Category: #inktober

October’s almost over – 31 October 2023

Posted on by Zogman

Another bright morning and a cold day to follow it.

I think we just sat in the warm living room and looked out at the world outside for a while. We also stood at the back window and watched the antics of a couple of magpies struggling to find a way to get at the fat in half a coconut shell that’s hanging on the rowan tree.  It’s a cheap bird feeder I bought intending it for the bluetits to feed on.  However one of the wily magpies found a way to hook the string that holds the coconut with its claw and pull it close, meaning it could plunder the contents in comfort.  The others were still flying up, taking a peck and falling back down.  I think they expended more energy than they gained from the fat.

Scamp wrote a letter to the Gas Ombudsman, complaining about the terrible wait we’ve had to get a gas bill.  Nobody seems to know why we’ve not had a bill and any correspondence we get for British Gas is basically a photocopy with the date changed from the last one.  The smart meter is working for the electricity bill, but not for the gas!  Maybe we need someone to come out and read the meter! We’ll see what the Ombudsman can do to jolly them along.

After lunch we walked down to the shops for the makings of a stir-fry and some potatoes to make Potato and Leek soup.  There were a group of ‘workies’ cutting back the bushes at the front of the house.  I didn’t envy them their work in the cold breeze that was blowing.  We felt it too on our fifteen minute walk to the shops.  I’d intended leaving the bags with Scamp on the way back and going for a walk in St Mo’s, but they were quite heavy, so I walked home with her and then went out again to see what I could find. Not a lot was the answer, although I did startle a deer in the woods. It saw/smelled/heard me long before I noticed it and it was away like the wind.  I tried taking photos of some fungi but few of them were interesting, then I found a curvy looking flat topped mushroom just as the sun shone through the trees on it.  I think I missed the best of that light, but was happy with the image I did get.  That became PoD.

Back home the workies had finished and I could smell soup, so the potatoes had been used! I made a cup of coffee and uploaded today’s photos then worked on them for a while.  Then I remembered, or was reminded by the computer that there was an update to the iMac’s OS, so I put it in.  About an hour later I was walking past the computer and noticed the screen was still black with a white progress line half way along its slot.  Not long after an error message flashed on the screen.  The update had failed for some reason. On a normal week, I’d already have made a backup of the OS and would just have overwritten the OS with a new one, but I hadn’t made a backup and I didn’t want to risk losing the data as well as the operating system.  I tried a Safe Mode start and everything was still there, but I decided I’d wait until tomorrow to do a backup and then replace the OS.  Computers are a pain some times. Dinner was the stir-fry and it was quite good, but nothing special. Soup was kept for tomorrow.

Today was the last sketch in Inktober for this year.  The prompt was Fire. Instead of an actual fire I chose to sketch the vehicle that hopefully would be responsible for stopping a fire. It’s based on a Dennis F8 Fire Engine 1955. The group this year with a couple of headbanger exceptions has been really good and well behaved.  That made my life a lot easier!

I think a dance practise will be called for tomorrow.  Other than that, we may well be sheltering from the predicted rain!

Just a Monday – 16 October 2023

Posted on by Zogman

Shopping, taking photos and a very short bit of gentle gardening.

Some days when I’m writing this blog I look back on the day that’s almost finished and ask myself “What DID we do today?” This was one of those days.

Wordle and Spelling Bee took up about half an hour of the morning, then I started messing about with a bit of software I’d downloaded. It’s called SyncTime and I’ve got the ‘Lite’ version which is another way of saying ‘Free’ version. I have lots of tutorial videos, mainly dance related on two different computers and I want to synchronise them, but hadn’t really looked into solutions for the problem until recently. SyncTime seemed to be just what I was looking for, but it’s especially ‘Lite’ on explanations. I spent most of the morning trying to work out what was happening. Now I have a better idea of what I’m getting myself into, I don’t think SyncTime is the solution. More investigation (or time wasting) required. I’m sure Scamp would agree with the bracketed description.

