Category: Garden

Shorts and Tee Shirt Weather – 7 May 2018

Posted on by Zogman

When we woke this morning it was cloudy and dull.

It may have been cloudy and it may have been dull, but the outside temperature was already 14.4ºc. That’s only 0.6º short of official Shorts and Tee Shirt weather as decreed by me.

When I eventually dragged myself away from my book, got showered and dressed, it was definitely shorts and tee shirt time, but I retained my decorum and just wore a shirt and jeans instead. Scamp was already in the garden, watering and feeding the plants and encouraging the sun to shine down on this great land we live in. Even better, it seemed to be working. The sun was breaking through the clouds and it looked like it was going to be a lovely day. Cleaned the Gaggia and which has been on my to do list for ages. Sat on the front step with Scamp and grabbed today’s PoD which is the inside of an open tulip.

After a quick trip to Tesco, lunch and a conversation with Hazy. I decided it was time to get the bike out and take it for a run. Truly this was shorts and tee shirt weather, cycling shorts and a short sleeved top. It was a good run, but there wasn’t much for the new lens to get a grip on. Back home and it as salad for dinner and a mighty good one too. Potato salad, mixed leaves, yesterday’s mutton served cold, beetroot and all washed down with a glass of vino collapso. Then a seat in the garden to let it all slide down with the last of the vino to help it on its way. After an hour or so the sun had dipped far enough down to force us back inside.  Nice to have a restful Monday with no salsa as  the STUC building is closed on bank holidays.

All in all, it was a very nice day. Unfortunately it looks like it’s all going downhill from here on in. Never mind, it was a really good summer. We enjoyed both days.

Maybe that was summer – 6 May 2018

Posted on by Zogman

It was sunshine and blue skies when we woke today and it more or less stayed that way all day for a change.

Just on the off chance that today WAS summer, we made the most of it. Scamp was doing the most in the garden, of course. Putting up sweet pea netting, although I did the structural part and fixed the high bits. Pruning the blackcurrant bush. Repotting everything she could find. Cutting the front grass and having great fun blowing the cuttings into the trees. Generally being the gardener. Me? Well, apart from being the designer of the sweet pea frame, I wandered round looking at things and taking photos of the tulips, one of which became PoD. Oh yes and I planted the first batch of Charlotte potatoes.

After lunch I took a load of junk and garden waste to the council tip. There were signs on all the skips to the effect that you weren’t allowed to put soil in them. Why not, and if you’re not to put them in a skip in the tip, where are you meant to dump the soil? If you can’t dump it legally then illegally is the only other option. Then they wonder why people are fly-tipping. Joined up thinking is a step too far for NLC. Anyway, I joined everyone else by emptying the contents of my bag in the skip. “Honest mister, it wasn’t soil, it was compost.”

Back home, I roasted my mutton and put it in the slow cooker for it to do its magic for four hours or so. By then the sun had gone behind a cloud and I sat for an hour struggling with Keyboard Maestro, a really clever piece of Mac magic that allows you to create macros to do clever stuff once you’ve written the code. It was the writing of the code, or to be more exact, the syntax of the code that was messing me about. I gave up after a while and joined Scamp with a G ’n’ T and a book in the garden. It was really lovely for a while, although the sun kept disappearing behind the odd cloud. Veg to go with my mutton (or hogget) was carrot and fennel, sliced thin, fried in butter and then put into the slow cooker to stew in the juices from the hogget. (It tasted lovely by the way. Quite like fennel now.

After dinner and a glass of wine I sat down again, determined to work out how to fix the syntax of the code. Finally I cracked it and this is what it does if you hold down Control + Option + Command and press the ‘3’ key:

Y6 – 365/126 – Photo1952

That means that this is the 6th year of my 365s. The picture at the top of the page is the 126th of this year’s 365 and it’s photo 1,952 to be given the title PoD. There, don’t you feel better for knowing that?

