Category: Garden

Just out for a curry – 10 June 2022

Posted on by Zogman

We couldn’t decide where to go today.

Bright sunshine in the morning, but heavy showers blown along on a strong wind. I suggested we drive to Hamilton for a curry. Scamp favoured Glasgow on the bus. We settled for a curry in Stirling with the chance to do some food shopping in Waitrose.

We’ve been going to the Indian Cottage in Stirling for many years and the food is always good. Not so good today. My meal was just as good as it usually is Chicken Tikka Chilli Boonah never fails to hit the mark. Scamp’s Vegetable Dhansak, however fell short of excellent. She said the sauce was fine, but the vegetables felt a little ‘old’, and the sample I had did fit her description. She summed it up by saying that the veg tasted like frozen veg flung into the curry sauce before serving. We both agreed that what was promised as a ‘well done naan’ was nothing like a naan. Flat, tasteless with no ghee or oil to soften the bread, it was awful. I realise that restaurants have to ‘cut their cloth’ these days, but they also have to serve the food that people want to eat.

We walked back to Waitrose and bought a fair amount of food. Mainly things that we can’t get in Tesco or Morrisons. Fruit, veg, fish and meat. That about summed it up. Scamp used up a Covid voucher for a few bottles of wine too

Drove back home without meeting any of the heavy showers we’d seen in the morning, but we weren’t in the house for long before one descended on us. Others followed later in the day. I was tempted to go over to St Mo’s, but instead I sat in the garden in the sunshine watching the bees feeding on the Honeybells. I also took a few shots of them. One of those shots made PoD.

I think we’re turning the corner on foreign travel. Scamp had a look at some 7 day cruises, but it was difficult to determine if any flights were available from Glasgow. Maybe we need a visit to some travel agents to get a clearer picture of what’s actually available. Another hour out of our lives that we won’t get back.

Tomorrow looks wet and maybe that trip to Glasgow on the bus might materialise.

A Busy Day – 9 June 2022

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This was always going to be a busy day. The question was ‘How Busy?’

I was first out. I was driving Scamp’s wee Red car down to Jim Dickson’s garage to get its exhaust fixed. It was a hairy drive with the exhaust banging and clanging all the way there and once I got to the village, I had the speed bumps to contend with. I was praying that the exhaust would hold on until we reached the garage. It did. I got it booked in and left to meet Scamp, who was driving the Blue car and had picked up Shona.

We swapped over drivers at the village and I drove the rest of the way to the hospital just outside Falkirk. Shona was going there for an X-ray to check that her broken arm was healing properly. With her dropped off, we drove to Torwood garden centre for a cup of coffee and a cake each. Then we walked round the plants. We were really looking for some bark to put on the plant pots to retain some moisture in them and also to dissuade the slugs from eating them. Apparently slugs don’t like crawling over bark. By the way, bark has now been renamed “Woof!” in the house. Oh! the fun we’ve had with that 🤨. We did find some bags of bark which would actually fit into the car and dumped one in a shopping trolley.

Of course we had a look at some of the plants too. Both of us have been looking for a plant called Snow in Summer. It used to be very common, but we couldn’t find it anywhere. Today Scamp found what looked like a pot of it. I checked the name on my phone and it was indeed correct. We got two pots of it, one small one to go in with the alpines and another to go into the general garden. Pelargonium Grandiflorum was our other purchase. Lovely colourful big flowers.  I found a part of the garden centre I’d not seen before.  It’s laid out as a sort of zoo enclosure with resin cast animals in it.  Some quite realistic, some not so much.  I took a couple of photos on the better examples.  They’re up on Flickr.

We loaded them all into the car boot and sat for a few minutes before Shona phoned to say she was ready to go. She had offered to buy lunch for us, so we drove to Broadwood Farm and had a taste of their carvery lunch. Scamp had turkey, Shona knew the server 😉 and got turkey, ham and beef. I had ham and beef. There was mash, carrot and turnip, peas, stuffing and gravy to hand and I think I had all of them except the mash. A very enjoyable lunch.

After lunch we went back to our house for Shona to see the wedding photos from two weeks ago. Halfway through the show I got a phone call to say the car was ready. When the show was finally over we drove Shona home, then down to the garage where we swapped over again and Scamp drove home while I settled the bill and followed her home.

There was a rain shower just as I was going out to get some photos, this time with the A6000. I’d taken a few shots earlier and although they looked good on the camera, I wanted a few more just to be sure. This time I used the 55-210mm lens, but the gusty wind made it a hit or a miss. In the end it was a shot of some daisies waking from the rain that got PoD.