Lunch was soup and then we went out to ‘get the messages’. Just a 15min walk to the shops, but it breaks up the day. On the way back I took a detour to St Mo’s and Scamp walked home after she eventually got across the road. There is work being done on one of the dual carriageways just now and that means the traffic on the other roads in the town is a lot heavier than normal. Crossing the road becomes a dangerous pastime, because everyone is in a hurry, pedestrians included.

There wasn’t much to see in St Mo’s and although I did get a couple of shots, I wasn’t really impressed with them. They filled a space and that was all you could say about them. I really think that the 365 as it was is coming to an end. I know I’ve said it before, but it’s becoming truer every year. It keeps getting more difficult to find fresh subjects to tackle. That doesn’t mean the blog will be closing. It’s a pain too, but if I have a dull day I just write wee stories like this one!

After I’d shortlisted two photos and processed them, I went out into the garden to pot up three different basil pots. The first was a new one we bought in Lidl yesterday and it was seriously pot bound. The second was a pot of basil we got in Tesco and had on the kitchen windowsill for too long. I think the poor plant had exhausted all the nutrients in the soil. It too was pot bound. The third was a wee pot I’d grown from seed, but it wasn’t making much ground. There were about ten separate seedlings in the pot, but all clumped together. They were separated and planted into new soil then dumped in the birdbath to soak up some rainwater. The other two were just transplanted into bigger pots to give their roots some elbow room and then they too were given a soak in the birdbath. I left them for about half an hour before I brought them in to the kitchen again. I hope the new compost gives them some energy.

On the subject of plants, Hazy. ‘Nelly’ is definitely splitting. I’ll try to remember to send you a photograph of her tomorrow. Looking very healthy!

Sketch prompt was Angel. I thought of drawing the Christmas tree fairy until I realised that a fairy and an angel are two different things! So it was a different angel. She stands over the old Hutchesontown Library in Glasgow. She has stood there since 1906. Everytime I see this angel I think of the Paul Simon song “Call me Al”, and I “see angels in the architecture”, but it’s the architecture of Glasgow. I always liked this sculpture and she fits the prompt perfectly.

PoD turned out to be a yellow leaf caught in some weeds.

Tomorrow we may go out for a spin.

A coffee, a walk and a blether – 5 October 2023

Posted on by Zogman

A coffee, a walk and a blether

Going out for the above with my brother.

Another wet day, but Scamp offered me a lift to the town centre to hopefully catch a bus into Glasgow that would take less than an hour to get there. I did catch the bus and it did take significantly less than an hour for the journey. Scamp herself was off to meet Shona for coffee and a blether too. It must be blethering weather.

In Glasgow I was early and I used that time to see what JL had in the way of freezers and fridge-freezers. Actually, they had a fair selection and I took some photos of the price and size labels, both are important to us. I also took a selfie of me standing in front of two freezers. Not because I like taking selfies in shops, but because Scamp would get an idea just how tall they fridge-freezers were. Some were taller than me. How’s a 5’9” high bloke meant to get things out of the top shelf of that fridge?
JL’s main door was locked and the shutters were down when I was walking over and I thought “Oops! Maybe these tales of the High Street closures are coming home to roost”. But it seems that there was just a problem with the doors.

Walked back to the bus station and met Alex coming off his bus. We had our usual coffee in Nero and I told him I’d found a lens I fancied was available in WEX in Glasgow. We intended getting a bus up Bath Street to the shop, because it’s a fair walk, but there was a lot of work being done on the pavement all the way up Bath Street and temporary bus stops everywhere, so we chose to face that mountain and walk up the hill in the rain.
Found the lens in WEX and gave it a good try out on the A6500. It looked fine and I was sure it would do the job I intended it for, but I wanted a second opinion which I got from Alex. Still not sure about splashing the cash (or plastic) I said I’d sleep on it. I’ve not done that yet, so I’ll see how I feel tomorrow, all being well.

