Category: Garden

Curry and a Bon – 29 June 2019

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Today revolved around food. Most days do.

Today we decided that as summer had gone and winter was in the meadow we should go to Hamilton to cheer ourselves up with a curry. It worked. Vegetable Shimla Bhaji for Scamp and just a standard Chicken Rogan Josh for me. We know what we like and that’s the normal order at the Bombay Cottage. With a side of gigantic nicely well-done nan bread. Quite excellent. I think we managed to bag the last table for two in the place, because after we arrived they were sitting folk in the waiting area. Nice of them to keep a table for us.

Apart from the Bombay Cottage, there’s not a lot to interest us in Hamilton. Today there was “A Walk”. Not Orange in colour this time, but decidedly Green. It was a Hibs Walk but it did have a Flute ‘Bon’ (Band to those of a southern disposition). It was a small affair, not at all like an Orange Walk in Larky which stops the traffic for most of the afternoon. It’s strange to see these folk walking the streets dressed up in their regalia these days. There’s nothing like it here in the sanitised centre of the central belt. I didn’t take any photos. I fear I wouldn’t have been allowed back in to Larky if I did.

The weather today was overcast and ‘heavy’. Twice when we came home, Scamp thought she heard thunder. The third time there was no mistaking the rumble, and it grumbled its way around for an hour or so, followed by short torrential rain showers. I managed to get out for about five minutes to grab some shots of the rose you see above. Sheila’s Perfume.

Tomorrow it’s the Summer Ball. The weather looks slightly less than inviting, but I expect we’ll have a great time as usual.

A good day – 18 June 2019

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Sometimes the phone rings and it’s good news.

This was one of those days. PSA was normal and no infection found ‘down south’. No need for a biopsy and no need to go to the hospital tomorrow, just a routine visit to the clinic next week. I breathed a sigh of relief and the sun started shining brighter.

Postman brought me a Father’s Day present. Two books. One by the man who completely changed the way I looked at trees, Peter Wohlleben. If you’ve never heard of him, search out The Hidden Life of Trees. It’s an eye opener, at least it was for me. The other book was a novel on the same theme. Thanks Hazy.

Earlier, I’d found a wee spider in the kitchen sink and encouraged it to go for a walk on the wild side, or at least in the garden. It paid for its freedom by posing for a few photos. Managed to grab a few 19 frame focus stacks – hand held. Dropped them in to ON1 and it made a decent job of the processing.

Just before lunch I saved Scamp the backache of cutting the grass by strimming the back garden. It’s not the best cut its ever had, but it got the worst of the grass reduced down and if we get a few dry days, perhaps we can get it cut properly. Re-potted the Lupin that wasn’t happy where it was. Hopefully it will recover in a pot of nearly new compost.

In the afternoon I went out for a walk around St Mo’s for a breath of fresh air and just to get out of the house. Managed a PoD of one of the millions of Wolf Spiders that live under the boardwalk. Apparently they come up onto the wood to soak up the heat from the sun because the warmth encourages the spiderlings they carry in the sac under their spinnerets to mature quicker. Scary looking beasts these arachnids with their eight eyes!

Dinner was Sunday’s chicken made into a chicken curry with lovely flat bread to go with it.

I had a wee dram tonight to celebrate my good luck phone call.

Tomorrow we’re hoping to go dancing.

Private lesson – 5 June 2019

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Private lesson for two couples

Drove in to Glasgow through some torrential rain to find that there were only four of us, just two couples. We had a whole hour with teacher Ann Marie while the other couple had one of the experts, Heather. The great thing about Ann Marie is that she asks you what you want to do and then goes over that in detail. So, not only a private lesson, but an own design private lesson. We went over some of the Jive steps that were bugging us and then we ironed out my problems with the fish-tails and running steps in Quickstep. We also learned the Two Handed Cuff and improved on our Bumps in Jive. Came home after a coffee in Nero to give us some time to review the lesson.

Later in the afternoon I took a couple of cameras over to St Mo’s and everything fell apart. Not only did the camera start to vastly over-expose, but then it got itself stuck in electronic shutter mode and wouldn’t come back out again. Nothing I did would make it work. It all started when I stuck on the Samyang 7.5mm and the image started shaking and jumping in the viewfinder. After that, nothing would work again. Eventually I gave up and came home. Finally got it to do a full reset, after which it was back to normal and working well. I think the Samyang had messed with one of the esoteric settings I’d set up over the last week and the full reset put everything back to normal. Scary time though. I had visions of an irate phone call to Brighton followed by parcelling up the new ‘Toy off the Rack’ and sending back. Neither of these are now necessary … I hope. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.  So, no PoD from that visit to St Mo’s, but luckily I’d taken a walk around the block earlier in the day and got a couple of shots of Scamp’s alliums from the path at the back of the house and that’s what achieved PoD.