I drove Scamp up to the Link in the evening to get her Pneumonia jag. It’s a once-only jag for over 65s.

That was a busy day with so many changes and things done. However, the wee Red car is back in business. Now all we need to do is save up enough money to put some petrol in its tank!

Tomorrow there is talk of going somewhere, possibly for lunch.

 

Maybe the last sunny day – 5 June 2022

Posted on by Zogman

A bit of a lazy, sunny Sunday, but it looks like it’s downhill for the weather now.

Spoke to Hazy in the morning and caught up on all that was happening with them and the extended family. Neither of them feeling fully fit yet, but that’s to be expected. Sometime you just have to take things a bit easier and let the world turn at its rate.

We started out doing a bit of gentle garden work under a warm sun, but with a cool breeze. For me, today’s work meant pruning away seed heads on the aquilegia just to make sure they don’t seed everywhere as they did last year, dead heading the lupins, and checking that we hadn’t lost any peas, kale or leeks over the past couple of days. It looks to me as if I’ve already lost a pea plant, but there was no sign of slug trails, so maybe it was one of the hungry birds that had done the dirty on me. I’ll maybe do my mum’s trick and stretch some black cotton thread across the raised bed. Scares the living daylights out of the birds! Scamp, of course was right in there in the front garden, digging out weeds and cutting down excess growth in the bushes.

Soon it was lunch time and after that, Scamp went walking down to the shops to get some stuff for tonight’s dinner while I prepared mine. Today I was cooking some diced pork I’d bought months ago. Neither of us had any experience of cooking it, so I stuck fairly close to a recipe I’d downloaded from BBC Food. Basically you fried off the meat to start with and put it in a slow cooker, then it was the turn of some bacon to be fried and added to the slow cooker next the veg was cooked and added with an uncooked peeled, cored and chopped apple. Finally, in went about half a bottle of cider, some herbs and some water and half a chicken stock cube. Put the lid on and cook on low for six hours, it said. I didn’t have six hours, so I cooked it on auto for about four hours and the meat was falling off the fork when it came out.

While Scamp rested I went out with a macro lens on the camera hoping to see that dragonfly again. My backup was some yellow flag irises that I reckoned would be in flower by now. No dragonfly to be seen, but the irises were beautiful. They got PoD I also found that the newly sown grass football park behind St Mo’s school has some lovely wee red poppies in with the grass seed.

Spoke to Jamie later and heard all about bat investigations and preparations for exiting his present employment to head for pastures new. Never easy, although I must say that it’s a very long time since I had to do that. Some time around 1980 I believe!

Tomorrow I think I’m taking the wee Red car down to the village to see about a new exhaust.

Finally getting my hands dirty – 3 June 2022

Posted on by Zogman

About time too!

Went out this morning to get some bread from Tesco and hopefully post some photos to Hazy. The bread was no problem, but the post office was shut, as was the local one in Condorrat. Don’t blame me, blame Mrs McQueen and her Platignum Jubbly holiday. Ok, if I’d posted the parcel yesterday it wouldn’t have been a problem, but I didn’t. I still blame Mrs McQueen for it. If not her, then Boris. That’s the obvious fall back, Blame Boris.

Came home with the beautifully wrapped parcel and a loaf plus a couple of bars of chocolate for being a good boy. With that done, and not done, we started in the garden. I found a single pea had germinated from the five I’d planted in the raised bed, so I carefully dug it out and put it aside. Then I added some compost to the raised bed to replace all the stuff I’d dug out since the end of last years growing season. After that, this year’s planting could begin.

I planted four peas, plus the pea I’d recovered earlier in the back row of the raised bed. Next line was four curly kale plants. While I was planting them, I found what looked like another kale plant left over from last year. It turned out to be a piece of kale stem with a little green leaf sprouting from the middle of it. There was no sign of any root on what you might call a cutting, but the leaf looked healthy. Just for luck, I planted it with the rest of the kale. Next line was four leeks and that was the raised bed about full.

I’d five leeks left, so I emptied out last year’s plant pot that held about six leeks. Chucked half of the compost away and all the leek roots. Mixed what was left with some fresh composts and refilled the pot, then planted the remaining five leeks in the pot. Watered everything in as all the gardening programmes say you should and left then to sink or swim. Meanwhile, Scamp was potting up her new hydrangea and rearranging other plants to give them a better chance of catching some sunshine.