We walked back to the city centre and went to Paesano for lunch. Number 5 (Cooked ham – No cheese) for Alex. Number 3 (Anchovies and Olive for me). Since I was bussing it today, I had a glass of red to go with lunch. We sat and talked about family, cameras, life in general and, of course, the lens.

Alex wanted to visit a wee old second hand shop on Trongate and I wanted to get freezer bags for Scamp, both in that direction so we took our time. I got the bags, Alex had a browse round guitar amps. He’s found his old electric guitar and enjoyed playing with it even without an amp. I think I’m a bit to blame telling him about Crawford and I jamming!

I had one more shopping trip and that was Cass Art for a couple of cheap sketch books. Got them and walked in the general direction of the bus station after a coffee in the Nero in Queen Street. I got PoD which was red and black wrought iron chairs and black wrought iron tables covered in rain splashes outside the Counting House at George Square. Nice easy wide angle shot.

We both went our ways at the bus station and I just got the X3 as the driver was opening the bus. Perfect timing.

Back home it was a baked potato for dinner, just the potato with butter. Lovely. Then it was time to work on the sketch for today which I admit I’d roughed out yesterday. The prompt was “Map”. My take on it was a fictitious map that had been well used on yellowed paper with the standard ’X” marks the spot mark on it. I liked the effect of the fold lines.

Tomorrow Scamp is intending going to FitSteps as usual and I might make a phone call to reserve a lens.

 

Last day of October – 31 October 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Not only the final day of October, but also Halloween and the last day of Inktober 2022.

It didn’t start well. At 7:30am our next door neighbour started banging nails into his wall, which is also our wall. I think he got a new hammer for his birthday and wanted to see how it worked. No point in complaining. He trained as a lawyer and became a taxi driver, or that’s the impression he gives.

It was hot last night, I was actually sweating in bed, in October. That’s just not natural. All the news reports are telling us that this weather is not normal for the time of year. Excuse me, but some of us have lived in this country for a few years now and know how hot or cold it should be, we don’t need some teenager to tell us. Y’see that’s what happens when I get woken up early by a hammer wielding ex-lawyer who’s banging nails into his wall. I just end up grumpy for the rest of the day.

Lunch was roast beef with garlic and coriander. It sounds awful, but usually it tastes really good. Not so today. The smell was starting to make me sick, but luckily I didn’t go through with it. I did chuck the offending remainder in the bin.

<Technospeak>
On the first of each month I back up my photos for that month onto a big 2TB or 4TB external hard drive. Today I thought it would be a good idea to check that everything was working after the upgrade of the OS. It wasn’t. The problem was I couldn’t see the external drive on the computer. I read about lots of different ways to circumvent the problem, but none of them worked. About an hour and a half later I found the solution. The drives were made by Seagate, and with no fanfare, I stumbled upon a patch on the Seagate site. Installed it then restarted the machine. It worked a treat. Both my external drives worked perfectly. It’s just another case of Apple wanting you to use their external drives and putting blocks in the way of you when you try to use PC hardware.
</Technospeak>

Later in the afternoon I went for a walk in St Mo’s, partly to clear my head and partly to get a PoD. The PoD was easy. I found a patch of Candle Snuffer fungi on my way to the park. Another name for it is Stags Horn fungus, (Xylaria hypoxylon). I can almost see the Stags Horns, but have no idea what a candle snuffer looks like. Anyway, PoD found. I also got a very wide angle shot of a tree with a carpet of leaves beneath it. Look on Flickr for it.

When I got back I wasn’t feeling great. Sore back, a bit tired and aching. I took a couple of paracetamol with a cup of tea and didn’t feel much better.

