Category: landscape

I saw blue sky! – 18 December 2023

Posted on by Zogman

We drove up to Costa today to have coffee with Isobel.

We spent an hour in a cold barn of a place with a really high ceiling that means any hot air collects under the manky glass roof and doesn’t warm those seated below it. Although, I think the air con was blowing cool air around us. We sat in this dismal place for an hour. Isobel eventually put her coat on. An hour was enough in the cooler and we parted to go our separate ways.

Scamp and I were going to Tesco to get a trolley load of messages which tested the suspension of the blue car. It was just a Monday morning shopping expedition with little to differentiate it from any other Monday, except, the sun was breaking through and a big triangular chunk of blue sky was in evidence! Miracles do happen, even in Cumbersheugh.

We drove home and unpacked the bags and then stashed them in cupboards, fridge and freezer until the bags were empty. Scamp was going to have lunch, but I wasn’t going to let the blue sky and sun get away lightly. I changed into boots and drove down to Auchinstarry to get some real outside photos.

A couple of landscapes were first on the list, taken on a walk along the canal towpath, then as I was crossing into the Plantation, the light was just scraping down the side of the Campsie Fells. Just as I took the shot a deer ran across the path and into my field of view, except that the fraction of a second it takes for the shutter to fire allowed the deer to get into the trees. All I saw on the shot was the white of its tail. Never mind, it was the landscape I was photographing this time, not the wildlife.

I crossed the River Kelvin on the bridge and turned right to head back to the car park and found PoD. It’s a snail complete with shell, paddling across the waterlogged path that used to be a mineral railway line taking coal to Glasgow. A nice low angle and a slow moving subject gave me ideal image for the PoD.

Drove home after visiting Lidl in Kilsyth and wishing I’d walked through the wee park where a bloke told me he’d seen a kingfisher about a month ago, but the light was failing by then and I had to leave the kingfisher for another day. I drove home and had a late lunch of a piece ’n’ cold meat.

Dinner tonight was more of yesterday’s Carrot & Lentil Curry. It had matured since yesterday. Not as sweet and with some extra garam masala, it was a bit spicier.

Watched the final part of Portrait Artist of the Year 2023 where the winning artist painted Dr Dame Jane Morris Goodall DBE for the National Portrait Gallery. It was so good to see a portrait that ended up looking like the sitter for a change.

Tomorrow a bloke is coming to service the boiler and I’m hoping to meet Alex for a photo walk.

The yellow brick road – 20 November 2023

Posted on by Zogman

No Scarecrow. No Tin Man. No Cowardly Lion.

The yellow brick road is what we used to call IKEA when you had to follow the yellow arrows round the store. Now it’s arrows projected on the floor from above and not even yellow ones. Not nearly as much fun.

We were looking for a rug for the kitchen, a hanger for holding socks and pants on the whirly and maybe a replacement light for my room. What we came home with was:

  • Two boxes of sealable plastic bags, the ones IKEA do so well.
  • Half a dozen new dinner plates.
  • The hanger for the socks and pants.
  • A portable phone charger.
  • A toilet brush.
  • Three rolls of Christmas wrapping paper.
  • A bag of IKEA Swedish meatballs.
  • A box of alphabet biscuits.
  • The light for my room (but no bulb).

No rug because we couldn’t quite agree on which one we liked best. Quite a restrained set of purchases though, even if I say so myself.

Earlier in the morning we’d been to B&Q because their websites said they had two CO2 monitors in stock. They lied. Eventually got them in Screwfix for less than B&Q wanted for them, even if they had them.

Drove home via Costa in Robroyston for a cup of coffee and a bite to eat. Then continued on to Muirhead where I got today’s PoD which is a view over to the Campsie Fells with a lovely bit of golden sunshine lighting up the edge of the hills. The most amazing thing about it is that bit of sunshine is real! Not faked in Photoshop or ON1, although I admit there was some post-processing done on other parts of the picture, but that slice of golden light was real!

Dinner tonight for the first time in ages was pasta. My speciality, What’s In The Fridge pasta. Just using up odds and ends I found in the fridge.

<Technospeak>
One thing that’s been bugging me and I couldn’t solve was to create and install an SPF script into my email system. SPF is nothing to do with sun cream! Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is used to authenticate the sender of an email. I’ve struggled to complete the complex script that need to go deep into the email system to verify that an email I’ve sent to someone’s Gmail address is genuine and comes from me. Today I found a way to get that script written for me by the email system itself!
For my Webmonkey:
The answer was there all the time in Cpanel, and it was all done in less than a minute. I can now send emails to half the world without it bouncing back to me! I realise that now I’ve said that, the first email I send tomorrow will, indeed bounce! That’s just the way computers trip you up, isn’t it!
</Technospeak>

No plans for tomorrow, but the temperature is due to drop to near zero tonight! Brrr.