At that point, I felt I’d done more than enough gardening, so I grabbed a camera and a 105mm macro and went over to St Mo’s hoping to see a dragonfly I’d seen yesterday. I didn’t find it, but what I did find was a lazy Large Red damselfly which was compliant enough to sit there while I took a few photos of it. One of them made PoD.

Dinner tonight was a pizza we bought in Sainsbury’s yesterday and very nice it was too. Sainsbury’s always have produced good pizzas.

We may be dancing tomorrow or we may not. It seems there are only two couples definitely going to class. Hopefully we’ll find out in the morning. Mrs McQueen has a lot to answer for, I’ll tell you that, her and her Platignum Jubbly celebration.

Out looking for leeks – 2 June 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Any excuse to get out and have a sneaky bit of lunch, but the wee car was sounding exhausted.

We started out early, because a lady would visit us today and ask us to stick a cotton bud thing down our throat and then up our nose before answering a series of very searching questions which we answered very quite honestly. Then after she went away leaving us with a memorable word picture of India we two went different ways. Scamp went to pick up Isobel to go for coffee and I wanted to do some painting. Neither of those things happened. Scamp phoned to say that she though the car was making a strange noise, maybe exhaust? I agreed because I’d heard it as she drove away. I never quite go round to doing any painting, because I wrote a long email to Alex instead. One thing added to my to-do list and immediately ticked off.

When she got back from having coffee at Isobel’s rather than at Costa, we drove off in the blue car to Clydeside, looking for somewhere for lunch and also if they had leek plants in that place, it would be a bonus. Gouldings was the first place we went to and it was bedecked with bunting and purple banners declaring that there was a Platinum Jubilee. The other thing they had was a very long queue for food. So we went looking for leek plants, but, eh, that was something they didn’t have. It’s become more and more difficult to find garden centres that sell veg plants. Flowers, yes. Vegetable plants just aren’t sexy enough though. Nor are they pretty enough. We left empty handed.

The next place was Dobbies which used to be Sandyholm. The car park was almost empty, not a good sign, but I did find leeks in their vegetable area. Scamp found a couple of interesting flowers there too and there was no queue for lunch. So we paid for the plants, put them in the car and went back for lunch. Scampi and chips for two and that was lunch sorted. When we drove past Gouldings on the way home, I did wonder if we’d have had our lunch by then if we’d stayed in that queue.

Dropped in at John & Marion’s to hand over a memory stick with a load of wedding photos on it. Then we continued on our way home to plant out today’s leeks, hydrangea and tomato plants. Actually none of these were planted in the soil, but they were watered with the rest of the garden when we dug out the hose and used it on the front and back gardens. Tomorrow I have kale to plant and also some leeks. Scamp has the flowers to deal with. I also have pea plants to transplant along side one pea plant that is growing from seed in the raised bed. Strangely, it looks as if I’ve got a kale plant growing from last year’s sowing!

I took a walk over to St Mo’s after we got home and got PoD which is a shot of Horsetails looking like an alien jungle. Also, if you look in Flickr you’ll find a pugilistic Wolf Spider that just missed PoD and slightly confused mushroom that thinks it’s autumn come early! On the way back, I had a poke at the exhaust in Scamp’s wee Red car and it’s definitely needing a visit to Jim Dickson’s garage. I think it’s hanging by a thread just now.

Tomorrow we’ve decided it will be a gardening day. Lots to do there now that we have some warmth in the soil, so time to start things growing.

 

I’m busy doing nothing – 1 June 2022

Posted on by Zogman

This might be a short blog.

I don’t feel I did much today. I woke about 6am and couldn’t get comfortable after that. Eventually gave up just after 7.30 and got up to make the breakfast. I hadn’t much to do, except make a screensaver from May’s PoDs and file the May photos. However, I managed to spin that out to cover the whole morning. In the afternoon, I’d filed the photos and made a set of wedding photos to go to Hazy and another to go to John and Marion using most of Scamp’s photos and mine. Again, not an onerous task. Photos are on a memory stick and should go in the post tomorrow, Hazy.

Scamp, meantime had cut the front and back grass. I know I should have dome my share, but I didn’t. I was watching the clock, because I was going to the doc’s today to find out what’s wrong with these red blotches on my leg. I spoke to the triage nurse and she suspected they might be caused by contact dermatology with a bit of fungal infection thrown in. It still sounds a bit unclear, but I’ve got new meds which I’ll try tonight. One is an emollient, to soften the scab, and the other is a slightly stronger hydrocortisone than the one the pharmacist gave me. I’ve to try them for a week and report back. Let’s hope it works.