It being Monday, dinner was pasta with tomato sauce and some bacon for extra flavour. Best I’ve made for ages, and I was beginning to feel better after that. Maybe the heat during the night, maybe the dodgy roast beef or maybe just being a bit cold coming home in the gloaming. I’ll take another couple of paracetamol before I go to bed.

So this is the last day of Inktober 2022. I’ll miss it. I always do, but it’s not been the same this year. Too many folk just dumping their paintings and photographs into Inktober and thinking they’ll get away with it. They won’t. They didn’t. Some complained and some just shrugged their shoulders and went to find the next new group. This is the first time, or maybe the second that I’ve had to ban someone from Inktober. I did it with mixed feelings, but they knew the rules when they joined.
Anyway, today’s sketch was of Matilda the tractor driving hen. There a nice wee nonsense story about her on the Inktober 2022 page on Flickr.

Some tidying up of photos and stuff tomorrow. Some messages to get at the shops. That’s about it. Not a lot, but enough to keep us both busy.

Summer has officially ended – 30 October 2022

Posted on by Zogman

At 2am the clocks went back. I never saw them do it, but I’m happy to believe they did.

We got an extra hour in bed, sleeping through that amazing happening at 2am. However, in my sleep I must have been worrying through the Continuous Hover Cross, so much so that I wanted to see if I could manage to get through it solo. I did the count that Jane had done and lo and behold it worked. Not the first time, nor the second, but by the fourth or fifth attempt the steps worked. Now all I had to do was fit it into the routine that Scamp was doing, because unlike most ballroom routines, the Lead and the Follower are doing completely different steps, while almost being joined at the hip. Again, not at the first attempt, but at the third or fourth we were dancing the CHC. Hooray! A milestone had been reached! On to the Telemark Turn.

We spent some more time dissecting the next part of the routine and that’s where iMovie came to the rescue again. In that clumsy bit of software it is possible to speed up or slow down a video. We did the slowing down to about 70% normal speed. The really clever part is that you can force the pitch of music or speech to stay the same and not slow down with the visuals. That gave us another weapon to use in the final part of the ‘back end’ of the Foxtrot.

We needed something for tonight’s dinner, so once the rain had stopped we put the computer away and walked down to the shops. We came home with a chicken, some veg and a pudding plus other odds and sods that would do for lunch during the week. We wouldn’t starve.

When we got back, I grabbed a camera and went for a walk in St Mo’s.  According to my weather app, there was a one hour window before the next rain shower blew in and we’d already used up about half an hour of that walking down to the shops and back! There wasn’t much to see over the road, but there was just occasionally some sunshine through the trees. The sun gave a bit of back lighting to a leaf that had become entangled in some weeds. That made PoD after some restorative work in a couple of post-processing apps. Yes, the weather fairies had it down perfectly.  I was back in the house about ten minutes when the first raindrops met the window.

Dinner was roast chicken with baked potatoes and roasted veg. All done in the oven. The kitchen was toasty hot for the rest of the day as a result.

Spoke to Jamie later and found out about his forthcoming work trip to Switzerland, famous of course for it’s clocks and WATCHES.  DId I say WATCHES?  But of course he wouldn’t be interested in such things, would he?  Sounds like they were getting some much needed rain these past few days.

The prompt for today was ‘Gear’. Would I do meshing gear wheels? Nah! The thought of drawing all those gear teeth with involutes and pitch circles. No chance. I thought of drawing camera gear, but somebody had already drawn that. I settled, finally, on my painting gear and that’s what you see here. I thought it was only right and proper to give them a chance in the limelight.

No plans for tomorrow. Possibly another practise of the Gershwin Foxtrot. I don’t think Alex is fit enough for a photo walk yet.

Dance Class – 29 October 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Today being Saturday we were off to Brookfield for dance class.