Soil – 25 September 2023

Posted on by Zogman

We were meeting Isobel for a coffee and a long blether this morning.

We drove up to the town centre and found Isobel halfway through her latte. I imagine it would have been cold by then. She seems to like cold milky coffee. I can think of few things more disgusting than that, although cold milky tea must come close. My Cortado seemed to interest her, but as she said, it hardly even a mouthful. We sat and talked for over an hour and found out that her son had delivered a bag of topsoil for her. Scamp has been looking for topsoil to pack round her roses to give the roots more of a grip in their pots. After interrogating Isobel we discovered that the soil came from Dobbies in Stirling and was reasonably priced. So reasonable that she had decided to get her son to buy another bag for her. Scamp was telling her that she was needing some and we might just go to Stirling to get a bag or two. Then I said to Isobel, “why don’t you come along for the run” and she agreed.

So it was that we drove to Stirling. lifted three bags of topsoil into a trolley, paid and left. Isobel’s quip that “It’s the shortest time I’ve been in a garden centre in my life.” was true. They hadn’t been in that plant paradise for more than fifteen minutes! While they were in looking for the topsoil I had been taking photos of the Wallace Monument and the Ochil Hills through a two meter wire fence. A bit clumsy, but the photos worked. Half a dozen shots in the bag.

We drove home and the wee blue car was struggling on the hills going home. Three full 25litre bags of damp soil and three folk too, plus a heavy camera bag and a zimmer. That was straining its three cylinders to the max, but at least were keeping most thing in threes!

We stopped in the village and used Isobel’s zimmer to transport her bag of soil up the path to her house. Then we drove back home for lunch which today was pizza.

After lunch Scamp got her tools out and started filling the rose pots with the soil. It looked like good quality stuff with maybe more than its fair share of sand mixed with the soil, but it hadn’t been very expensive, so we didn’t mind. I did consider taking a walk in St Mo’s, but when I checked the clock, it was almost dinner time and as it was Monday I was pasta chef today. A sort of cross between Penne Arrabiata and Amatriciana. It tasted fine anyway.

A quick Wednesday Waltz practise tonight and I do believe we are beginning to lick this dance into shape, but whisper it, because I don’t want it to hear!

After a bit of photoshopping and some jiggery pokery I declared one of today’s shots to be the PoD.

We have no plans for tomorrow.

Heading North – 30 August 2023

Posted on by Zogman

Both of us heading north, just not together

Scamp was going to Pitlochry with the rest of the witches on the bus and I was driving to Perth to get coffee, tea, lunch and Coltsfoot Rock. The only place I know I can get the rock is in a wee herbalist shop in Perth.

It was a fairly pleasant run up until I reached the roadworks. The works have been advertised for sometime, but were describes as being at Broxden. I assumed they were at Broxden roundabout. Not so, they were for a long stretch of the road before the roundabout and in actual fact, the roundabout was clear of any an all works. It was a 30mph speed limit on the single carriage way through the roadworks and the person in front, whoever they were was holding exactly to the speed limit. I’m guessing they were running on cruise control. It didn’t bother me because I wasn’t in a rush.

Parked at the multi-storey where we park when we’re going to the dance weekends and took too heavy bags of books to the Oxfam shop. Next stop was the coffee shop for beans and tea, then over to Nero for lunch which was a roll ’n’ sausage and a cup of decent coffee. Final task was to get the Coltsfoot rock and thankfully the shop had plenty. With that done, I managed to sneak in to the 1 hour parking category and happily paid my £1.49! At the coffee shop I’d made enquiries of the best way to drive to Kinnoull Hill which I thought I might just conquer in the afternoon.

I found the road up the hill using the directions one of the girls in the shop had given me and parked in a convenient parking place. It was a steep climb and I then realised that my troubled cycling the other day hadn’t been an isolated incident. This hill just got steeper and steeper and soon I had to stop to take a breath. That gave me a chance to check how far I’d walked and how much further I had to go. The answer was depressing. Surely I must be further on than that? But no. The OS map on my phone confirmed what Mr Google said and I’d a long way to climb yet. I thought I could remember driving along what turned out to be a private road with Scamp and both of us walking through some woods to the viewpoint. This was nothing like that path. Eventually I gave up and walked back in the direction of the car. I did find some brambles though. Nice big black fruit that’s now taking up 100g worth of space in the freezer. Back at the car I followed my nose and found my way back through Perth town onto the notorious A9 and after driving through two torrential showers, arrived back home. Conquer Kinnoull Hill in an afternoon? Who was I kidding!