Tomorrow looks like it will be much the same as today, if not better, but after that it’s the downward slope into rain and ‘seasonal average’ temperatures. It’s coats-on time again, so we should make the best of it.

Peacocks, Plants and a Swallow – 28 April 2018

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Today wasn’t a day for going over the sea to Millport.

When we woke, the sky was clear with just a few clouds. However we just knew it couldn’t last and we were right. An hour later it had clouded over and the temperature was only 10º. We’d planned to go over the sea to Millport, but that wasn’t going to happen today.

I am planning to make a sourdough loaf on Monday. That means I have to prepare the active starter today in order to assemble the dough tomorrow (Sunday) and prove it overnight in its pretty cane basket in the fridge overnight ready for baking on Monday. That’s how it works with sourdough. It’s a three day plan process and you have to think ahead to be ready. That’s why this morning I was making up my active starter, just as the battery in the scales died. So my active starter is a kind of rough and ready one that feels right. As of now, at 11.45 it’s looking good. Tomorrow will be the big test.

The preparation of the AS was just filling in time while we decided what to do with the day. It seemed that east was better than west today so we settled on Dunfermline as a target and that’s where we went. Scamp wanted to go for a walk in the park and I wanted to look for a new book in Waterstones. On-line is cheaper, but it’s nice to just browse the books instead. You can’t really do that on-line, well, you can, but it’s not as much fun. We went to Dunfermline and had a walk in the park and found that there are still peacocks there and that’s where the PoD came from. We also found they’ve revamped the swing park to make it wheelchair friendly which is a great idea. One that more places should adopt. Only cost a little more than a ‘normal’ swing park, but the inclusion aspect is worth a lot more than the cost difference. I applaud you Dunfermline.

We’d half intended having lunch there, but instead we just had a coffee in Nero and settled on a home made curry when we got home. I did get to Waterstones and I did get a book … or two! On the way home we visited a wee garden centre and Scamp bought me a Forsythia from the sale plants and she got a wee alpine. My mum had a Forsythia plant in the garden and I always remembered it. I’ve got my own now.  On the way home I saw my first swallow this year!

Dinner tonight was a Spice Tailor curry and was good, but not nearly as good as the Butter Chicken curry we had the other night from the same company.

Swallow Watch:  This week I saw the first swallow this year and this is week 17.

Tomorrow?  Dancing in Paisley hopefully with dinner flung in for good measure.

The gas man cometh and great winds did blow – 24 April 2018

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The gas man came early which gave us the impetus to get up.

The gas man phoned just after 8.30 to say he’d be with us in about 20 mins. So that was it, put the book down, get dressed and get the front door open. Shower later. This is the earliest we’d been up since November! That in itself is scandalous. The central heating check didn’t take too long and for once there wasn’t a heavy push to replace the boiler. It was more a case of “If it’s not broke, don’t buy a new one … yet”.

With the rest of the day to play with we sat down with a cup of coffee. Scamp sat to read, I sat to do today’s Sudoku. After that and a quick run to Tesco to get tonight’s dinner, Scamp decided she’d go for a swim. I wanted to paint another masterpiece. She had her swim and I made a mess. Used black lacquer instead of black acrylic and then sprayed water on it to completely botch it up. Not to worry, it was just a small abstract. It was certainly abstract now. It may dry and it may not. I don’t really mind which. After that and after trying to clean the brushes with Hammerite thinners which will usually clean anything I was left with three claggy, oily feeling brushes. Tried heavy duty detergent on them and that didn’t work. I now have them steeping in warm water and will try using white spirit on them tomorrow. They weren’t expensive brushes, it’s just the challenge that’s keeping me going at it.

With the aborted abstract congealing on a board, I set about a landscape painting of the hills from the back window. Almost successful. Such a damning statement! Then Scamp arrived home just as the sun was coming out for the hundredth time today and she wanted to cut the front grass. Afterwards she was delighted with the speed at which she could blow the grass cuttings across the path into the trees. What would have taken about 15 minutes of heavy brush work was achieved by the Christmas Big Box Toy in about 20 seconds. Honestly, that was all it took. I think she was a bit disappointed because she wanted to play with it for a little longer. She’s had to wait four months to get to play with it and it was all over in half a minute.