After the drama of the camera, I did some painting. Today’s challenge was meant to be Seashells, but the only shells I could find were snail’s shells, so that was what I painted. Even worse was that I only could find one shell, so it was one shell in two positions. Tomorrow’s target is Something Shiny.

It’s been a day of mixed weather.  Occasional sunny spells and occasional heavy rain showers, but for the most part it’s just been plain dull with heavy clouds.  Hopefully it will be better tomorrow.

No Salsa tonight because teacher Jamie is still down in deepest England doing sciency things at a science festival.

Out early tomorrow to give a few drops of blood to be sent over to Monklands hospital for checking by the consultant. Nothing else planned.

Not going far – 4 June 2019

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Not going far

It wasn’t the weather this time, it was just the threat from tiny wee beasties.

Last night after I’d posted the blog and put the iMac to bed I found another tick. That settled it. Definitely no more walks in the long grass at least until the first frost. The further I got today was over the paths around St Mo’s pond, keeping strictly to the path. Didn’t get many photos, because the light level was fairly low. Heavy cloud all afternoon was the culprit. In the morning the weather was much more pleasant and on retrospect I should have gone out then, but I didn’t. My fault. I’ve made that mistake before and I’ll probably make it again. However I didn’t come home empty handed, I got today’s PoD which is a couple of White Tailed Bees (Bombus lucorum) on some bramble flowers.

I potted up some strawberry plants and a yellow aquilegia in the late morning , then, together with Scamp pruned some of the roses and the forsythia. We also pulled some rhubarb which Scamp made into a pie. There’s even some left over for tomorrow.

Later in the afternoon the rain returned and drizzled on for the rest of the day, so I retired to the drawing room – the room where I draw and managed to catch up with the sketches for June. June 3rd was A Bird and today was A Weed. The bird became a Blackbird from a photo I’d taken back in April and the weed was some buttercups which are the bane of Scamp’s gardening, but I like them. They were drawn from life. That’s me up to date now so maybe it will become easier from now on. Since I’m only doing it for fun and am not posting them on social media, I’m treating them as practise pieces and a chance to experiment.

Tomorrow we’re probably heading in to Glasgow to dance the afternoon away at Blackfriars. I don’t think we’re going to risk going to STUC at night, since Jamie G is still down south.

Dancing all the day – 2 June 2019

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Well, that’s what it felt like anyway!

Spoke to Hazy for a while in the morning and discussed the first part of Good Omens that we’d both watched. Agreed that it was good to see they were sticking fairly faithfully to the book so far. While we were on the phone my replacement batteries for the new camera arrived. After we’d finished speaking to London, I charged up the first battery. It seems like it had a part charge in it because it only took about half an hour to fully charge using USB. The second one took a little longer. When I exchanged a new battery with the one that came with the camera, I noticed that Made in Japan actually read Made in japan. That was one of the signs that the battery is a fake. The second check is the misspelling of the word ‘explode’ in the warning section. The ‘Olympus’ battery had it spelled as ‘explose’. This was looking like a complete fake. The third and final test is to check the weight of the battery. A ‘real’ Olympus battery weighs around 52gms. A fake one around 35gms. The ‘Olympus’ battery weighed 39gms. A pretty comprehensive case for disposing of the fake battery, safely of course. Just in case it does ‘explose’!

Did a tiny wee bit of gardening, since the weather was much nicer that had been predicted for today.  We even had some sunshine later in the morning and it was warm.  I just potted up a Meconopsis which Scamp had bought me last week. I’ve always liked the lovely blue, papery flowers, but Scamp doesn’t. That’s why she bought one for me instead of for herself. Today I gave it some room to grow in a bigger pot. I’m sure it will like the space. The garden was where I got today’s PoD of the little bee dangling form a ‘Nancy Pretty’ flower. You may know it as London’s Pride, but my mum always called it Nancy Pretty and that’s what it will always be to me. Still finding out things about the new toy. The amazing and dazzling amount of buttons and dials for one thing and the clever little touches in its operating system.

