A day of two halves – 15 March 2024

Rain in the morning and a bit of sunshine in the afternoon

The morning had light rain to start with but soon that turned to heavy persistent rain. Scamp was out to go to FitSteps, only to return half an hour later because nobody appeared. No teacher, now FitSteppers, nobody. We can only surmise that Kirsty, the teacher, had a hospital appointment to check her wrist was setting well. I’d just started reading the last few chapters in my latest book “To The Dogs” by Louise Welsh, but now it was put to the side.

Lunch was the remaining half of yesterday’s Ginsters pasty, baked in the microwave. That sounds awful, but with a combination of microwaving at ‘warm’ setting and convection heating at 220º is part microwaves, part bakes the pasty. An hour after lunch the rain stopped, but it was still cloudy. Half an hour after that, the sun shone. I’d been processing some of my favourite holiday photos to pass on Alex, but I knew the sensible thing to do was to put my boots and get out while the going was good.

The frogs that had been so busy making babies a couple of days ago seemed to have left en masse. I did find a small group at the far corner of one of the small ponds, but the biggest contingent had gone. I probably missed the big love-in when we were on holiday. It didn’t matter, because I did get some shots during the week, so I didn’t miss it all.

Instead of walking round the pond, I went looking for frogs in some of the tiny wee ponds in the woods, but didn’t find any, nor did I find any frogspawn. What I did find was a couple of sixteen spot orange ladybirds (Halyzia sedecimguttata). They were still hibernating, one tucked under some moss high in a birch tree and the other in a crevice from a broken branch in another birch. I hadn’t seen any earlier in the year, so maybe the recent warmer weather had tempted them out and then the colder weather had sent them back under cover. One of the ladybirds got PoD.

Dinner tonight was an old fashioned home made stir-fry made by Scamp with what we had in the fridge. It was really good. I’d forgotten how good Scamp’s stir-fries were.

Tomorrow we’ll probably be driving to Brookfield for a dance class. No confirmation that the class is on yet, but we’re hopeful.

 

Dancin’ Saturday – 26 August 2023

Driving through the roadworks. Roadworks that will last until the end of September!

We drove over to Brookfield for a reasonably successful dance class, and ignoring the roadworks, it was a pleasant enough drive. Two new members, two girls. One just likes to dance and the other one wore a Fit Steps tee shirt and thought she could do it all. Oh dear, wrong thing to say.

While Jane and Stewart took them aside and explained what we were doing in class, we practised our Joy’s Waltz. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a great improvement on last week. We did actually manage once through the entire routine without a mistake, well, almost without a mistake. Then it went to pieces again as it often, but not always, does! I am improving and when I get things like the Outside Spin right, I can feel that I’m getting it right.

A couple of easy sequence dances to ease the new starts in to this strange old fashioned way of dancing, where everyone does the same moves at the same time. After that we hurtled in to the new Cha-Cha with the terrifying Cross Basic. I don’t know if it is really basic, but it certainly has the ability to make us both cross. For once, Stewart agreed with me about who was moving clockwise and who wasn’t. I’m glad someone agrees with me sometimes. By the end of that part of the lesson, things were making much more sense.

Another sequence dance and then a chance to practise the Quickstep. If there is a great stumbling block in our dances it’s the Quickstep. It really is well named. The steps come at you so quickly it’s almost impossible sometimes to stop and find out where you are in the routine.

All things considered, it was a worthwhile class where we learned a few things and got a chance to practise lots more things in a big dance hall.

We took the M8 – M74 – M73 – M80 route home and stopped at Tesco on the way to pick up lunch. We’d already decided tonight’s dinner was coming from Golden Bowl.

Rain showers all afternoon, but I braved them to take a walk in St Mo’s where PoD was a ladybird hiding under a knapweed flower.

Watched the qualifying for the Dutch GP. Interesting but not as enthralling as the World Athletics Championships, especially the pole vault where the Swedish vaulter Mondo Duplantis cleared an incredible 6.1m.

Tomorrow Scamp is heading to Glasgow for a perfume making class. Thankfully I wasn’t invited!

Torwood and Ladybirds – 29 June 2023

Today we drove to Torwood Garden Centre to find replacements for some of the plants that were lost during the hot weather.

We found a few that Scamp liked but bought only two which weren’t actually replacements, but it was Thursday, so that ticked a box for me! While we were there I picked up a scrap on the offside wing of the blue car. Nothing terrible, but I’ll need to get it fixed with the Smart Repair voucher I got when we bought it.

Back home I wanted to go out in the sunshine while Scamp was gardening and drove up to Fannyside looking for dragonflies. When I got there it was too windy to have a hope of catching them, so instead I went looking for ladybirds and found a compliant one sitting on a lichen covered fence post. It’s a Striped Ladybird, brown rather than the usual red and with stripes (obviously) rather than spots. That became PoD.