The sun came out just before dinner and illuminated the garden. I quickly grabbed the Nikon and took a few macro shots of flower buds, mainly the Pieris which should by rights be a mass of red and orange foliage by now. Unfortunately it’s just the buds that are red at present, but it will be much more colourful by next week. One of the shots became PoD.

After dinner, it was my turn to do the dishes, but there was no hot water. Checked the boiler and sure enough the flame light was out. Pressed the reset button, but the power light was resolutely off. Unplugged it and re plugged it, but still no joy. Phoned Scottish Gas and the call centre girl told me she’d booked an engineer, the same one who had broken a working boiler this morning. He’d call between 12 and 6 tomorrow. I told her that was poor service, but I realised as I was saying it that she was just the messenger who didn’t want shot. She said I should visit the Scottish Gas website to see what freebies and great offers were available. I declined. She signed off by telling me to “have a great night”!!

Tomorrow? Waiting for the gas man I suspect.

A glass of vino in the garden – 21 April 2018

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I was up early (for a Saturday), but not to go anywhere, although the sun was shining.

No, today was baking day for my third sourdough loaf. I started it on Thursday evening when I made the Leaven, the preparation of active yeast. Then yesterday was making the dough which had cooled in the fridge and increased its size overnight and today it would be baked in a very hot oven that I put on just before 9.00 this morning. I left it for half an hour with a pizza stone in it, then I carefully slid the oversize dough on to the stone and shut the door. Left it for 30 mins before I had a quick look and it seemed ok. I was in two minds whether to give it the full hour or do what seemed right. I settled on staying with the recipe and gave it the full hour. Then turned the oven down and let it have an extra 15 mins at the lower temp, all as the instructions said. When it came out, it really looked the part and when it was sitting cooling on the wire rack it started crackling which is a sign of a nice crispy crust. Ok, time to have breakfast.

Later in the morning we deemed it to be cool enough and I cut the traditional slice from the fat end, spread it with butter and halved it between us. It was the best so far. Still a bit heavy at the bottom, but a definite improvement on what had gone before.

It had turned into a beautiful day, but neither of us really wanted to go anywhere. The roads would be mobbed on this the first really hot day of the year and we didn’t want to spend it sitting in a traffic jam so Scamp sat and read for a while and I completed two days worth of Sudoku while the sun shone in through the open window. Part of Buddhist meditation is called ‘just sitting’ and that’s what we were doing.

However, things were needing done and Scamp went off to plant out her sweet peas while I fiddled with the computer. Then we decided to go our for a light lunch, so we drove to Robroyston and had reasonable Costa coffee. Better than burnt water, but not as good as mine or Nero’s. Went in to Glasgow and got a bluetooth mouse for the new Linx. Got it home and it kept making the ‘puter crash. It worked on the Mac, but everything does, it was just the Windows 10 PCs that crashed. Gave up and went outside to have a glass of vino with Scamp sitting in the back garden in the sun. That’s where I saw today’s PoD. I can’t remember the name of the plant but it simply takes over the border by the back door. Dies down to nothing in the winter then sprouts up merrily the next spring. My mum called it Spirea, but that’s not its real name. Anyway, a macro shot of one of the sprouting buds made PoD.

Finally found a solution to the bluetooth problem. You just find the bluetooth radio in Device Manager and go to power options and set it to not shut down the radio. Just unticking the box does it. Simple.
<That note was for me for the next time I have the problem. I’ll remember that I wrote it down here … I hope!>

Dinner was a fish supper from the chip shop in Condorrat. Delicious, but I’m suffering for it now.

A stay at home day – 20 April 2018

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A day to get things done. That was the intention today and it worked … sort of.

