn’t impressed with the price they wanted for delivering the heavy stuff. It would have cost more than the compost and grit combined. However, she did manage to get a few tubs of flowers, big and small with the possibility of getting the heavy stuff locally. We had lunch there too and I got a tray of leeks plants . They’ve come a long way from when we’d get a bunch of leeks wrapped up in wet newspaper from a couple of blokes who worked in the greenhouses along Clydeside. Changed days.

We drove home and stopped at Calder’s where Scamp got Vermiculite and Perlite. Both recommended as good drainage for young plants.

Scamp had been complaining about the length of the grass in the back garden, so I took out the strimmer and gave it all a fairly rough short back and sides. Maybe that should read … a very rough short back and sides. Still, after Scamp had raked it over it looked ok. It’ll need a proper cut in a week or two I think.

After that I went for a walk over St Mo’s while Scamp took a book and a seat into the garden. In St Mo’s I found a couple of clumps of Cowslips, another sign that Spring is Springing. One of them became PoD.

When I came home, Scamp was in the house, on the phone to Jackie, So I kept her seat warm in the front garden and watched the world go by for a while.

Soon it was time to get dressed for Kirsty’s class where we were dancing a Melody Foxtrot. We actually got to demonstrate it to the class because Kirsty had only learned it this afternoon and of course we are experienced dancers now.

One of those classes where time seems to disappear. Hopefully we’ll have two weeks off dancing now because the Brookfield teachers are off teaching on a cruise and the Link where Kirsty’s class runs is closed for two weeks at Easter.

Tomorrow we may go out to lunch in Glasgow.

Another beautiful day – 6 April 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Thankfully without the wind we’ve had recently, just a gentle breeze to keep us cool today. It would have been better if it was a tad warmer, but it is only the beginning of April and it was dry, so we shouldn’t complain too much, although we always will.

Spent an extra hour or so in bed finishing “Paperboy”, my latest book. Enjoyable, but not as good as book 1, “Squeaky Clean” in my opinion. Loved the writer’s use of Glasgow slang and language.

That left us the whole morning to wait before the Japanese GP aired. Finished Wordle after a struggle, gave up on Spelling Bee, but completed the new game, “Strands”. The race, itself was more a procession than anything else. You could hear the commentators attempting to make it sound interesting, but that just wasn’t happening. A dud, I’m afraid.

We spent half an hour wandering round the garden while Scamp explained her intentions for new planting and pruning. It looks like we might need to to reposition some of the branches from Schoolgirl to cover up where I was overenthusiastic with my autumn pruning. Schoolgirl it a tough rose and will be able to take that extra stretching, I hope.

I spent some time photographing tiny little spiders with my big heavy macro lens and then rejecting almost all of them. PoD went to a group of greenfly clambering over a rose leaf. I should mention that the second place photo of one of Scamp’s parrot tulips is worth a look too on Flickr.

Dinner was Cauliflower in a Filo Pastry Case, baked in the oven. It sounds fairly plain, but it was delicious. A lot of work for Scamp to prepare the veg, and it really needed four hands to get the baking tin out of the oven.

Spoke to Jamie later in the day and heard about his asparagus plants and plans for seed planting – vegetables, of course! Also their search for reasonably priced, but good quality outdoor garden furniture. We don’t really get enough sun to merit outdoor furniture!

Tomorrow it looks like we may be going out looking for compost and maybe gravel to provide more drainage for some of Scamp’s pot plants.

Coffee with Isobel and Shona – 1 April 2025

Posted on by Zogman

We were booked for coffee with Isobel and Shona today. Just the usual Costa in the town centre on a beautiful warm spring day.

The temperature was all set to reach 18ºc by afternoon and I’m sure it reached, if not exceeded that temperature. Shona was looking quite relaxed and seemed to be enjoying the benefits of not having to worry about Ben because he was being looked after by his minders. After a fairly interesting coffee chat, we went our separate ways and in our case, headed home.

Scamp was desperate to get back into the garden and tidy things up. I can see the difference she is making and am glad she’s enjoying seeing the growth coming in all her plants. In the afternoon she declared that she was going to sit in the sun. Not long after that I saw the thick black clouds of smoke that looked like something was burning fiercely on the far side of the motorway. I was intending going over to St Mo’s anyway, but I thought I’d have a look from the vantage point of the bridge over the motorway. The motorway was running normally, but the black clouds weren’t going away. If anything they were worse than they had been before I left. They were still too far away for me to see the source. Quite a few ambulances coming and going though.

I walked back and in to St Mo’s and with the help of my phone managed to work out the direction the smoke pall was coming from. It seemed to be near Greenfaulds School, although, maybe a bit beyond that. Later we heard on the news that it was a recycling unit that was burning and that Greenfaulds occupants were warned to keep their doors and windows shut.