Scamp is out with Isobel tomorrow. I’m hoping to draw the blog catchup to a close!

Another hot day – 30 May 2023

Temperatures around 25ºc expected again today.

Scamp was supposed to be going for coffee with June, but she called off this morning with a dodgy stomach. I know how she feels.

That left us with a different shaped day. We did consider going for walk, but decided it was too hot for that today. Instead, Scamp went out to do some weeding and pruning. I was checking the roses and found a sticky residue on one of the buds, in fact, on more than one of them. I suspected aphids and was about to grab the bug killer spray when I noticed a little blob of orange on one of the rose leaves. It was a little sixteen spot ladybird, Halyzia sedecimguttata, orange with white spots. I put away the bug spray. The ladybird will hopefully deal with the aphids and get lunch along the way. Of course I took a fair amount of photos of the little orange killer. One of them got PoD.

We went to Tesco to do some shopping. We also had a fair load of stuff to go on the skips, so we split up. Scamp went to Tesco and I drove over to the skips to dump the old carpet tiles, the broken carpet sweeper and yet more Wii controllers. Hopefully they were the last of the Wii. While I was there I managed to grab a few shots of a Teddybear’s Tea Party.
Back at Tesco we met up just as Scamp was finishing the shopping and drove home to have a roll ’n’ banana for lunch.

In the afternoon, Scamp was going to do some more trimming and I was taking the A7 for a walk and to check out the graffiti on the Luggie because I’d promised Alex a walk there tomorrow. Unfortunately they hadn’t been improved since last time. Then I went for a walk in Fannyside, hoping to get another photo of the caterpillar I saw last week, but there was nothing interesting to be seen. I drove home and had a beer in the garden while Scamp had a Pimms.

Dinner was a Scamp speciality, Potatoes and Cabbage with an addition of fried bacon for me. Then I washed the dishes while Scamp grabbed a few more minutes in the sun in the garden.

Today’s prompt asked for A Guitar. This is my Spanish guitar It’s a fairly old instrument now and is a bit battered and bruised, but it’s had a hard life and still sounds good. It’s nylon strung and therefore it’s a bit easier to fret than a steel strung acoustic guitar.

Tomorrow I’m hoping to meet my brother for a walk around Glasgow and the chance of a coffee and a blether.

Grass Cutting and Water Drops – 24 May 2023

Not me, Scamp was doing the grass cutting today.

I was the hired help who moved the plant pots for the gardener to cut right to the edge of the path. Then once the cutting had been done, I moved them all back again. It wasn’t an onerous task and I’m much rather do the lifting than the cutting.

Today’s prompt was A Water Drop. It seemed such a simple task, but even with a few photos in front of me, I just couldn’t get anything like a drip to grace the paper. After three attempts, I gave up and had a “Piece ’n’ Sausage” for my lunch. I really needed to clear my head of water drops, so I drove up to Fannyside Moor and went for a walk with the A7. I’d two lenses with me. One wide angle and one macro. I reckoned I could use both today and I did. I took a few landscapes with the wide angle, the best of which is on Flickr. It’s a view from my parking place, across the moor to the Campsie on a beautiful spring day. Changed to the macro and caught a little ladybird, a Striped Ladybird to be precise. Red with white spots and stripes. I also saw a strange beetle which Mr Google says is a Two Banded Longhorn Beetl, quite a mouthful, and a host of slow flying Hawthorn Flies.

The best of the wildlife was still to come and it was the PoD. It’s a Drinker Moth Caterpillar, about as long as my middle finger and it was walking along a barbed wire fence. It was walking because these caterpillars have feet, not all do. I remember seeing one before, but I can’t remember where. Will have a look through my records.

Back home Scamp was reading in the garden and I encouraged her to have a glass of wine while I had a beer. Well, it’s ‘hump day’ (the middle of the week) so we were allowed. Scamp made stir-fry for dinner and it was really good, better than mine. After dinner I returned to the painting of the water drop and went back to basics. No fancy backgrounds, just the water drop. It worked, but I’m still not happy with it. Could do better is the expression I’m thinking sums it up.

No real plans for tomorrow. It all depends on the weather.

Saying goodbye to Margie – 20 April 2023

Today we said goodbye to an old friend.

It was a tough morning and I’m not going into details. She was a lovely lady, a singer in Scamp’s Gems singing group. She was also a painter who produced some beautiful artwork in all media types, but her favourites were ballet dancers in the style of Monet. We’ll both miss her greatly. May she rest in peace.

