Garden – Page 66 – My Photo Blog

The Galleries and the Airies – 2 September 2016

Posted on September 2, 2016September 2, 2016 by Zogman

Scamp was out this morning having coffee with her niece. This gave me time to sit and swear at both WordPress and Galleria. WordPress provided the bad plugin I wrote about yesterday and Galleria is a gallery making piece of software I’ve use for a few years now. Galleria works well. WordPress works well. The problem is that they don’t work well together. This morning I made them both shake hands and play nice together. It took a lot of swearing and a fair bit of trial and error, but they did eventually produce a decent photo gallery in my WordPress blog. Like my pal Val says, it was “a wee challenge”. Now that I’ve managed to do it more than once, I’m quite happy to let it go and revert to the simple gallery I made last night. Time wasted? Yes, but a couple of lessons learned. You should learn something new every day.

In the afternoon, I started cutting down a rogue tree growing out of the wall at the corner of the back garden. Once I’d dumped the cuttings in the council dump, I went for a walk along the Luggie Water to find some photos. I had thought to go to the free day at the Scottish Airshow at Ayr, but it was the thought of standing in the rain watching for the ‘airies’ descending through the clouds and then disappearing again into them, wishing that it was a lovely sunny day with the ‘airies’ shining against a blue sky. It had rained on and off all day and there was no sign of a letup. With that said, we decided not to go. We should have, because at 4pm, the sky started to clear and the sun came out. Unfortunately the show was due to start at 5pm and it was too late for us to get ready and drive down to Ayr to see the ‘airies’. Oh well, a walk along the Luggie would have to do. I liked the light on the ‘Bucky’ bottle under the road bridge and with a bit of post processing the gigantic ‘rhubarb leaves’ looked quite impressive.

Don’t know what we’re doing tomorrow, because it looks like wall to wall rain.

Non-Stop – 27 August 2016

Posted on August 27, 2016 by Zogman

That’s how it felt today. From the minute I got up until now 9.30pm, it feels like I’ve been on the go all day. Here’s how it happened:

Went shopping with Scamp in the morning through the dreadful traffic in Falkirk. In less than five hundred metres there are no less than five different sets of traffic and pedestrian lights. Come on, this isn’t central London or even Glasgow city centre, this is a small town in the central belt. What’s the story? Were too many traffic lights made that year and they had to put them somewhere? Away back in the dim mists of time not long after the UK joined what was then the Common Market, there were stories in the press about Butter Mountains and Wine Lakes. Is this the result of a Traffic LIght Forest? Rant over.

After fighting my way through this no-man’s land of tailbacks, not once, but twice, we drove home and dumped the hard won food we’d sourced at Morrison’s, had a very quick lunch then drove to Muirhead to Colin’s Flower Show. It’s not actually Colin’s. True, he is on the committee and enters an amazing amount of stuff in it, but other folk do to. Today’s show wasn’t quite as grand as some I’ve seen there, but most of the flowers were spectacular, and the vegetables were mammoth. I don’t know how these folk do it.

We left the flower show and went for coffee, then bought even more food in Asda. Still not satisfied, we stopped at Tesco to get the things we’d still to check off our list. Well, at least we spread our money around all the local supermarkets! Finally we headed home to try to find places to put all these consumables.

By the time everything was packed away and the fridge door closed on the groaning shelves, it was time to make dinner. After dinner, once we had done the washing up, I set to, to make the paste for tomorrow’s Thai Green Curry.

With that made, I grabbed a cup of Earl Grey and went to read for an hour before starting to tidy the painting room (back bedroom) for tomorrow’s guest.

Now I’m writing the blog and submitting the photos to Flickr, after which I may have a small libation. I think I deserve it.

Tomorrow will not be as frantic – please!

Birds and the Bees (and a Spider) – 22 August 2016

Posted on August 22, 2016 by Zogman

Today I did some gardening.

This is an example of forward thinking by Scamp:

The weather forecast for tomorrow is rain, a few dry spells and then more rain, followed by rain.
We have a bag of stone chips that we are going to put down beside the new tall fence to complete this area. The stones when they are washed are basically a golden yellow, but with other colours through them, quite pretty. In the bag they still retain the abrasive mix that they are tumbled with and are a claggy yellow ochre.

If you add these two things in the correct order, Scamp postulates that it would be good to lay the chips down today and then tomorrow’s rain will wash the claggy yellow ochre coating off them and reveal their true colour. That’s why it was boots on, riggers gloves on and get yourself mucky laying down the chips. Fine. If only it ended there. Scamp said: “Could we pot up this Hebe using the compost from the potatoes we lifted a week or so ago?” Followed by: “We really need to prune the rose round the back door.” and “Maybe if we ….” Oh, if you can’t beat them, then join them. I volunteered to repot a wee rose that was being completely swamped by some wee blue bell-shaped flowers, that might be Campanula. That’s as far as I went though. This gardening can be quite addictive I’m told. I’ll take their word for it, thanks.