It was an incredibly late start to the day and we probably lost the best of the day as a result, but The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is an exasperatingly gripping story and one you just can’t lay down, especially when you’ve just worked out who’s talking and who they’re talking too. Just under 70% through the story and I still haven’t a clue who’s doing the murdering and even if there IS a murder. I’ll just have to wait another 30% to find out. It’s a bit like The Bone Clocks and a bit like Inception, but with Hercule Poirot type characters on each page.

When I eventually gave up, closed the Kindle and had my shower it was nearly 10.30! So much to do today. Most of it I achieved. Some I shelved for later, that indeterminate place in the future. Some things I hadn’t intended doing, I completed too. But first there had to be coffee!

After coffee I started on the bread making. Bread making used to consist of chucking the ingredients into the mixer, switching it on for 10 minutes. Then halving the dough. One half went in the freezer to be used in the future and half went to prove to make a loaf. If I was organised I’d get the dough made in the morning and the bread ready for the table by dinner time. Not so with Sourdough bread. Last night I made the ‘Leaven’ which is an extra-energetic form of the starter. Today I’d make the dough which has to be turned four times every fifteen minutes for an hour total. See? It’s quite complicated. After that it has to rest (so has the baker) before it’s tucked up in a basket and put in the fridge to sleep and dream of the nice warm oven it’s going into the next day. Three days seems to be the norm for a loaf. This is definitely not ‘fast food’. Anyway, I missed out the faff of turning it four times every fifteen minutes and went straight to dumping it in the fridge. Tomorrow we’ll see if I ever attempt another Sourdough loaf.

In between nursing and nurturing my dough, I washed the car to remove the rook crap from yesterday and even did a bit of planting in the garden. Basil (two kinds), kale and rocket were planted today. Some went out into the mini greenhouse to celebrate its first birthday and the basil went up into the front bedroom window sill to catch some rays and some heat (hopefully).

Dinner tonight was Butter Chicken from the Spice Tailor range. Lovely stuff. After that I struggled with Windows 10 trying to get it to do what it was told. Like a precocious child it did the exact opposite. Macs may be expensive, but they just work. Even the ones running El Capitan just work when compared with Windoze 10. Such a waste of time. In the later afternoon light I got my PoD which is a crocus stamen among some crocus leaves. I liked it right away.

Now I’m trying desperately to get the photos uploaded and the blog written so that I can go to bed the same day I got up. That would be another thing done!

Tomorrow? Thought of going to Embra, but Hibs are playing host to Sellic and that means loads of drunks on the train, so perhaps not. In other words, “Don’t know.”

Burnt Water – 17 April 2018

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Coffee with Fred today. Lots of stuff to discuss.

This was a change of day for us. Usually we’re there on Thursday or occasionally Friday. This week it was Tuesday. We’d books to exchange and TV programs to criticise and building control department to castigate for messing up Fred’s daughter’s extension. Basically we just complained about stuff for a couple of hours, then agreed that we’d had a good natter.

Came out of that dive with the sour taste of the last cup of something described as ‘coffee’, but was really burnt water, or so it felt to me. Went to get some gardening and painting stuff:

  • Seed potatoes. Charlotte, one of Scamp’s favourite varieties.
  • Twine to make a climbing frame for Scamp’s broad beans.
  • Tester paint pots to use as cheap gesso for painting boards

Came home to a slightly rearranged garden again and had it explained to me. I’m sure I’ll forget the finer details, but I have the basic idea of what was achieved while I was out drinking burnt water.

Since Scamp was making dinner I had some time to go and get a photo or two in St Mo’s. Like yesterday, today was a mixture of sunshine and showers. What we used to expect in April a few years ago before the jet stream started messing around with our weather. With that thought in my mind I grabbed my jacket and camera bag and went to see what I could see. What I saw was somebody sitting on a seat looking out over the BMX track and thought it would make a decent shot, especially if I reduced it to mono and darkened the sky, cropped it and … So I took a few shots from different positions and exposure setting. Walked round the pond after that, but saw nothing else interesting.

