Category: landscape

Cold and Frosty – 6 December 2020

Posted on by Zogman

It was really quite frosty this morning with still a little bit of snow on the hills. Cold.

It didn’t look like there was going to be much walking done today with icy paths and roads. Scamp didn’t fancy going out at all and spent most of the day Christmassing the house even more. I must admit it does feel festive now. Not something I’d have considered in a ‘normal’ year, but this hasn’t been a normal year by any measure.

After lunch I took the cameras, two of them, out to St Mo’s in search of the elusive ladybirds. Only one today and that was burrowed into a crevice in the tree on the shadow side, so even the Oly had a hard time focusing on it and with the shutter speed of 1/8th sec, I wasn’t going to get anything worthwhile, so I gave up and went looking for a landscapes shot. Finally found what I was looking for with an early sunset sky reflecting on the wee pond on the edge of the woods. There was just the hint of mist forming and I knew if I waited a while that mist would thicken up and it did. I took a few shots and then decided it was time to head home, because the sun was indeed setting.

As usual it took a few minutes to frame and grab the shot and an hour or so to convert it into something I was satisfied with. I managed to beef up the mist and then added a few bits of extra frost to the grass in the foreground. ‘Cheating’, Scamp calls it. I say it’s just emphasising what’s already there.

Spoke to JIC in the evening and wished him well in the final part of his Cranfield course. Heard that they were having similar weather to us with mist and fog and cold. No snow though!

Watched an interesting if slightly confused F1 GP. Felt sorry for George Russell trying to do his best with a completely disorganised Mercedes pit crew. I think they must have got them from Rent-A-Numpty. Two disastrous tyre changes robbed him of a win. Bottas on the other hand robbed himself.

Hoping for a better day tomorrow.

F is for Fog – 3 December 2020

Posted on by Zogman

It rolled in on silent wheels today.

When we were having breakfast the snow was crisp and even. The hills were clear and there was just the hint of sun. Within an hour the hills had disappeared, as had the sun. Then the fog drifted down and the snow was turning into slush. I decided to go out and get an early(ish) moody photo in the fog. I waited on the path to St Mo’s to let a girl get past, because the slush was starting to freeze. It also gave me time to frame her into the shot you see here. I didn’t realise then, but that was to be PoD. By the time I’d walked into St Mo’s, the fog was lifting and the temperature was dropping. Scotland, the weather here just can’t stand still, it needs to be constantly changing.

Got another shot in the thinning fog of an old tree in the park with the faded forest in the background. Very moody and etherial. You can see it in Flickr. I wanted to get a shot of the ladybirds I’d seen yesterday (and also on the 3rd of December 2017 – how neat is that!). However, the light was a bit low and the snow was melting on the branches of the trees and it was just too uncomfortable. I got half a dozen shots and decided enough was enough. My feet were wet, my hands were freezing and I was going home. I got a few more icy and snowy shots before I stumbled home.

Scamp wanted some stuff in Tesco and we didn’t have a delivery booked until the 17th, so we decided to do it the old fashioned way and go to the shop. Beside which, Scamp wanted a look around, because sometimes you see things (too many things sometimes) that you’d forgotten to put on your list. So, we drove to Tesco. It’s the first time Blue has been out in the snow and it seemed to perform well. Not a hint of slipping and sliding. There were fairly long queues for the checkouts as we’d thought there might be. We had just reached the front of our queue when this woman appeared and seemed to want to sneak in front of us. Not that’s a red rag to a bull.

“Eh. Excuse me, there’s a queue.”
She looked nonplussed and said “I’ve been waiting here for a while. My husband has been keeping my place.”
“So have I” I said, “And I’ve been waiting IN THE QUEUE.” (the poor bloke hadn’t been in the queue)
She still wouldn’t give in, so I said quite loudly “SO, ARE YOU JUST GOING TO SHOVE IN THEN?” Loud enough that everyone nearby could hear.
At that she harrumphed and said “Well, if you’re going to be like that …” and walked down the aisle to the self service checkouts dragging her husband on his lead. Poor man. He’ll suffer for that later.