Sometimes the class goes well, sometimes I have a few problems, but this class was an utter disaster for me today. I seemed to be able to do nothing right. We were dancing Foxtrot. Well, the rest of the class were dancing foxtrot, I was staggering around the floor for most of the time. I just couldn’t get one part of it right. The part is called the Continuous Hover Cross and it was indeed making me cross. I’d practised it in class last week and after following Stewart with the rest of the leaders, I could do it. When I tried dancing it with Scamp, it didn’t work. We also practised it last night and after a few mistakes, it fell into place. Today it just fell. I had to admit defeat after a while. Gave up and thankfully could manage the Tango we did after the (bloody) Foxtrot.

Driving home was a bit of a slog. Even using my shortcut through the Clyde Tunnel, we were still locked into a long queue of slow moving traffic. In retrospect, I think the problem was a weekend rail strike, meaning that those folk wanting to get to the football had to drive there. Whatever it was, it meant an extra half an hour added to our journey.

The clouds that we’d seen beginning to break as we left Brookfield were joining together the nearer we got to Cumbersheugh and they’d invited all their cloud pals along too. So much so that it felt like evening was coming by about 3pm.

I did manage to get one or two photos of a beautiful rose flowering for the second time this year in the garden. It’s called Simply The Best and it’s living up to its name. It became PoD.

The prompt for today was “Uh-Oh”. So my interpretation of that was a broken egg. There is a saying that you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. Sometimes I can’t make anything without an egg catastrophe!

I remember reading somewhere “You always get a second chance. It’s called Tomorrow.” We have no plans for Sunday.

Out to lunch – Out in the wilds – 28 October 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Scamp was going out to lunch today. I was going out into the wilds.

The clouds were rolling in when Scamp set out on the trek to Brodens in Condorrat. I stayed at home to see if the rain was going to come to anything or if the clouds would clear. In the meantime I got a needle and thread and sewed a necklace of my red chillies. I’d watch part of a Gardeners World program where a woman was stitching a chain of chillies. I didn’t see exactly what she was doing, but I got the gist of it and now I have two strings of chillies drying in the back room.

By the time I’d finished the weather looked a lot more settled to sunshine. I drove up to the back of Fannyside Moor and watched the light scud across the landscape as the clouds were broken up and blown about by a strong westerly wind. When I was sure that the light was getting better, I took my camera bag and walked along the road that leads to a farm. I didn’t actually go as far as the farm, because it was the walk back to the car, into the wind, but also in to the more photogenic landscape. It’s just a few hundred metres of straight road, but in that time the light on the hills and woods was changing all the time. PoD turned out to be a view down the road I’d driven up with the light coming from the right, through the trees. Of course the image has been ‘fiddled with’ just a bit, but it is certainly improved by my digital interventions.

On the way home I stopped at the shops to get tonight’s dinner which was a ‘bake at home’ deep pan pizza. Not the healthiest of meals, but fairly tasty and very filling. I was only home for about five minutes when Scamp arrived from her lunch. I think we may wander along the road to Brodens this week for a Pensioner’s Lunch. It sounds just the job.

Scamp was determined to plant up her pansies today when she came home. They are now sitting on the back step settling in to their new home. Tomorrow they get the airlift to their true place on the fence. The snowdrops have already been planted in a trough by the back step.

While the pizza was in the oven I was trying to get the new OS backed up on a spare section of another SSD, without success. The OS copied perfectly, but it wasn’t bootable. I was on my third try and it was just after dinner, that the work “Legacy” popped into my head. You don’t need to know what it is or how it works, but if I’m ever looking for a way to make a bootable OS copy, remind me the key word it “Legacy”. When this revelation appeared, I had just started making a sort of OS copy from the original ‘spinning rust’ hard disk. When I stopped it and put it out of its misery it was telling me is still had five hours to go. The Legacy OS took 25 minutes to do the same thing … and it worked.

The prompt today was ‘Camping’.
We used to do a fair bit of camping when we were younger, but the world was a different place then. I’m not sure I’d want to go camping in the wilderness in 2022. Having said that, we still have a tent somewhere in the house, just in case we get that sudden urge to spend a night or two in the great outdoors … in the rain.