Grabbed an hour and a camera and a new album from the latest John Connolly book and took them for a walk to St Mo’s. I met a heron as I was walking over. I’m not sure if it was Mr Grey or not. It seemed a bit small for him, but I’ve only once seen him out of the water, so it could be. He posed for some photos, then disappeared in a great flapping of wings. The rest of the photos were bees and hover flies. Hence the title of today’s epistle. Birds and Bees and a Spider. The John Connolly album was interesting as it always is. Very atmospheric and all by artists I’d never heard of.

With Hazy’s help, we got Netflix to work tonight and after salsa class, settled down and watched A Royal Night Out. Harmless fun. Better than watching the highlights of this year’s Olympic Games. Princess Margaret is a hoot!

Rain forecast all day tomorrow. Hope it washes the stone chips clean again.

I didn’t know you could do that – 19 August 2016

Posted on August 19, 2016 by Zogman

I’ve had the Nikon D7000 for over three years now. In that time I’ve settled on it as my ‘good’ camera. The one to use when quality is paramount. I use it in manual mode most of the time and allow the camera to decide the best ISO setting to use within the limits I set. I also use it in AF-S mode. Single servo focus because I mainly photograph still objects, landscapes don’t move much and flowers, although they do move, don’t wander far from their stems. Maybe too it’s that I’m a control freak and like to know exactly what my camera is doing and can predict how it will react in any given situation. Today I started using AF-C for probably the first time since the early days just after I acquired the camera. AF-C is Continuous servo focus. The camera continually focuses and if the manual is to be believed, “if subject moves, camera will engage predictive focus tracking to predict final distance to subject and adjust focus as necessary.” I am so glad that was cleared up, I thought it was going to be complicated! What I do know is that it works and it keeps things in focus while they are moving, and even if I am moving. That’s what I found today. It never ceases to surprise me what this camera is capable of and I’m sure there are even more surprises hidden deep in the manual waiting to be discovered.

I went to the physio this morning and felt a lot better once he had stretched, manipulated and massaged my shoulder and neck once again. Maybe it’s just that feeling when you stop hitting your head against a wall. It’s so nice when you stop. Went swimming in the afternoon.

I’m becoming absolutely pig-sick of the Olympics on TV. Events over-running and programme schedules being changed with no notice. News when it arrives an hour late crammed with results and interviews with athletes before we get to the nitty gritty of what’s happening in the rest of the world. Only two more days to go and it’s finished, because it doesn’t look as if the Paralympics will be covered in the same way as the able bodied version. Don’t you feel so sorry for the athletes in the Paralympics who have trained for years, only to find that in the eyes of those running these games, they are second best.

Weather today at home, as predicted, was wet from about 12midday and it stayed that way until early evening when it dried up.

The end of summer? – 18 August 2016

Posted on August 18, 2016 by Zogman

Today started cloudy and remained that way until the early afternoon when the sun finally broke through.

I went for a walk along the railway hoping to get some black and white shots, or more exactly, some shots that would transfer well into black and white. It didn’t happen. I couldn’t settle on anything at all and came home with a few photos, but nothing that I would be happy to upload to Flickr. Just as well really as Flickr is in one of its strunts when it refuses to upload any photos. That is why today’s link takes you to the full size image instead of Flickr. This is happening more and more recently of late to Flickr and makes me glad that I didn’t opt for a ‘Pro’ account, ie. one that I have to pay for. Flickr is owned by Yahoo and Yahoo appears to be in trouble at the moment, so it’s spending less and less money on peripherals like Flickr, so outages aren’t dealt with as an urgent need. All it means is that I’ll upload tomorrow, not today. It matters very little today as the only decent photo I got was the one above of some pansy seeds.

Rain due tomorrow. The garden needs it.

Green – 17 August 2016

Posted on August 17, 2016August 17, 2016 by Zogman

I’d read on a blog somewhere about taking shots of part of an object or even parts of an object and allowing them to define the whole and another about taking more time to study a shot before taking it. They must have struck a chord with me because that’s what I found myself doing today. First when we went to Strathaven this morning after we’d picked up our new reading glasses in Larky. We were sitting having lunch in a wee cafe. The local secondary school was coming out for lunch too and for a time we were surrounded by school weans. I felt quite nostalgic for a while. Aye Right! (that mean’s “No I DId Not” in Scotland). Anyway, we were sitting next to a wall and over the wall was the Powmillon Burn and a beautiful fern lit by contré jour light (backlight). It looked good, and it still does after Lightroom has had a go at it. I took another wide angle shot from the same position, but it did not come out of Lightroom very well. In other words, it was rubbish.