Back home we got our first Christmas cards of the year and got the decorations out of the loft. We also changed the upstairs and downstairs curtains. Tomorrow we are hoping to put the tree up. After that, I’m sure we’ll feel a lot better.

Tonight I painted the landscape that was in my head for yesterday. I really didn’t like the sketch of the tin of lager. The lager is good, but the drawing wasn’t up to standard. Tonight’s landscape, although one of my standards was much more satisfying to paint and also looked better than the tin.

Since I’ve now found a way to extract the data from the old NAS disk, I’m going to make a fresh start with a new NAS. Ordered it from Amazon tonight and it’s not a WD My Cloud. It’s a Synology DS220j. The WD worked quite well for the three or four years I had it, but it was erratic. Let’s hope this one is better.

It looks like more snow is forecast for early tomorrow morning and it’s -0.6º just now, so I doubt if we’ll be going far.

Cold and Bright – 30 November 2020

Posted on by Zogman

Cloudy and dull to start the day, but later the sky cleared.

Scamp was off to Tesco in the morning, leaving me to start my tidying of my half of the living room. It might not look like it, but it is tidier now than when I started. I was also tasked with some internet research that I cannot divulge as yet. Suffice to say it was successful, I hope. When Scamp returned, there was much rustling of paper and a box was packed. With that done it was my turn to do my part in this project and I had the experience of walking through a town centre with almost every shop closed. While a pre-recorded message was telling anyone who wanted to listen that “The Antonine Centre has all your favourite shops under one roof.” Yes, there are still a few shops in the centre, it’s just that none of them are open! I did my posting and the box changed hands.

By the time I came out the clouds had lifted and I was walking under a blue sky. I did think about going for a drive to take some photos, but decided that lunch would be a better option, so I drove home.

After lunch Scamp wanted to do some gardening and I wanted to take some photos. We decided on a fair division of labour. She did the gardening I did the photography. Couldn’t get any decent photos today. The light was good and the sky was still blue, but things just weren’t working out until I was headed home and saw today’s PoD in front of me. I took three shots of it and this is the only one that was in focus. That didn’t matter to me, I had a PoD.

<Technospeak>
In the evening I got a FB message from Colin (Not Colin C, but Colin B) with a suggestion for a way to get the data off the NAS drive. Basically he had connected his NAS drive to a Raspberry Pi which runs on a subset of Linux and then copied the files from there to a removable drive. Now that would be a lot easier than my idea of dual booting the MBP and doing it that way. I’m thinking it might just work. Thank you Colin, because I know you read this.
</Technospeak>

Today’s Sketch of the Day is “J” for Jelly Beans, traditional jelly beans. Lovely soft, shiny outer sugar shell with the jelly inside. And the colours, oh the colours! What’s not to like?
One of our favourite local Thai/Chinese restaurants, The Cotton House at Longcroft, presents you with a little cardboard tub of these with your bill. Certainly sweetens the paying part!

Tomorrow I must be up early to drive up to the doc’s to get my shingles jag! I don’t like jags, so I hope I get a sweetie for going, or at least a gold star!

Out for a walk – 25 November 2020

Posted on by Zogman

Lovely sunny morning. Too good to waste. Off to walk the canal

Drove to Auchinstarry and walked along the canal passing some folk and avoiding the cyclists. Beautiful light, but low lying cloud on the Campsies to the north. There was very little wind and so the reflections of the trees were almost mirror perfect. Took a fair amount of photos. Even found a bunch of Ragwort looking bright and cheerfully yellow beside the canal and a cow parsley plant still in bloom. Scamp found a wee bunch of white flowers whose name escapes me growing at the side of the path. I’m guessing the vegetation is well sheltered by Bar Hill and the trees that overgrow the canal itself. We had to walk back by the same path from Twechar because our alternative route back by the old railway is still being upgraded. Thankfully fewer cyclists on the way back and only a few joggers. The good light was disappearing too as the clouds merged together.

Back home and after lunch we spoke to Hazy for half an hour and caught up on what’s happening down south. Like JIC she agreed that it’s pretty much life as usual, just a bit duller. We discussed books and she and her mum discussed clothes. It was good to speak to her.