Tomorrow it looks like the dance class is ready to go ahead and we’ve had a bit of a practise tonight to make sure we know the rudiments at least. Other than that, we have no plans. It looks wet again.

Plant hunting – 27 October 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Scamp wanted pansies and snowdrops today.

Pansies to replant the trough that hangs on the fence and snowdrops to plant around the garden. So it would be a drive to a garden centre. We chose Calders. It was the nearest one and would probably have what she wanted. Aha, but before that there was coffee to make for both of us and both Wordle and Spelling Bee to solve for both of us.

After lunch we drove to Calders. Pansies were no problem, loads of them. Scamp found a tray full that seemed to suit her, but no snowdrops were to be found. However, there were lots of snowmen, elves, reindeer (both illuminated and not), snow dogs and even Frank Sinatra singing Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas and other jolly songs. I hate Xmas. Not Christmas, that’s alright, but Xmas is just tinsel and fairy lights and spend, spend, spend. Bah Humbug!

We came home via Tesco and there Scamp found the snowdrops. She got two boxes. She also found the Good Food Christmas (see what I mean) magazine with the free calendar we couldn’t find anywhere last year. This year we’re ahead of the game. When we were driving in to the car park Scamp noticed the old fashioned Tunnock’s delivery van and that made PoD. I had my camera in the car, but my phone in my pocket. The best phone in the world is the one you have in your pocket. It’s a true saying.

Of course the phone couldn’t take a picture like the PoD. That took Lightroom and Photoshop to do that. Lightroom and Photoshop and a couple of hours poring over a computer screen. I was quite happy with the result, although if I’d thought about it a bit more and planned it better I might have been happier with the result, but I didn’t and it wasn’t. It’s still PoD.

The prompt today was ‘Snack’. I drew a Piece.
A sandwich in Scotland is a ‘piece’. This one consists of a layer of buttered bread. A layer of fried pork sausages slathered in tomato sauce. A layer of bread buttered on both sides. A layer of lettuce (one of your ‘five a day’). A layer of buttered bread. Squash down and slice with a sharp knife. Please note:

  1. The bread must be from a Scottish plain loaf
  2. The jury is still out on whether tomato sauce constitutes one of your ‘five a day’.

Tomorrow Scamp is out for lunch with The Witches. I might go in to Glasgow for a wander.

A wild morning – 26 October 2022

Posted on by Zogman

A wild morning and a computing afternoon with a walk in the late afternoon.

Heavy rain in the morning, but by the time Scamp was driving to meet her sister, the worst of the rain had passed and the sun was beginning to shine on the hills. Scamp had put some towels in the washing machine and once they had run their cycle I was in two minds whether to hang them up on the whirly to dry in the breeze. I finally decided to just do it because although the clouds were still massing, the breaks were getting bigger.

I planted a pot of basil after the washing had been hung out. It cost virtually nothing, just a couple of quid for a packet of seeds. There is always some compost in the greenhouse, enough to plant the seeds in and lots of plastic pots. The seeds should germinate in about a week’s time and once they have their second set of leaves they can be divided up into individual pots. They seem to like to live on the window sills of the bedrooms. Not too warm, but plenty of light. Let’s hope they grow well.

<Technospeak>
With that done, I started to carve up the SSD that holds the new operating system for the iMac. I’d initially set up the SSD almost a year ago, before I knew what the APFS was all about and it ended up a confused mixture of partition and APFS filing systems. To get it cleaned out I had to be careful and take one piece out at a time and in the correct order, or I risked screwing the whole 1TB drive. Long story short, after about two hours I had the ‘easy’ stuff done. The next chunk of data was about 250GB in size and I was copying it off to an old spinning disk (scathing called “Spinning Rust by the SSD fanboys). The copy would take about an hour according to the info box. That left time for lunch with Scamp who had just arrived home.
</Technospeak>

After a plate of Scamp’s Just Soup I put a pair of boots on and went out for a walk around St Mo’s for the first time in about a week. Deep in the woods I found some delicate looking fungi growing out of a fallen tree branch. They made PoD. I’d made some changes to the colour balance in the A7 last night, but clean forgot to leave myself a note as to what I’d done. Whatever it was it seemed to have cleared away a green cast that had appeared on everything yesterday. Easily changed in post-processing, but better if it’s done in the camera instead.