Drove in to Glasgow to have a go at dancing Jive to a real rock ’n’ roll band. We did manage one song then the band played ‘Tequila’ so we just had to dance salsa to that. After the session was finished, we had another hour before the real salsa started, so we went for a walk up Byres Road and found out that today was the official start of the West End Festival which apparently is second only to Nottinghill in size in the UK. We thought we’d missed the procession, but after checking tonight, it seems that there was no procession this year again. Maybe it takes too much organising or maybe it’s difficult to close such a busy road to traffic for a full day. Who knows. It just didn’t happen. We walked round the edge of the celebrations in Ashton Lane then walked back to the Record Factory to get ready for another hour and a half’s salsa dancing. Met a few folk we hadn’t seen for ages and danced with a few beginners. Left after an hour and a half because I was worn out.

Storm winds and heavy rain forecast for tomorrow and Gems are here for the last practise before the summer break. Don’t know where I’ll go.

Flaming June – 1 June 2019

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Well, maybe not flaming as such, just not raining.

We were still in two minds whether to got to the Italian festival in Glasgow or just have a day somewhere in the dry, with the outside chance of a bit of sun. If we chose the latter, Scamp suggested Stirling or Hamilton. Both curry capitals of central Scotland. Finally, because there are at least some shops still open in Stirling and very few in Hamilton, we chose Stirling.

We went to the Indian Cottage in Stirling and had our usual: Vegetable Pakora followed by Vegetable Dhansak for Scamp and Chicken Pakora followed by Chicken Tikka Chilli Bhuna for me. Almost every time we go to this restaurant, that is what we have.

After lunch we went for a walk round the centre of Stirling. I was looking for a cheap, second hand copy of Good Omens, because the copy I’m reading on my Kindle must have been a publishers advanced copy complete with all the typos and bad typesetting. I looked in vain. It seemed that the hype about the new film of the book had led to all the copies being bought up. Scamp wasn’t looking for anything, but came home with a new ‘holiday and maybe for salsa’ dress.

On the way home we were stopping to get some compost and some ‘chuckies’ which for those readers who are from south of the border are small, possibly rounded stones. The chuckies were to provide drainage for the latest of Scamp’s containers. After a bit of an argument about where we should park and whether we should drive in or reverse in, we got a space. Scamp was right, of course, about driving in – easier access to the boot for loading stuff in. She was wrong about the tiny wee space she expected me to get the Juke in. It’s a wider car than her’s. The compost wasn’t too heavy, but those chuckies certainly were. However, we got them in and got home without breaking a spring. Had to barrow them out of the car and through the house. That gave Scamp time to get the container planted with two Gazanias, a Shooting Star (American Cowslip) and a Geum (Cookie). It looks good. That the second mixed planting she’s done recently and both are looking very natural.

A walk in the unexpected sunshine through St Mo’s gave me a chance to test out the ‘new toy’ and it certainly seemed up to the task. Especially impressive was the way the electronic shutter and automatic focus bracketing made short work of a shot of a tiny wee snail on a tree. It may go up on Flickr later. The only problem is the state of the battery. After about 60 shots it appeared to be losing most of its power. Not surprising really when I noted that it was manufactured in 2014. That makes it five years old. That’s a long time for a battery to be working. Luckily Amazon was offering a decent looking replacement pair plus USB charger for £18. It’s being delivered tomorrow. Not an actual Olympus battery. They cost around £70!

No sketches today. I’m having at least a week off, if I don’t go cold turkey. PoD went to a little dowdy looking fly that sat nicely for me in St Mo’s. No fancy focus stacking, just a straight forward shot.

Man seen building an ark in Condorrat – 30 May 2019

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I was wondering today, did it rain on St Swithins day? Then I realised that wasn’t until July. Maybe the rain is just practising.

We drove through the rain to Falkirk today to get some low-sugar muesli and a few other essentials. I thought the brand I usually get, with no added sugar was in the low sugar bracket. Nope, it was in the High bracket, carrying the danger sign of the red shield. What I forgot is that it was the extra fruity version and that extra fruity contains the extra sugar, but because the manufacturer is not actually adding sugar, they are telling the truth, just not the whole truth. There are a lot of devious people out there and they’re not all politicians. Had lunch at Morrisons because they do a lovely roll ’n’ link sausage, plus, Scamp likes their bowl of chips. Back in the car and through the rain once again to arrive back home with not one photo taken.

I’d been watching the progress of a couple of cameras on MPB and WEX, both second-hand sites. Today I made the decision which one to buy and will report back on it after it arrives from the DPD man tomorrow sometime. In case you’re interested, it’s an Olympus E-M1. Please don’t moan about ANOTHER new camera. It’s about five or six years old and originally cost over £1,000. I’m not paying anything like that. Also, it’s over three years since I bought the last Oly.

