Category: Garden

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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

A problem solved – 21 February 2025

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Today, Scamp was off to FitSteps in the morning and I was determined to fix a problem that had been bugging me for almost two months.

The problem was that my .gmail accounts had managed the transition from Android to iPhone, but it felt like the Apple system was putting blocks in my way when I tried to put a couple of my own, home-grown accounts into the iPhone. Every time I tried, there was an error of some sort that prevented them being accepted. Today I solved it. I doubt if any of my readers are interested in the nitty gritty of the process, but after about six hours of work I finally found out how to do it.

The answer was there all the time in a combination of a Namecheap link and a Cpanel link. I needed both of these pieces of information to work the magic. I’ll store the work-through somewhere on the iMac, so I can come back to it when I’m sure it’s working. For now it’s a “back of a fag packet” solution. If you don’t understand that, then you’re too young! (Or I’m too old!!)

I started about 10.30am and finally had a working prototype by about 4pm with breaks in between for food and drink. It had been a terrible day with heavy rain showers and gale force winds. Scamp said she was nearly blown over getting from class to the car. Once in the car, driving was fine. That’s one of the benefits of having a car with a fairly low profile, it cuts through the wind well. I did go out into the back garden for a few minutes to recover a flower pot that our local grey squirrel had tipped over, but came back in when the rain got heavy. That’s when I found the PoD. It’s a view of the stained glass panel on the front door with raindrops on its outside face.

While I was still swearing at the computer, Scamp was making the dinner which was Carrot & Lentil Curry. Not a hot curry, just one that improves with resting and can have lots of additions to improve the general flavour. It’s an ancient recipe now carefully kept in a binder.

Tomorrow we may be dancing at Brookfield if there is enough interest to make a quorum. Some lucky folk are booked for a week’s dancing in Calpe, flying out on Sunday, but for a couple of reasons we won’t be with them.

Snow and an Anniversary – 17 February 2025

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In the morning there was snow, but it didn’t lie for long before the snow turned to rain.

It was one of those days when the weather couldn’t decide what to do for the best. First it decided that today was to be a snowy day with fairly thick flakes coming down. Then it chose to change its mind and make the snow disappear, before thinking again and returning to the snowy theme. On and off, it went all morning until eventually snow was cancelled and just plain dull was the choice for the day. Then it rained, of course.

We didn’t do much today. We drove over to Tesco to get Scamp’s meds and a few bits and pieces for lunch and dinner.

After some discussion we decided that we’d go dancing in the early evening and spent a fairly useful hour trying to work out how we were going to dance the Foxtrot. Would we choose style 1 where we would do part one and then repeat that pattern.
Or would we choose style 2 where we would start with part one and then add on part two before returning to part one and repeating the entire routine.

To be honest, I was completely lost. Style 1 I could understand and I could almost manage style 2, but neither of them seemed to allow us to move round the dance floor and it looked to me as if we were simply dancing a routine on the same area of the floor all the time. I was confused … Dot Com. I don’t think this was one of Kirsty’s more thought out routines.

We drove home after the class and had Giovanni Rana pasta with some fancy out of date mushrooms on the side. Neither of us liked the mushrooms very much and they more or less stayed ‘on the side’.

We did scoff a couple of half bottles of wine while we watched Mastermind and University Challenge, shouting out the occasional answer now and again.

It was our 52nd wedding anniversary today and we were allowed to do those things without fear or favour.

PoD was a picture of a Christmas Rose from the garden, looking a bit battered and bruised by the wild weather, but still flowering nicely.

Tomorrow I’m hoping to meet Charlie and maybe another couple of folk I haven’t seen for about forty years! Perhaps I should wear a red carnation!

Another cold day – 12 February 2025

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Another day when we didn’t venture far.

We did walk down to the shops to get some things for dinner, potatoes and bread and stuff. Oh yes, and a bag of jam doughnuts too! First ones I’ve had in ages.

We had spotted the wee yellow crocus just below the front window. Looking a bit bedraggled now, it had survived all the storms and came up smiling and yellow. Today Scamp noticed it had company. An even smaller crocus beside it. Both of them are of the species ‘Dorothy’. Bright yellow with a bronze stripe. Pity there hasn’t been very much sun to encourage them to open up properly.

One of the things we got at the shops was a Butternut Squash. I’d meant to get one a day or two ago and completely forgot. It’s been cooked now and is waiting to be blitzed into soup, probably tomorrow. The main dinner tonight was Fish ’n’ Chips and they were delicious.

In addition, she also made a Rhubarb Pie. Lovely crumbly pastry with sharp, but not sour rhubarb. One quarter disappeared almost immediately, but there’s plenty more for tomorrow, all being well!

That was about all there was to say about today. No walk today. Too dull and cold. No point in putting yourself through that when you have a couple of pretty crocuses in the garden to photograph and make PoD.

No plan for tomorrow as yet.