Back home it was a beautiful day, as long as you had shelter from that east wind again. It looks like spring, but it doesn’t feel like it. However, I went for a walk in St Mo’s with a macro lens doing all the work today on the A7. The first thing to do was to check up on the three little orange ladybirds. My first surprise was that three had become one. Where had the other two gone? The answer was waiting a couple of trees away. There had only been one orange ladybird there last week. Now there are three! So have two ladybirds moved from one tree to another or is it just a floating community in the woods? I reckon they are just fed up with me photographing them and are trying to mess with my head.

Not a lot else happened today. Potatoes, bacon and cabbage was dinner for me. Scamp replaced the bacon with more cabbage!
PoD was the new trio of ladybirds, but take a look at the pair of old leaded glass windows I captured on my phone last week in Glasgow.

Remember I was writing about Scamp and I being labourerers the other day?  Well, today Scott’s wife handed in a bunch of roses and a box of chocolates to say thanks for the help!  That was a brightener for the day!

Tomorrow we’re intending doing some planting in the garden.

 

Officially Spring – 1 March 2023

We drove up to Costa at the town centre this morning for coffee with Isobel on the first day of metrological spring.

Unfortunately, half the weans in the town were also there roaring and shouting, crying and screaming and generally being obnoxious. For the second day this week, all the schools in Scotland were closed while their teachers were out protesting. The noise made this the most uncomfortable couple of hours I’ve had although the coffee was good for a change. I just feel sorry for the folk who have to work in that place with that noise all day.

Isobel gave Scamp a bunch of roses, and gave me a bottle of wine as anniversary presents. Then she explained the tortuous details of her side of the family tree while Scamp made notes to send to her cousin in Australia. I’ve never really been interested in genealogy, and seeing the complexity of this family’s family tree ensured that I won’t be delving into ours any time soon. We dropped Isobel off at her house afterwards and did some shopping in Tesco on our way home.

My daily walk in St Mo’s brought a hibernating or perhaps a just hatched sixteen spot orange ladybird as PoD. I now know where at least around ten of these insects can be found. All orange and all with sixteen spots. I did take a couple of photos of some clumps of Cladonia lichen too, but the ladybird was the winner.

Scamp made leek & potato soup for a starter and she had cauliflower, broccoli and potatoes for her main course. I had soup and then steak and kidney stew with potatoes and the left over cauliflower and broccoli. The Instant Pot heated the stew using the slow cooker function. Useful tool.

Watched Landscape Artist of the Year and we both disagreed with the judges decision. Of the three finalists, the winner would have been in last place if they’d asked me to judge.

Tomorrow Scamp would like to go out somewhere different. I’ll sleep with my thinking cap on tonight.

Tesco, Ice Trees and a Trio – 17 January 2023

We went for messages today. Lots of messages.

Scamp was out first, clearing the frost from the windscreen of the Micra. I locked up and then sat in the passenger’s seat for our run up to Tesco on another lovely bright, but cold day. A waltz round the shop, just normal food shopping. So good to be able to walk around without folk barging past to grab stuff off the shelves like they did pre-Christmas. Today was relaxed shopping. Scamp drove us back and we had lunch. It was good being a passenger.

After lunch I had a headache and thought a walk with a camera would ease the pain, so I wrapped up well and walked over to St Mo’s to see if the ladybird was still in its hibernation hideaway. It was, then I noticed there were three more on a nearby tree. A trio of ladybirds of different sizes tucked under a lump in the tree. This time I’d come prepared. I screwed the camera onto the Gorilla Pod I’d brought along for taking low down shots of Cladonia and pressed two of its legs on to the tree trunk just below the trio. That allowed me to angle the camera to get quite close to the ladybirds and get a few shake-free shots. The ladybirds were about two metres above ground level, so hand holding the camera would almost certainly have induces camera shake.

I didn’t find any Cladonia today, but the wee pond gave me the opportunity to do my ‘Camera On Ice’ trick and get some low level shots by resting the camera on the ice (once I’d tested its thickness) and pressing the shutter. It gives a totally different perspective on the pond. Lots of little bundles of ice crystals growing round the rushes that protruded from the pond like little frozen trees. By that time, the sun was beginning to set, so I walked back to the path by the shortest route to get a few landscape shots before the orange ball of the sun dipped behind the trees.

When I got home, the delicious smell of mince cooking reminded me that tonight was going to be Mince, Potatoes and Cabbage. Just the food you need on a cold winter’s day. Before that, though, I had a cup of hot chocolate and discovered that my headache was gone.

So, tonight’s dinner was indeed Mince, Tatties and Cabbage for me and Bubble ’n’ Squeak for Scamp. Basically the same as mine but without the mince.

Tomorrow doesn’t look as clear as today and there’s snow on the forecast for tonight. What we do tomorrow depends on the weather.

Busy day – 13 January 2023

It could have been retitled “Relentless”, but I did steal an hour to find and photograph an old friend and have a walk in the bog that is St Mo’s just now.