The sun had disappeared when we returned from our walk, but later it started to show its face again, so I put my boots on and went out to investigate the photo opportunities of St Mo’s. They were few and far between and then my camera ran out of film, digital film and I had no spare card, so I had to come home to find I’d missed a call from Val. Scamp was heading off to the shops and I spent a pleasant hour on the phone to Mr Rinaldi, my go-to guru for all things computer. I was intrigued to find that his WD Mycloud NAS had died recently too. I think that settles it. I won’t be throwing any more good money at Western Digital.

Dinner was a delicious plate of Fish Fingers, Egg and Spaghetti. An absolute favourite in the house. Just tasty welcoming food. I had intended to sketch the egg shells for today’s sketch, but it wasn’t happening and I needed to get the PoD into Flickr. A view of the canal from Auchinstarry achieved that little bit of fame. I also needed, still do, to get the blog written and posted. So if you’ll excuse me, I’ll end there and get that done.

If the weather is fine tomorrow we’re going out for a walk. If not we’re not.

In better tid today – 21 November 2020

Posted on by Zogman

I learned the word ‘Tid’ when we were down in Newton Stewart. It sort of mean ‘state’ and I’ve only heard it in a positive setting.

So, today my head was in a better place, that’s what I was saying. Number one, I had a good sleep and a long one too. Woke fairly refreshed. Secondly, the problem with the NAS drive had resolved itself. Yesterday after the electrician plugged in the hub for the Hive, my NAS changed its IP address and nothing I did would get it back again. Today, I think, the OS had taken a long hard look and consulted its DNS spreadsheet and discovered the new address for the NAS (I apologise if that’s too many UPPER case abbreviations, JIC). Whatever happened, the NAS was online again.

A possible third reason was that our Hive controlled lightbulb arrived and we could play with it. Scamp was the first one to get it installed on her phone, but couldn’t quite remember how she did it. Then my phone registered it too. We had some fun switching it on and off, brightening it and dulling it, and then it was lunch time. Simple things and simple minds!

After lunch I chose to go out for a walk and a rainstorm was just waiting for me to walk about half a mile before dumping on me. I walked to the butchers and waited in the queue which went down quite quickly until some dimwit wanted a whole lamb rack French dressed, and then said she wanted them cut into individual chops. All the while she was chatting up the butcher. Eventually the women who work in the shop could see their wet customers considering leaving and decided they could allow two people in the shop as long as they were socially distant. When the dimwit entered the shop there were two of us waiting outside, when I left there were about nine wet, disgruntled shoppers. Some people just don’t care about others.

Came back home via St Mo’s and as the weather had brightened up considerably, I got some photos in the sunshine for a change. My favourite, and PoD was the tree.

I wasn’t long home when my parcel arrived from Amazon with its autofocus adapter to allow some of my old Nikon lenses to work seamlessly with the Sony A7. I was pleasantly surprised to find that two out of three worked completely. One didn’t quite cover all the bases, but enough to make it a worthwhile investment.

Nick the Chick (no, I wouldn’t risk calling her that to her face!) put a large swathe of Scotland into Level 4 on Friday, yesterday. Unluckily for me, I’m in Level 4 of the Scottish Covid prevention scheme. It’s not total lockdown, but it’s fairly close to it. With that in mind I decided I’d start sketching again. Initially it will be alphabetical subjects.
Today it starts with ‘A’ is for Apple.

Tomorrow may be a case of sunshine and showers, but we can survive that. We may go for a walk.

Leaves, Friends and Glenmorangie – 16 November 2020

Posted on by Zogman

Too many of our days are spoilt by reading in bed.

Today the light was good, so after breakfast I got up, dressed and took my camera out for a walk. Yesterday, on the way back from our walk I saw a little clearing in the woods beside Broadwood Loch, covered with golden brown sycamore leaves. That was my target for today. When I got there the clouds had already rolled in and it didn’t look as if I was going to get a chance to take the photo. But I was there with a camera and I wasn’t going home until I had at least one shot in the bag, and this time it would be in focus. I got quite a few shots looking in both east and west directions. I walked round the boardwalk after that took a few shots of the padlocks rusting together on the square link fence. No great sky, no directional light. I don’t know if there would really have been any because at about 9.30am the sun wouldn’t have risen much and the area I was in would have been in shadow anyway. That was about it for photography. I really need to put that little battery powered light in my bag to give me some portable directional light.