That sort of set the tone for today’s photos. Also,most of them were green, like the fern, but one that bucked the trend was a shot of a Yellow Wagtail which wasn’t a plant and wasn’t green, but it WAS only a part of the frame, because I couldn’t get closer and I only got one shot. Remember, it’s better to have one shot in the bag and then try to improve on it rather than fart about trying different compositions but then miss the shot entirely and end up with nothing. The other one that wasn’t green was the blue blobs shot which was taken with the intention of having only one flower of the three in focus.

After Strathaven, we came straight back home as I wanted to get the ingredients for tonight’s dinner and Scamp wanted to cut the grass in the back garden. Grass is also green, or am I stretching this too thin now?

With the dinner half made and having solved today’s Sudoku puzzle while sitting in the garden, I went for a walk to St Mo’s to see if there were any other parts of things I could isolate and that’s where the leaf and the two grasses came from. Back home I finished making today’s dinner – Thai Green Curry. Total coincidence!

Possibly one more glorious day tomorrow before the rains come.

Cake Today! – 15 August 2016

Posted on August 15, 2016August 15, 2016 by Zogman

Well, we did have cake today! Woke to sunshine that didn’t really go away all day.

The sun enticed us out and into the wide world. We couldn’t agree on a destination until Scamp suggested that we go a walk along the canal. Now I go there quite often, but it’s a while since she’s walked along it, so it was decided that we’d drive to Auchinstarry and walk along to Twechar and back.

Today was the day the teachers went back to work after the summer hols and as we were walking along the railway, I was thinking about all the times I’ve sat in the assembly hall at school listening to head teachers and deputes droning on about grade averages, STACs, child protection procedures and other dry, boring paper-pushing nonsense. They always started with a jolly “Well I hope you’ve enjoyed your holidays and are feeling refreshed. Here’s the bad news …….. “. Drone, drone, drone. It was essential to get there early, not to show you were interested, although there were some that did. No, it was to grab the seats at the back where you could doodle unseen on the hundred page handout you’d been given with charts and tables and mind numbing statistics that meant nothing to anyone but the bean-counter who had created them. “Can you see this Powerpoint alright at the back?” some depute would ask. “Yes, we’re just not interested.” we’d mumble in reply.

Ah, but while all my former colleagues were enjoying this annual festival of figures and meaningless jargon, we were out in the sunshine, admiring the flowers and the light through the leaves and counting the wee fishes and talking to the ducks. It was when we were walking back along the canal towpath I heard what I thought at first was a motorbike before I realised that although the pitch of the engine was rising, it wasn’t changing gear and it seemed to he coming from Barr Hill which has a roman fort, but no roads. I knew what it was then, it was a Piaggio. It’s an Italian plane type called a canard. Which is a plane with a wing towards the rear and two little winglets just rear of the nose which makes it look as if it’s flying backwards. Some people think it looks like a duck, hence the name ‘canard’. Some have actual tail fins and tail planes like a normal aircraft and some have jet engines, but most have pusher props. That is, the propellers stick out the back of the plane and push it through the air rather than pull it like a conventional plane. (I like planes, in case you hadn’t guessed.) I’d seen one last year at almost exactly the same place, but hadn’t got a photo of it. I started taking my camera out of the bag and tried explaining to Scamp what it was I was so excited about. She didn’t share my enthusiasm and said “Oh, so it’s a plane?” I managed two shots of the Piaggio before it disappeared into a cloud. Neither of them very good. I’ve never managed to get a good clean shot of this plane. You can see today’s effort above. Maybe one day …

After we drove home and had lunch, Scamp wanted to work in the garden. I dumped my photos into Lightroom and let it get to work on them. Then we sat in the garden and read until it was time to make the dinner and then get ready for salsa class. I had done my exercises from the physio this morning under a hot shower and they paid off while I was in the class, allowing much more movement than I’d had last week. We were able to complete almost all the moves tonight which is proof that we are moving in the right direction.

Beautiful sunset tonight which augers well for tomorrow’s weather. We’ll see what the day brings. If it’s as good as today it will be very welcome.

Hobbiton – 14 August 2016

Posted on August 14, 2016 by Zogman

According to the weather fairies last week, today was to be a beautiful day. Yesterday they said that Sunday was to be a bit cloudy but with sunny intervals and Monday was to be a beautiful day. Today was less than beautiful and there was a distinct lack of sunny intervals, and now the predictions are that Tuesday, not Monday will be a beautiful day. It’s like “cake tomorrow, but never cake today.” However, we struggle on with grey skies and the eternal prospect of good weather some day.