After dinner (Chicken with a mushroom and shallot sauce since you’re asking), I started to process the pics. About two hours later, after a fair bit of swearing, I finally exported the finished result into Flickr. Takes about two or three minutes to take the shots and two hours to make the picture. The new software I’m using on trial is ON1 2018 and it is very flash, a bit heavy on special effects and unable to export without crashing (twice). I may not shell out the $69 for the pleasure of beta testing their dodgy software for them.

We did manage a bit of dance practise tonight again. Just the waltz, but I’m happier with it after yesterday and today. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow.

Tomorrow is dancing day!

Dancing on an empty floor – 15 April 2018

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Up early to watch an exciting Chinese GP. Yes, really. Exciting!

Up early, well around 9am to watch the Chinese GP. For once it was worth getting out of bed for. Great tussle between the top teams with lots of ill will on the part of most of them. My, what spoilt brats they are.

Spoke to Hazy for a while after that and then went to work in the garden. No, really. I did actually do some creative work for a change. I built up the frame for Scamp’s broad beans to grow on. Unfortunately we couldn’t find any gardeners green twine, so the actual net the will climb on is not in place yet. Not my problem mate. I didn’t put it away. I’ll get some new twine tomorrow. With the work part completed, I skedaddled to St Mo’s to get some photos.

There wasn’t much doing across the road, but I did get one photo of a coot standing on its nest. The nest looked almost as untidy as my ‘bean frame’. PoD went to a macro shot of a tiny wee spider on a tree trunk. It could only have been 3mm long. Most impressed with the result from my pair of extension tubes.  The down side, or maybe not is that the orange ladybirds I’ve been tracking have disappeared.  Flown the coop, I hope.  Hopefully if they were egg laying earlier in the week, I’ll see the results next year.

Came home and started the prep for dinner which was to be 5 A Day Chicken with Pesto. It should have been pistachio pesto, but Scamp’s avoidance of any nuts meant that I substituted pine nuts for pistachios. Apparently pine nuts aren’t really nuts at all and can be used in place of ‘real’ nuts. I was only doing the prep, because I’d spent too long in the Land of St Mo and, as we were strapped for time to get in to Glasgow to go dancing, we’d have to have our dinner after we came back.

The dungeon that is Arta was almost empty when we got there. Apparently Cameron was holding an event in competition with AdS and Rangers were getting gubbed by Celtic (as usual) and most of the guys would be there or else be too inebriated to dance. It did brighten up a bit later, or to be more precise, more people arrived. Nobody could ever call it bright. We did have a few dances and both of us tried out moves we’ve learned in the past few weeks. We really should go out more often just to practise some of our moves.

Came home and I made the dinner which turned out better than I’d hoped, but there was a lot of garlic in the mixture. Possibly (definitely) too much. Needs some tweaking, but then again don’t most recipes. Just to get them working like you imagine they should taste.

Tomorrow looks good if the weather fairies are correct. If it turns out as predicted, I’ll go for a walk along the canal. If not, then I’ll go to the gym.

Another day older – 8 April 2018

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Hopefully not (too much) deeper in debt.

Yesterday I got to bed just before I became 68. Today I woke to the reality of it. We had intended going in to a food festival in Glasgow, but after due consideration and the fact that the rain had stopped, I decided to go out and cycle. Scamp decided to work in the garden. Very satisfactory decisions for both of us.

While I was getting dressed for cycling, Scamp had been giving the back garden the once over and she’d found an old clay flowerpot which was being used by about forty, yes FORTY (I did a rough count) slugs. Big fat Irish Yellow Slugs. I’d post the picture, but it would put you off your breakfast … lunch …. and dinner. We could have salted them, but the resulting slime is even more disgusting than the molluscs. The more humane option was to put the pot, complete with slugs in a poly bag and take it into the country and release them there. Now I’d heard that slugs are homing creatures and will easily find their way back to their home garden if it’s half a mile away. This lot were going five miles away and they went there in a poly bag in my back pack and they couldn’t see where we went. I released them after turning the bag round three or four times so they wouldn’t know which way was home. Also they’d have to cross three main roads to get back here. I think we’re safe. They’re gone.