Started a sketch of a motorbike, today’s topic. An MZ TS 150, the bike I used to own. It was a bit rough, but a reasonable record of the bike. Then I got a bit frantic and dived outside to grab a couple of shots of our Schoolgirl rose in the rain. I’ve just posted it on Flickr and it will be interesting to see how many hopefuls I can trap with the title Schoolgirl In The Rain! It usually works well. It would be fun to see their sad little faces!

Just so you know Hazy, I got an email from A Small Orange this morning asking me to pay $89 for an overdue bill. That’s the bill for the webspace contract I terminated in April and have confirmation that it’s been terminated. I also managed to log back in to ASO and found that my invoice there has been cancelled. Wrote them a nasty email.

I was making Crab Spaghetti for dinner tonight when the ring pull on the tub of white crab meat broke and left me with a plastic tub, metal lid and no way of opening it. Tin opener wouldn’t work on the thin rim. Eventually used my favourite tool, Molegrips to wrench the lid off. Took some photos of the carnage and another nasty email will be on its way tonight.

Schoolgirl eventually became today’s PoD, then after dinner when the swearing about that crab tub had subsided, I painted the proper MZ picture. Great bike. Just really a commuter bike. A two stroke that made a terrible racket and drank oil like it was going out of fashion, but a dream to ride with its flat ‘Vinny’ bars. So called because of its design being based on the legendary Vincent motorcycles. Had to sell it round about 1980 to buy a Reliant Regal 3/30 three wheeler. Tomorrow is the last day of the challenge and, would you believe it, the topic is A Crab. Maybe I should just draw the tub with the half ripped off lid.

Tomorrow we may go to the Sagra Italia event in Glasgow. It looks like being a very wet day, but Scamp thinks everything is under cover. If we decide not to go then we may go on Saturday. We’ve got (free) tickets for both days.

Private Dancer – 22 May 2019

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Well, almost. More like a private lesson for the normal price.

Because Wednesdays are such a rush, in the morning I got started on the sketch for the day. I’d taken a photo of the playpark last week and only had to transfer it to the tablet upstairs using Dropbox. While I was drawing, the gardener was planting in the new bed under the back window. Her final decision was to plant the green spotty plant and a couple of others in the space we had, then add some lower level primulas which we had split up yesterday. By the time she was finished, I had laid down the ink outline and it was lunch time. When I checked my email I found that Jamie G would be in Embra today. That would put paid to Salsa tonight.

After lunch we drove in to Glasgow to dance some Jive. It turned out that we were the only couple there for our level and had Michael’s undivided attention, which meant he’d catch every mistake we made, and we made a few. However, although we didn’t learn any new moves, we cleared up and cleaned up a lot of the ones we did know. Quickstep followed Jive and the same thing happened. Little things that we knew we were doing wrong were spotted and corrected. We’ve a lot of practise ahead of us this week.

While we were walking along Ingram Street, a wee man stopped in front of us and started photographing the glass building with his phone. We had a chat about the reflections on the building and the great shape of the curves. I took a few shots myself because the reflections looked so good today. I’d just switched the camera off when a seagull passed along the face of the building and the glass facets picked it up and multiplied its reflections so it looked like a flock of seagulls … and my camera was off! I must try and get that shot again. It looked lovely in my mind’s eye. PoD became the reflections on the building minus seagull! After a coffee we drove home.

Back home I started adding colour to the sketch and although it looks ok, it’s not as fresh as it could be. Overworked, I think. It was after dinner time when I checked on Facebook that I found the update from Jamie G to say that he’d make it back for class after all. That was a bummer, especially as there isn’t a class on Monday because of the bank holiday. That means our next class will be next Wednesday. Oh well, these things happen.

Tomorrow Scamp is meeting Shona for coffee and then I think we may go out for lunch.

Will it stay or will it go? – 21 May 2019

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Remember the big green plant with the spotty leaves Scamp bought yesterday? Well today it was going back … or was it?

To start the day I wanted to create order from the chaos of my painting room. It needed a good clean out and today was going to be the day for it, despite the blue skies outside and the sunshine outside and partly because Scamp was outside, planning!