It was dry, not very windy and quite warm, so we went out for a walk. Today’s choice of walk was around one of the paths at Chatelherault near Hamilton. It’s a huge area with forest, grassland and interesting architecture. The main building on the site is the former Hunting Lodge and Summer House for the Dukes of Hamilton and looks out over an avenue of trees which originally led down to Hamilton Palace which has now been demolished. Behind Chatelherault is a large forested area of gigantic redwoods, pines and also some natural hardwoods. The Avon Water runs through the estate and it was looking very fishable today with tea coloured water just running off a spate.

We left the car in the car park and headed for one of the shorter routes. Shorter, but still quite demanding, especially to two walkers who will happily admit they are out of condition. I think we need to visit the gym more than once a week to get back to a reasonable degree of physical fitness. That said, it was an interesting walk. Lots of ups and downs, muddy paths and demanding stairs to climb. Perhaps it was because we were watching “The Hobbit” last night, but the whole place had the feeling of the set for that film with thinning of the pines allowing the light to penetrate and made it much less gloomy than commercial woodland. Unfortunately we didn’t see any hobbits.

There wasn’t much to photograph today, but it has potential if there is a bit more directional sunlight to play with. I did manage to fake a shot of the frontage of Chatelherault with a bit of levels adjustment in Lightroom, then I pasted in a more interesting sky from one of yesterday’s shots. The peas are two of the potentially five pods from our single pea plant. I think I planted the other peas upside down and they are growing down the way.

Hoping against hope for cake tomorrow.

Perf (in the rain) – 10 August 2016

Posted on August 10, 2016August 10, 2016 by Zogman

We intended going to Perf on the bus, but after a slight misunderstanding about bus times, we discovered that we’d just missed the connecting bus, so I drove us instead.

We had just arrived in Perf when the rain came on. It had been threatening all the way up the road, but now the threat became a reality. I’d only really come to Perf to get my coffee and tea supplies. After I’d got those necessities, Perf (in the rain) was our oyster. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Perf (in the rain), but it’s not exactly the entertainment centre of the universe. Once you’ve been round the shops and the St John’s centre, there’s not much more to do. That was it today. If we’d gone on the bus, we’d probably have had to wait an hour (in the rain) at the Perf bus station which makes the rest of Perf look like Las Vegas. Now we could drive home whenever we were ready. Maybe it was a good idea to drive after all.

The rain didn’t really stop all the way home and so it continued after we got back to Cumbersheugh. Today’s shots were just grab shots. One taken in the front garden braced against the window sill and the other taken from the back window in the living room. Sometimes it’s the grab shots that are the best ones.

Looks like more rain again tomorrow, even for Perf.

Broken Back – 29 July 2016

Posted on July 29, 2016July 29, 2016 by Zogman

When you’ve got a really small garden like ours, that retains the water when the rains come and ends up turning into a swamp, the majority of your plants have to live in pots. After we got the fence built, all the plant pots were dumped into the centre of our swampy postage stamp. Today was the day to put a bit of order into the chaos. Scamp had decided that since we had moved the compost bin (another back breaker), we should rethink the area immediately in front of the fence. She decided that we would lay down some weed suppressing fabric and then put some white pebbles on top. The plant pots would then sit on the pebbles and they would provide drainage.

We drove to Tesco, because they were doing a 3 for 2 deal on pebbles. Well, they would have if they had any pebbles. Ok, next stop Dobbies which were also doing the same deal. Yes, they did have pebbles in a variety of sizes from really small things that were really chips up to big bold boulders and almost every bag was slit open with the contents strewn around. We’ve been thinking that Dobbies quality has fallen away sharply recently, and this is the proof of the pudding. Next stop, B&Q. They weren’t doing any deals, but they did have lots of different bags of different sized and different coloured pebbles. Scamp decided that the white pebbles were out and large golden chips were in. We bought three bags, hoping it would be enough. Getting them into the car wasn’t a problem, but I wasn’t looking forward to getting them out again. Scamp wondered if we should have bought a cheap barrow to wheel them into the garden. In retrospect, we should have. Truly, retrospect is the only 20-20 vision. We finished off the front of the border with some big boulders we’d dug out at various times from the garden, and it looks good. Three bags of chips were almost enough. Perhaps we need just one more bag, to finish it off perfectly, but it looks beautiful as it is, and anyway, I need time to allow my poor back to get better.
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To put some suppleness back into my angry muscles, I went out for a bike run in the late afternoon. I wanted to photograph a local farm that I’ve wanted to paint for a while. I ended up photographing three different farms and small holdings and may manage to get paintings of them done soon.
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Feeling sore tonight, but the effort was worth it.