Back home the shots looked ok. Not great, just ok. The main problem apart from a lack of shadows was the white sky behind the trees. Luminar 4 is a great bit of software for adding interesting skies to bland landscapes and it came to the rescue with today’s PoD.

Time to get ready for lunch. Today we were booked for lunch with Crawford and Nancy at The Cotton House in Longcroft. Lovely lunch and a great laugh with the other pair. My Salt and Chilli Chicken with noodles is fast becoming my go-to standard for Chinese / Thai food. Scamp has gone back to the old favourite of Chicken Chow Mein.

When we came out, Nancy had a Christmas parcel for Scamp (a bit early, but who’s counting) and Crawford presented me with a bottle of Glenmorangie as a belated birthday prezzy. I was flabbergasted. I totally hadn’t expected that. We did elbow bumps and left for our respective homes.

The weather was closing in as we neared Cumbersheugh so we waited a while before walking down to the shops for staples which this time included iced buns, chocolate and pancakes. Only the iced buns and the pancakes have been sampled, the chocolate is hiding in the fridge.

The golden leaves and the subtly added sky finished off the PoD and I was happy with it. Must try out PhotoPills on the iPhone to find out if I can indeed get light onto those trees on Thursday, because tomorrow and Wednesday are definitely out with heavy rain both days.

Doesn’t look like we’ll be going far tomorrow.

Mountaineers – 12 November 2020

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Well, that’s how we felt today.

It was such a beautiful morning, it seemed a shame to waste it just sitting around. I suggested we climb Bar Hill. We had completed the Croy Hill ascent last month and it seemed like a good use of the clear, dry weather.

We parked at The Hebo House and walked up the hill towards Croy, crossed the road and started on the path to Bar Hill. Through two gates and when the road curved to the left we went right, following the John Muir Trail arrows. They took us along a wide grassy area between banks of trees, gently climbing, but we could see ahead of us the climb growing steadily steeper. It was also a lot soggier underfoot and pure mud in places. Scamp wasn’t sure about this part at all, but we found a way through it. We’d brought our walking poles and they helped a lot, giving the security to plant our feet firmly, knowing that the poles would support us.

Once we were past the boggy area, the slope got a lot steeper. I was pretty sure the view from the top would be worth the climb and I was right. Well, I thought it was worth the climb anyway. Scamp was more worried about getting back down, but I didn’t intend to retrace our steps. I was almost sure we could take a gentler way down. That last climb took us to an Iron Age fort of which nothing really remains. There is a trig point and we stopped to take some photos. A hundred yards further on was the ruins of the Roman fort, and then I realised that the gulley that we had kept on our right hand side on the climb was actually the ditch that had contained the earth used to build the ramparts that protected the wall itself.

We walked round the ruins for a while noting what went where and wondering how they managed to dig a well deep enough to find water on the top of a hill. I suppose it’s all to do with water tables and stuff. I vaguely remember being taught about it in geography in school, and that was only a couple of years after the Romans left. Then we headed back down by the “easy” military route which is probably the way the Romans with their horses pulling carts of provisions. It was still fairly steep, but there were ruts cut perpendicular to the direction of the path and these would help with traction, but it must have been slow progress from the level of the valley up to the fort. The ice cream would probably have melted by the time they got to the top.

Just because we could, we took a new path back to the car. Bits of it reminds me of the second day at Cautley Spout in Yorkshire where we were walking on what seemed like a stream bed. This was similar in places with water running off the fields on our left and then being channeled down the path and not across it. It looked treacherous, but was actually quite easy. “Quite easy” because we had walking poles to give us support again. Back at the car we booked a table for lunch tomorrow at The Hebo House. A review will hopefully be posted in due course.

Apart from a quick visit to Tesco for messages that was the excitement over for the day. On the way down the hill the clouds had been gathering and the sunshine less often breaking through. By the time we got home it was gathering gloom and by about four o’ clock it was getting dark.