After about an hour putting stuff away where it should have been and failing utterly to throw anything out except my old bike boots, and even they are not certain to find their way to the tip, the room did look better. I found the top of the chest of drawers again after a it had been reported missing a few weeks ago. That’s when Scamp came up and told me she was taking the big green plant back. According to the website you had 28 days to take things back. It was too big and was not going to fit in the place under the window she’d intended putting it in. I told her perhaps that 28 day rule didn’t apply to plants and was intended for hardware. She wasn’t to be turned from her path, so she phoned the garden centre and was assured that, Yes you could return plants. So it was settled the big green spotty plant was going back. We stood and looked at the place it was sitting among the other plants she’d arranged in the new space. I didn’t think it looked all that out of place, but we’d forgotten that there was a large unmovable Magnolia Stellata standing in the corner and perhaps she was right the green plant was too big. That’s the I had the light bulb moment. We were looking at the plant, in its pot, standing on the ground. When it was planted it would drop in height by about 200mm (8” in old money). Ah, that made a big difference. Hmm, I could see a sea change happening. Maybe, just maybe it would be alright after all. Her final decision was that we should plant it and revise our decision after a year, or at least a few months. Of course we couldn’t take it back then, but we could just dig it up and dispose of it.

The rest of the day was spent gardening. We put up the pea netting and planted the half a dozen pea plants in the raised bed. I think that’s the raised bed effectively full. The leeks are thickening up nicely, the calabrese is growing well not that we’re killing off the slugs that were attacking it and the kale is settling in nicely. The whole garden is looking good. We even measured out the area for the proposed raised bed / planter for the front garden. It’s probably too big for one single planter and I’m suggesting two beds, each 2m long by about 1.5m wide. It’s still in the sketchy ‘back of a fag packet’ stage. When we move on to Inventor and AutoCad it will become more ‘real’.

We were watching the BBC news at lunchtime when the picture froze on the TV and after a few seconds showed the ‘fault’ screen with a number to call if the program did not return. I phoned. Apparently they were “… receiving more calls than normal and the waiting time is 20 minutes”. The recording went on to suggest we phone back at the quiet time between 2pm and 4pm. It was 2.15 at this point. Not only was the TV disrupted, the broadband was dead too. Without broadband we are helpless these days. You need it to get the number to phone to report that your broadband isn’t working. Also, as we live in a ‘shadow area’ not very well covered by 4G we have to go outside to use the mobile phone to check what’s wrong. Eventually, after half an hour, service was resumed. You never miss the water ‘till the well runs dry!

Went out to St Mo’s for a walk in the sun and to take some photos later in the afternoon. Took a few macro shots, but that’s all. The best one of the buttercup got PoD. Saw two dragonflies, not damselflies, but dragonflies while I was out.  That’s most unusual in May. While I was out Scamp cut the back and front grass and also hoovered the downstairs. I know she reads this, so that’s why I’m saying “Leave some of it for me”. Delegation is the name of the game.

Today’s sketch topic was Something You Collect. So, Weemen (Minifigs) or cameras? Why not both? So that’s what I did. Not my best, but maybe I just need to settle down with it for a few days. That’s what’s happening with the liquorice allsorts sketch from yesterday. It’s growing on me.

Tomorrow, of course, is hopefully dancing in the afternoon and also perhaps at night.

Plants and plans – 20 May 2019

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We went to visit Torwood Garden Centre today as Scamp had found a small square in the garden that would support one more plant.

A fairly early rise for me to go and post a parcel, then get some blood taken for my annual health check next week. Checked with the hospital about my prostate appointment and found that I’d been mistaken about the time and it was actually well in hand. More bloods needed to be taken for that too! Heavens I’ll be like a pin cushion this month!

After lunch we drove to Falkirk to the garden centre. Actually I wanted some peas for the raised bed as my previous two plantings have been growing downwards instead of up or something, because they weren’t showing their little green heads. Not in the raised bed where two lots were planted and not in the pots in the greenhouse where two lots were planted. Got some today. Not a named variety, just labelled Garden Peas. Scamp bought a big green plant with spotted leaves. Looks the part and will bring some colour to a dull part of the garden that gets little or no sun.

When we came home, she unveiled her plans for a long raised bed to be used as an edge to the front garden. It’s to run from the corner of the house out to the path. That’s a distance of about 4.5m and about “That wide” she indicated with two hands. I’m actually more used to working with numbers. It makes it much easier when you’re buying lengths of timber and also when you’re cutting them to size. I’ve found in the past that “That wide” can vary considerably with the length of a person’s arms. We may do some measuring and some drawing tomorrow.

Today’s PoD was the wee 2cm viola which is flowering in a plant pot. Tiny wee thing.

Today’s sketch took ages and I’m still not happy with it. Topic was Some Sweets and I chose liquorice allsorts. It took about four tries before I got something resembling them. No time left to do anything else, so it had to do. Onward and upward.

Went dancing in the STUC and the new moves for the advanced class were “Spiral” and “Osco”. Both were interesting and both were doable with care. Beginners class were doing La Completa.

It was a day of ticking things off as we got them done. A good day.

Tomorrow we are both hoping to get our plants into the ground.