It was a lovely bright morning and after coffee this morning I got to work and made a batch of dough for the Tear ’n’ Share to go with the tomato soup. Meanwhile Scamp was out dancing with the FitSteppers. While the dough was rising I went out for a walk in St Mo’s and got today’s PoD which was a wee orange ladybird with sixteen white spots, hibernating in a crevice in an ash tree. It was a Halyzia sedecimguttata and I’d seen it last year in the same tree, you know the one. It’s just to the right of the tree with the stick in it. You can’t miss it.

When I got back the bread was ready to be shaped into twelve balls that would squash together to make the tear ’n’ share. Scamp had been just in front of me and after lunch she walked down to the shops to get lots of stuff for the dinner. When she got back I realised I’d forgotten to tell her to get mozzarella cheese for the bread. Also the broccoli she’d brought turned out to be a bit dodgy with great purple streaks running through most of the florets, so I drove down to Tesco to get the cheese and broccoli. What exciting lives we lead.

Long story short, the dinner tonight was Tomato Soup for a starter, Chicken Milanese with (non-dodgy) Broccoli and potatoes for the main and Dutch Apple Cake for a dessert. The soup and the Tear ’n’ Share was obviously the start of the show with the rest just filling in time! ?.

We both had a really good catch up with John and Marion. It had been a long, long time since we’ve met up. Let’s hope it’s not so long until the next one.

Tomorrow it’s the first dance class or about a month and we’re both looking forward to it.

Painting – 9 July 2022

No artistry involved, just a tin of paint a brush and disposable gloves. That kind of painting!

After sitting around doing nothing this beautiful morning, waiting to see if Scamp wanted to go anywhere in particular, but knowing in my heart of hearts that she didn’t want to be stuck in a traffic jam, going to and/or coming back from the seaside, I doubted it. I was right. She decided this was the day to cut the grass in the back garden. Really sensible decision because it had been dry for a few days and therefore the grass would be easier (not easy, easier the difference is important) to cut.

I felt bad that she was doing work in the garden while I was playing Angry Birds on my phone. I’d already sanded down the door to the bin shed, so today I sanded off the remainder of the scabby paint and changed my long trousers for a pair of shorts. Then took my tin of exterior gloss, a brush and a pair of disposable gloves and went out to paint the door, or at least to give it its first coat. As it happened, with a Florence and the Machine in my headphones, I quite enjoyed the morning slapping paint onto the door. It’s the same colour of paint that was on before. It’s good stuff, but the sun had crazed the old paint and the rain was getting in to the wood. It really needed don and it really needed two coats. The first coat took half a double album and I was thinking as I was cleaning up, what a boon disposable gloves are! The few spots of paint I had on my hands were easily removed with Swarfega.

By the time I was finished, Scamp was finished too and it was lunch time. After that and after some discussion about dinner tonight, we settled on a quiche. We’d some smoked salmon that needed using up. A broccoli and smoked salmon quiche sounded good. That meant we needed some broccoli, cream and probably some frozen shortcrust pastry. That meant a walk to the shops, which suited us both. It really was a beautiful day with just enough breeze to cool us down without blowing us away as it almost did earlier in the week. As it happened, we had to go to three different shops to get all the ingredients (and some beer). On the way back a cheery wee man offered us ice lollies out of the box he’d just bought. Scamp eventually gave in to his offers and took an ice cream ice lolly we used to call a “Mivvi”. I felt it was unfair for us to take the poor bloke’s lollies and thanked him, but said no thanks. Just a nice wee man. Afterwards as Scamp was eating her lolly I wished I HAD taken him up on his offer!

With our work done and the frozen shortcrust pastry defrosting in the kitchen, we sat in the garden and enjoyed the sun. I got tired of reading after a while and went for a walk around the garden taking photos. I’d got one or two of a ladybird this morning before I started the painting, but I wanted more. Then I remembered I’d wanted to take some photos with an old Zenit 58mm lens which apparently gave excellent ‘Bokeh’ (out of focus blobs which delight photogs.). I soon had the lens cleaned and working and sure enough, it did create some strange effects. A photo of a little lupin flower with a strong bokeh background got PoD.

It didn’t look as if the shortcrust pastry was going to be ready today, or even this century at the rate it was defrosting, so we revised our plans and instead we had Fish Fingers, Egg and Spaghetti with some fried Potatoes. It’s a store cupboard stand by when nobody can think of anything else to have. A family staple. It was perfect for today. Maybe quiche tomorrow. More reading and sunbathing later, but eventually it got a bit cool and we had go adjourn to the house.

Tomorrow looks much like today according to the weather fairies, so I may give the door a quick sand down and then put on another coat of that paint, or we may go for a walk somewhere. We’ll see how we feel in the morning.