Got some pics there the PoD was the monochrome shot of the brambles.

Had a lovely day. Thank you JIC, Sim, Hazy and Neil. Most of all, thank you Scamp for planning my day. You said you didn’t, but I know you did.

Biting the bullet – 6 April 2018

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Today wasn’t as bright as yesterday. Maybe that was summer and we’re into autumn?

<Technospeak>
My old, not excessively old, maybe seven years old Toshiba laptop had been backing up my ‘Data’ partition overnight. I don’t know exactly how long it took, but when I woke this morning it was finished. I woke it, ejected the backup drive and, as someone on the net described it, pressed the ‘Kill button’. A couple of hours later the ‘quick reinstall’ had completed. The Data partition had been deleted and probably formatted. The C: drive had also been cleaned out and a new version of Windows had been installed. Everything seemed ok and everything seemed to move with the same sluggishness as before. Welcome to Windows 10 (this may take some time). I think that’s the full name of Windoze 10. I had a friend in Australia who always referred to Windows as Windoze. Then, ten or so years ago we didn’t know how lucky we were. Now we really have a Win Doze. The most sluggish OS in the galaxy.
</Technospeak>

We went out for a late lunch at the Torwood Garden Centre after my technology overload. I think it must have been Greyhairs’ Day today. We may have been the only ones with our own teeth. (Oops, sorry H!). After our repast, we went for a walk through the plants. Scamp bought me an early birthday prezzy of a Buddleia. It’s the plant you see flowering on spare ground and beside rail tracks. Unfortunately it doesn’t flower for me in the garden. I’ve been trying to grow them for years without success. Maybe this time will be different. Scamp also got some plants for herself and a couple of big pots to put them in. Packing them in to the car wasn’t a problem as I’d discovered the versatility of the boot which converts from a flat floor to a deep pit. Very smart. You have to see it, I’m not going to try to explain how it works. Believe me it does.

On the way home I bit the bullet and told Scamp I was going to but a Linx 12×64. I was going to buy it from the bastard Curry’s too, because they were the cheapest. Drove to Coatbridge to do the deed and as usual, went in and recited the name of the tablet. “No, we don’t have any.” was the reply. I told the bloke that they had them last week. He checked the system while telling me that “That was last week. Maybe we’ve sold it since then”, but he did it with a smile and was multitasking, so I knew he was an AI, not a Sales Droid. Turned out they had one and I grabbed it before they could tell me they’d need to set it up for me and that would cost another forty quid, but I’d get a setup USB stick. I also said no to the usual offer of an insurance money pit. To be fare to the Droid who’d taken over the selling of the device, he didn’t push it. Well, it was a Friday afternoon and his sights were on a Buckfast bottle chilling nicely for him in the fridge at home. A fridge not bought from Curry’s I’d guess.

Drove home and went out for a walk round St Mo’s while the laptop was charging up and downloading the 3Gb updates. 3Gb! That’s massive. Anyway, St Mo’s provided today’s PoD which is the pic of the seat with a view over the BMX track. Nice.

Long story short. The Linx 12×64 works well and those nice people at Adobe even allowed me to install Lightroom 6 on it for nothing. Legally too I hasten to add before you say ‘Hmm, all his software costs him nothing’. New leafs people, new leafs! Tomorrow I’ll probably find there’s another 3Gb download waiting for me! For today I’m a happy bunny who’s double formatting his old Tosh data drive one more time for luck. It goes on sale on Monday.

Tomorrow we’re going in to Glasgow not to look at laptops, but hopefully to have lunch in Chaophraya. Going in on the bus too because drink will be taken I think.