I grabbed a few shots in St Mo’s and my favourite was the PoD, the Horse Chestnut buds unfolding. It was a tough decision if it was a sycamore leaf opening or the horse chestnut, but the horse chestnut won. Surprise of the day was a butterfly darting about under the trees. Couldn’t get a clear shot of it, but hopefully there will be other chances. Walked home and joined Scamp with a bottle of beer in the front garden.

Dinner tonight was fish ’n’ chips. Giant pieces of fish with baked chips. Really lovely with beetroot and tomato sauce! Scamp made it, of course.

Watched the final episode of Death in Paradise and it was just as bad as all the rest had been!

Tomorrow I’m hoping to meet Alex for a photo walk. Scamp, I’m sure, will be hoping to work more magic in the garden.

British Summer Time begins – 30 March 2025

Posted on by Zogman

I had thought the days of coughs and stuffed up nose were past now that we are sailing into warmer days, but I was wrong.

Woke this morning to a thick head (nothing unusual there) and blocked nose. Just when I thought it was safe to go back in the water, so to speak. Scamp told me to dose myself with paracetamol and Vitamin C and go back to bed. That felt like sound advice, so I took it. An hour or so later I felt better.

Scamp was off meeting Shona for coffee on a Sunday! A bit strange, but they both seemed to enjoy it. When Scamp returned I was already on my feet and had put a load of washing in the machine. She wanted to pot up some new flowers and was concentrating on that. I was off to enjoy the sun with a walk in St Mo’s. I took the long lens on the A7iii and managed to capture a few shots of a robin on a branch in the sunshine. Not very inspiring, I know, but it was a photo in the bag and it ended up being the PoD after some messing around in Lightroom.

Didn’t see much else worth photographing, so I made my way home. By that time, Scamp had finished her re-potting and was reading. We discussed dinner and came back to the suggestion she’d made yesterday which was an old favourite; Mushrooms and Chicken.

Speaking of Lightroom, it’s beginning to slow down a lot. I think there may be Gigabytes of photos, probably two month’s of them clogging up the system. I’m intending backing them up to storage on the external drive and clearing out the ‘deadwood’ soon. Soon, in this case meaning on the 1st of April which is just around the corner. January’s and February’s photos are backed up, as far as I can remember, but March needs to go soon. Also there are a lot of last year’s files that can safely be cleared out. Effectively, those older files can be removed any time and that might create more usable space.

Spoke to Jamie later in the afternoon and heard about his visit to HQ in London with days and evenings working. Glad I’m past all that stuff now. Also heard that Simonne is off on her travels soon too.

I’m hoping my stuffed up nose has now gone for a while, likewise my cough. Hoping for another sunny day tomorrow.

It rained today – 27 March 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Unfortunately it forgot to stop.

After yesterday’s sunshine, today was a bit of a let down. The farthest we got was Tesco for a shopping expedition. Not much fun to be had in Tesco.

Then it was back home for lunch. I did take the chance of getting some photos in the garden in the afternoon, between showers. My target was a Snake’s head Fritillary. One of many Scamp had planted last autumn and were beginning to flower now. The light was pretty low by the time I got a chance to beat the rain, but hopefully I’ll get another chance tomorrow, or at the weekend.

Not a lot more to say about a typical wet Scottish day.

Hoping for better weather tomorrow.

It was one of those days – 23 February 2025

Posted on by Zogman

A day where the rain just never stopped falling.

Even when the gale force winds calmed down, the rain kept falling. A day when it would have been foolish to go out in the rain. But sometimes you just have to do what you have to do. I went out into the garden to photograph a clump of crocuses. Purple and yellow ones. They seem to grow well under the apple tree in the back garden. I did actually wait for a break in the showers and the wind before I attempted to photograph the flowers with their raindrops. Then after having taken just three frames, I retired to the safety of the house before the next shower and the next gale made landfall. The crocuses made PoD.

And that was it, really. The gales gradually calmed down and the rain showers became less fierce then for a short time the sun appeared and shone on us, but that didn’t last long. Now, as I’m writing this, the wind is strengthening again, but the rain has gone to annoy other folk for a while.

I had a Picanha steak for dinner. I hadn’t heard of it before a year or two ago, but now it’s becoming quite popular although M&S is the only place I’ve seen it recently. It seems to be a cut that has gained a following with barbecue chefs. I just pan fried mine with some mushrooms and fried potatoes. Scamp had a couple of Sea bass fillets with fried potatoes.

Spoke to Jamie later and heard about Vixen’s laser therapy and a swim to keep her muscles in trim. Good to hear that Simonne is starting to progress with her running.

Tomorrow we are expecting to attend an on-line funeral for Clive.