PoD turned out to be a shot looking down the hill we’d struggled up. In the pic it looks like the fairway of a golf course, but you can see where the ditch is and where the earth has been piled up to form the ramparts.

It was a good idea to go out in the morning. We had the best of the day.

Tomorrow, hopefully we’ll be going for lunch to The Hebo House.

A dull day in the morning – 5 November 2020

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Blue sky looking out the front window but really black at the back.

We decided to wait it out and see if the blue sky or the black clouds would win. Eventually the blues did win the day, but it was lunchtime by then and we stopped our cloudgazing to have a Bruschetta each for lunch. Sounds very posh, but the bread was going stale but would make good toast and the wee tomatoes were just past their sell-by date. A good way to use them up. Full marks to Scamp.

After lunch Scamp decided to make a chicken curry for dinner in the slow cooker and headed off to the shops to get a couple of chicken legs. I gathered my camera gear together and took a walk over to St Mo’s. Today I was mixing my cameras. I had my Oly with a macro lens and the Sony with the kit lens. I was fairly sure the Sony would produce the best landscape shot, and I wasn’t wrong. But I was equally sure the Oly would produce the best macro and again I backed the right horse. In fact, the Oly won the day with PoD going to a conifer trunk with a pattern looking like the flatworms from MC Escher’s lithographs. Google “Escher Flatworms” to see what I mean. I think the tree was a Larch because it was starting to shed its needles.

Back home the chicken curry was beginning to scent the air in the living room, because the great thing about slow cookers is they’re portable. You can plug them in anywhere there’s a power socket and they’ll do their job as well as sitting on the kitchen counter.

For a while we watched the antics of a couple of 70-somethings arguing about who won and I thought: Would I really want either of them to run my country? Boris is a bumbler, but these two are zoomers.

Tonight was Guy Fawkes Night, but since he was a bit of a terrorist and it’s not the done thing to glorify terrorists, the celebration has been renamed Bonfire Night.  That’s what we used to call it anyway, so it’s obviously the right name.  Although we didn’t have an official fireworks display this year, or maybe because we didn’t, there were loads of rockets flying through the air and explosions all around us.  Certainly one of the noisiest Bonfire Nights for many years.

Tomorrow we go out for lunch, but still stay within the boundaries of North Lanarkshire.

The Chicken Curry? Of course it was beautiful. Tasted as good as it smelled!

A busy day – 3 November 2020

Posted on by Zogman

The Gas Man was coming today, but we weren’t sure when, exactly.

So we did what we usually do in a situation like this:

  • We got up early
  • We emptied the boiler cupboard
  • We waited
  • And waited
  • We gave up!

I went upstairs and started building the bookcase we’d got yesterday. It would never hold books, but would make a decent sized small cupboard to relieve give us some floor space in the ‘wee bedroom’. It was much easier to build than it looked and will probably hold enough stuff to make it a worthwhile investment. Scamp seems happy with it and that’s what counts.

After lunch we got the call to say the man was on his way and he arrive about 20 minutes later. We got the usual warning that the boiler was running about 80% efficiency and there was a problem getting replacement parts. We’d been expecting that and we agreed to an online discussion of a replacement. He had a problem getting connected, but we have that too. It’s one of the annoyances when you live in the valley between phone masts. We’re not sure now his message to his HQ went through. Unfortunately we can’t access the British Gas website since we got our new superfast modem. We always get a DNS error now. Since we can connect perfectly well from our phone using our feeble 4G signal, the problem would appear to be with Virgin. I spent over an hour tonight trying to find a way to speak to someone there, on live chat or by landline, but they seem to have dropped the portcullis, raised the drawbridge and blamed Covid. I wonder how many other businesses will claim that same excuse.

We went out for a walk after the man had gone. It was still a lovely day although it seems to be getting colder now.  We walked down round Broadwood Stadium and along the boardwalk beside the loch. That’s where today’s PoD came from. It’s one of the pylons that circle the loch, looking like one of the Martian war machines from War of the Worlds with its deadly Heat Ray. On the way back I went for an extra circuit of St Mo’s and Scamp headed for home but bumped into Chris’s mum, Carolyn. They hadn’t seen each other for years and I was glad I’d chosen the St Mo’s circuit otherwise I’d have felt like the (actual) odd man out. Back home I’d left some stew on the slow cooker, but it turned out really tough. We’re not sure why. It might be the meat itself or maybe it wasn’t cooked for long enough or the temperature was too low. It’s had another four hours tonight, so I’d imagine it will be well cooked for tomorrow’s lunch.