I felt I really wasted today. I went nowhere, I did nothing and PoD was a photo of a lupin flower with a background of out of focus rhododendron flowers from the garden. It was such a beautiful day too.

Tomorrow I intend to plant the kale we bought yesterday and maybe to go looking for leeks.

Meeting a man from the money trade – 31 May 2022

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Our six monthly visit to Falkirk

We had an early morning appointment with a man who knows all the facts and figures and explains them with a large dose of humour. Always entertaining while he’s explaining how the world is turning.

With that done, the day was our own to play with and play in. First visit was to the Kelpies. I wasn’t sure exactly how to get there from deepest Falkirk. Unfortunately the sat nav wasn’t sure where we were. It was giving us the correct street names and the lady behind the map was giving the correct directions, but according to the map we were somewhere just south of Inverness. The electronics in this car are shot. However the lady with the posh voice knew where we were and where we wanted to go and she navigated us onto the road we recognised.

We parked and paid our £3. Three quid is pretty good value for a full day with the silver river horses. They alway radiate such a calm influence, it’s almost impossible to be down when you’re in their presence. We had a coffee and a coconut scone in the cafe and I took a few photos. We browsed the ‘gift’ shop but left without being tempted to buy any of the expensive merchandise. We walked round the ponds that the great beasts live in and that’s where I got PoD. It’s a bit spoilt by the pond scum. The council really should clean it up occasionally, just to make the photogs job easier.

We walked over the bridge that crosses the Forth & Clyde canal and walked along the towpath to the second bridge, recrossed the canal and drove over to Torwood, aided and abetted by that same posh lady who had in the interim fixed the display to show we were in Falkirk. Multi-talented she is.

I wanted some leeks and some curly kale at the garden centre, but there were no leeks to be had, so I had to be satisfied with the kale. Scamp collected some Violas and an orange Osteospermum. After a bit more browsing and deciding we couldn’t quite squeeze another plant pot into either front or back garden, we drove home.

Later in the afternoon Scamp planted out her new acquisitions while I made sure I did have a PoD. Actually I had quite a few contenders for that accolade, but the big wide shot of the Kelpies in their mucky bath won.

Dinner was Potatoes with Bubble & Squeak plus Haddock for Scamp and a Burger for me.

We watched another episode of Silent Witness, but maybe we’re being too critical, but it seems a bit of a fairytale these days. Too many unlikely scenarios. I suppose we must remember, It’s Not Real!

Tomorrow I’m booked to see the nurse at 4pm, but the rest of my time is my own. Scamp might have the whole day to herself!

Back to life – 30 May 2022

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Back to reality. Back to the here and now.

Woke this morning feeling better than yesterday. Things to do today included cutting the back grass and tidying up the back bedroom. Neither of them were done.
Constant short rain showers put an end to any idea of cutting the grass, either front or back (it was the same rain that was falling on the front and the back grass).
Constant short spells of interest in tidying up the back bedroom weren’t long enough for any sustained work being done. Maybe tomorrow.

I couldn’t really tell you what I did today other than go for a walk in St Mo’s late in the afternoon. It was quite warm with the threat of more rain when I went out, but that rain didn’t materialise, mainly because I chose to wear my raincoat. If I’d left home in jeans and a tee shirt you can bet your bottom dollar I’d have got soaked. I did get a photo of another damselfly though. This one was a Large Red, but it didn’t get PoD. That went to a field of yellow buttercups. They are Scamp’s worst enemy when they appear in the garden, but she doesn’t mind them when they are in someone else’s!

We both did a bit of tidying and moving stuff around in the back garden while we waited for the grass to dry (which wasn’t going to happen any time soon). And while we were giving the plant pots new positions, we fed some of them with some revolting looking seaweed fertiliser. Apparently it’s great stuff, but take my word for it, don’t drink it. It’s definitely for plants only.

What I did manage to do today was order three memory sticks from Amazon. Do you know that if I’d bought six of them instead of three, they would be worth exactly what my old MacBook Pro is worth today. Best price I’d get for it is £30!

That was about it for the day. Tomorrow we may be going to see a man in Falkirk and after that we might just go to see the Kelpies

A wild day – 13 May 2022

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Feeling a lot better today.

Yesterday’s paracetamol, Vitamin C and, of course, the hot toddy must have done its work because today was a different day. Different day outside too with gale force winds for a while.