Back home the backup was complete and I could continue with the last part of the clean up. I wasn’t entirely sure if the next bit would work, but was pretty sure the Mac would tell me if danger threatened. It went very smoothly in the end. I shut the machine down, then powered it up again and the operating system operated and it now had twice as much space as it had last night. Phew!

Dinner was Carrot & Lentil Curry and Scamp was chef. It was very good, but I just know it will be even better tomorrow. Curries are like that.

Prompt for today was another vague “Ego”. Now, in Latin, Ego means “I” or “Me”. That gave me the germ of an idea. After I looked through Google Images the germ became a reality, this is my interpretation of “Ego”.

No plans for tomorrow, but it looks wet … again.

The day dawned dry and clear – 25 October 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Not quite sunny when we woke, but dry and clear was good enough for us to pack a pair of boots and head off to Japan.

Before we went, we had one more thing to do and that was to photograph the eclipse. Everyone was raving about having to wear eclipse glasses. Being a photographer, I had a couple of polarising filters. If you orient them with the glasses at 90º to each other, they cut out about 95% of visible light. I did that and took a few photos of the sun with a bite out of it! Then we were on our way.

We drove over the ‘Clacks’ bridge to Clackmannanshire, then over to Dollar. Took a wrong turning there and got stuck behind a slow moving jeep pulling a trailer then up a long, steep, twisting, single track road, only to find a bin lorry coming the opposite way. Luckily I’d just passed a house about 100m back and was able to reverse down into their drive to let the bin lorry through. Thankfully no more vehicles on the road, but we seemed to be at the back of beyond and no sights of anything that could be construed as Japanese. We were looking for somewhere to stop when I saw an elegant open wrought iron gate. That looked like the place. We parked and walked to the cabin to pay for our walk in a garden.

A Japanese garden. Honestly you would never know this place existed if you hadn’t been looking for it. The photo, which became PoD, was the first view we got of this place. It’s laid out like a Japanese garden, but not in a tacky, tawdry way, but one that you just know was designed by someone who knew what they were doing. It was utterly stunning. The weather was trying its best to make it look even more beautiful. The sun, which had survived its fight with the moon, was cutting holes in the clouds and spreading some light on the trees, the pond and the little shelters. Everything was meticulously clean and tidy. Not a spot of litter. We spent about two hours walking round the place. We even found a “Christie Path” that led into the trees! I could rant on for ages telling you what we saw. It would be better have a look here and see for yourself:
https://cowdengarden.com/

Drove home by a different route, taking our time. After a cup of coffee Scamp decided it was time to cut the front grass. When she was finished I hauled the ‘grass hoover’ into the back garden and cut the back grass. It’s not perfect, but given the dampness underfoot, I think we did a fairly good job. It’s like a bad haircut, in a fortnight it will look fine. We also put up another set of lights. Little stars this time that hopefully will fare better than the last ones did. They’re shining brightly as I’m typing this.

Today’s prompt was ‘Tempting’.  I thought of that bag of four doughnuts I’d bought the other day.  There was only one left, so I sketched the bag and the doughnut.  One doughnut left?  It’s always a temptation to just eat it.  You know you shouldn’t. You know you should share it, so that’s what I did.  No I didn’t! I ate it!!

Tomorrow Scamp has been asked out for coffee by June. I’ve got more computer stuff to fix. Always got more computer stuff to fix!