Not sure what we’re doing tomorrow. We might make a big break for freedom and go in to Glasgow or we may be like little good mice and do what our mistress tells us. (Aye Right!!)

More junk goes – 2 November 2020

Posted on by Zogman

Even more junk will arrive to fill its place, that’s inevitable, of course.

The junk in question was my Linx 12×64 laptop(ish) computer. The (ish) refers to the fact that it won’t sit comfortably on your lap, because it takes up a fairly large footprint with its kick down stand extended. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but like all ‘good ideas’ there were drawbacks. It was fairly light with a decent sized screen. It wasn’t fast, but I knew that at the time. It could run from an emergency phone charger battery quite happily. The killer was that it was Windows 10 and constantly wanted to ”Get you going again” only it didn’t. The downloads nearly always failed for some unexplained reason and with every successful download it got slower and slower. I finally decided it had to go and today was the day. Scamp was out having coffee with her sister in the morning, so I’d plenty of time to get it organised. I did my final check to make sure the battery was 100% and that it would charge if needed, polished the screen, swept the crumbs out of the keyboard (terrible keyboard) then packed it in its box, ready to go.

It was still looking good outside when I was finished, so I grabbed the camera and headed off to see how much water was in St Mo’s pond. The answer was really quite a lot of water. In fact, all the weeds and assorted rubbish in the pond had blocked the outlet and the pond was overflowing onto the path and cascading down the other side into the gulley that takes it out to somewhere else. I have no idea where. Didn’t get many photos because the trees were looking a bit bare after the buffeting they’ve had from our recent gales. I did try a few landscapes, but I wasn’t impressed with the look through the viewfinder.

Back home, Scamp had arrived just before me and we had lunch. My first look at the photos on the computer confirmed my suspicions that quite a lot of work would be needed to find anything worthwhile there. Took the Linx up to CEX which are the easiest company to deal with for small electrical and electronic gadgets. The next best, I’ve found, are the workers at the council skips, but CEX give you a few quid more for your unwanted electronic junk, and there’s not such a big queue. Left the Linx to be checked and GS23’d and came home to close down Inktober 2020 on Flickr. It hasn’t been such an easy job being admin for the group this year. Too many punters seem to think that slapping some coloured ink on a page is drawing/sketching. It’s not, it’s just being a poser and if you keep doing it, I will remove your ‘artwork’. That’s what happened to an irate Italian bloke last night who seemed to think that he could unload his entire back catalog into my Inktober site. He got barred.

With Inktober sorted, Scamp and I turned our attention to additional storage space needed in the front bedroom. I suggested we get another bookcase and create an organised shelf system. That seemed to meet with her approval.

Back up at CEX the nice lady handed over the readies and I took some of them round to B&M where I exchanged them for a cheap chipboard bookcase. Strangely I met Emma, an FP (Former Pupil). I’d been reading last year’s blog the other night and had written about meeting her in the Beech Tree restaurant a year ago last week. She was one of my nicer FPs. I stopped on the way home when I saw what might just be a decent sunset forming. It got a few shots, and that’s what you see here. Sunset over the Pylons! Scamp approved the purchase of the bookcase. We’ll build it tomorrow.

Watched and interesting video on YouTube tonight that showed how to adjust lens adapters. The first one I bought was very loose. I fixed it tonight after watching the video. Very happy with it now. I’ll be able to use my Nikon lenses on the new camera until I save up enough pennies to buy Sony ones.

Tomorrow the Gas Man is booked to do the maintenance on the boiler. We know he’ll probably try to encourage us to get a new one. We may just let him make an appointment for us. Don’t know how that will work with Covid restrictions. We are now in Tier 3 of the Scottish system. England go into full lockdown later in the week for a month. Wales are just coming out of a ‘Circuit Breaker’. It’s complicated!