We were booked for lunch at The Cotton House and arrived to an almost full car park. Partly caused by a builders lorry taking up about four spaces. I managed to squeeze the wee blue car into a narrow space, and we were good. Starter for Scamp was Spring Rolls. Just for a change, I had Salt and Pepper Spring Rolls. Not something I’ve seen on a menu before, but if you get a chance to try them, move on to the next item. Loads of fried chopped onions and fried chopped chilli with some horrible brown breadcrumbs, also fried, on top. All of this was covering the spring rolls. I ate the spring rolls and gave up on the rest. Main for Scamp was the long time standard in this Cantonese restaurant was Chicken Chow Mein with noodles. I had Cantonese Sweet and Sour Chicken with fried rice. Both were delicious, in fact, Scamp was finished before me for once. I’m usually the glutton, not that I’m saying Scamp is a glutton. Oh no, not me! We didn’t have a dessert or even tea or coffee. We just paid the bill and left, feeling full. I took their little tub of jelly beans. It’s the only restaurant I know of that gives you a tub of jelly beans with the bill.

Back home there was a card waiting for me. A birthday card from my brother. I sent him a message to say thanks, and that because it was a little late, it was a surprise. He wrote back to say that he’d posted it first class on the 6th of April. Five weeks to travel 20 miles. That’s even slower than an X3!

Scamp was singing with Cumbersheugh Choir tonight and was leaving around 5.30pm. I was actually thinking of going to the concert, but Scamp said it wouldn’t be all that interesting. She’s very honest about these things, so I took her at her word and stayed. Didn’t do much with my free time. Browsed the photos in Flickr and posted today’s PoD which was the first of the American cowslips to flower, Shooting Stars is their name and that’s exactly what they look like.  It was taken in a lull between showers and gales when there was relative calm in the garden.  Scamp’s new rhododendron, Nancy Evans came a close second. Both are on Flickr.

Apparently the concert was well attended and it sounded a lot better than Scamp had feared, but she still insisted that I wouldn’t have liked the way that the pieces were sung.

Tomorrow we’re intending to go dancing in the morning, but the rest of the day is ours to do with as we wish.

 

Rain – 9 May 2022

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It was one of those days that started wet and just got wetter.

We needed the rain for the garden. We’ve had a few weeks of what can only be called Drought recently. Last week that finally ended when the rain blew in from the west. However now we’ve had enough rain. The buckets are full and the garden is pleasantly refreshed. Even the grass and the woodlands are bursting with fresh green, which is a great sight to see. But you can have too much of a good thing. We need the rain to taper off a bit to let that other natural source of growth stimulation, Sunshine, start doing some good work. Let the sun shine in and let the rain go somewhere else where it will be appreciated.

Lunch was another version of Crimpet™ Thins. Scamp had cheese and beetroot. I had ham, cheese and beetroot. But while Scamp made hers the traditional way, in the toaster, I gave mine a 20 second zap in the microwave first. That gave enough heat to melt the cheese in the bread. More experimentation needed.

Because of that, and the unlikelihood of getting anywhere to take some photos today, I started doing a bit of sketching and painting. I’d really meant to make a start on EDiM (Every Day in May) on Flickr. The main site for it is on Facebook, but after a bit of a bust up with the woman who runs it there, I only post to the Flickr group. However this May is going to be very busy for us and it’s unlikely I’ll be able to complete the 31 daily sketches that are required. So with that in mind, I thought I’d do a couple of quick sketches just to show willing. They didn’t turn out very well, but it was fun trying.

While I was engrossed in my paint splashes, Scamp was doing the opposite, she was cleaning and tidying the bathroom. Like she says, it needed done and today was, if not the best day to do it, at least a better use of a dull, wet day. I know I should have helped out, but it’s a small bath room, too small for two people to work in without really getting in each other’s way. I left her to it and made dinner. Monday dinner is almost always Italian in flavour. Today it was Red Pasta. The pasta in the cupboard (today it was mixed) with a tomato based ragu containing shallots and red peppers chopped fine. It was deemed ok! Foodies! We love to discuss and critique everything we eat.

Eventually I gave in and grabbed a camera and ventured into the garden to get some photos of the rhododendron bush that’s nearly flowering … in the rain. That’s what gets photogs a bad name.

Tomorrow we may go looking for a pair of brogues for me. No mention of another dress for Scamp. That doesn’t mean something won’t catch her eye, but I never said that.