I stopped in Condorrat for 500g of mince and 500g of stew. I vacuum packed the stew and half of the mince to put in the freezer. The remaining mince I turned into a bolognese sauce an ate half of it with spaghetti for dinner.

Not long after that I got the call to say that Scamp and Co were leaving Stirling and I drove up through the rain to pick them up.

It seemed that there wasn’t much to see in Pitlochry, however they had a posh lunch and enjoyed the walk around the town, window shopping. My lunch was basic, but was what I was looking for and I’d ticked off all my boxes apart from climbing Kinnoull Hill. Ill leave that for another day when I’m fitter, or more likely when I find that road we drove up the last time!

No real plans for tomorrow. The wee car is feeling a bit thirsty, so I might put some petrol in its tank.

Out to Lunch – 25 August 2023

Posted on by Zogman

It was Scamp who suggested that we go out to lunch today.

In the morning she went to her FitSteps class and I did some housekeeping. Actual, physical tidying-up housekeeping, but also the more interesting and almost invisible housekeeping on the computer. I was searching for a sofa bed that I knew was in the back bedroom / painting room / spare room. I’d seen it recently under a pile of books, a rucksack and a blizzard of paper. After some rearranging of things, a disposing of rubbish and just finding better places for jackets and hats to live, there, under it all was the sofa bed. It’s not completely unearthed yet, but now I know where to look the next time I might need it.

The computer clean-up took longer, although there was far less physical work involved. It’s so easy to get sidetracked into looking at photos you haven’t seen for a while and then that leads to more photos that look interesting until nearly an hour has gone and you still haven’t accomplished what you set out to do. It was when Scamp returned I realised that I was only half way through the clean up or what became a clear out. However I did manage to get the required photos put in the bin and their replacement put in place. I’ve still to empty the bin, because, well, I’ll need to check that I wasn’t throwing good photos out with the bad, and you never know when I’ll need that one or that one or …

I shut the computer down. I powered it off and we went out to lunch, just as the rain came on. Thankfully it didn’t last long because we’d agreed to walk down to Broadwood Farm for a cheap lunch and a glass of something alcoholic. After all it was Friday and the end of the historical working week. Not that I’ve been involved in any working for a while now, but you have to keep these traditions alive! Fish & Chips for Scamp and small carvery for me. Small because that means two of the three meats that are always available, Gammon, Turkey and Cardboard. It’s actually advertised as Roast Beef, but it’s so dry the gravy won’t be absorbed into it and it tastes like cardboard, so let’s cut to the chase here and call it what it is – Cardboard. Some mixed veg and Cauliflower Cheese brightened up the plate and actually the food was good, washed down with a pint of Tennents for me and a glass of 19 Crimes Red for Scamp. The father of a family sitting on the other side of the room had a broad southern Irish accent, and although he was speaking quite loudly, I couldn’t understand more than about three words in every sentence. This got me thinking: Is that what I sound like to English folk? I must ask Simonne the next time we meet. Scamp thinks Simonne can probably decode my accent by now!

Back home the streets were drying, but not for long. I was just thinking I might get an hour in St Mo’s when down it came, straight down rain. As soon as it had disappeared to bother somebody else, I got my boots on and went for a walk with the A6500 and a 50mm macro lens. The 50 did its magic again. 50mm used to be the lens to stick on your camera. A general purpose go anywhere lens that could handle most things. That part hasn’t really changed, but having the ‘macro’ part means it’s possible to focus down to about 30mm from the front of the lens and still get super sharp images. Kind of two lenses in one. Today it took a photo of a swan drying its wings while standing on a rock in the middle of St Mo’s pond – the swan was standing on the rock, not me, BTW! Daft, but not stupid. It took a photo of a tiny, about 3mm long spider on a web. Last, but not least it took a photo of a Red Admiral butterfly sunning itself on a bush. First red admiral I’ve seen this year and even better, there were actually two of them! The butterfly got PoD and the other two are able to be viewed on Flickr.

Swans are sneaky things.  You’ve only got to ask Jamie about their wiles!  The one referred to in the previous paragraph successfully enveigled itself into the photograph, but it’s now been bounced out and replaced with the butterfly.  Swan’s! You can never turn your back on them for a minute.  Ask Jamie!

A thin G&T each tonight because we’re out early tomorrow intending to drive to Brookfield to demonstrate that we have been practising the Outside Spin, if not the Cross Basic.

Out in the country – 12 July 2023

Posted on by Zogman

Scamp went out this morning to meet Annette.

Her parting shot as she left the house was “I’ve got my key”, but she hadn’t. She phoned to say she’d left her key in the house. I said not to worry because I’d be at home for a while because I was entering into what felt like a long text conversation with someone in America trying to solve the saga of Google’s need for SPF which stands for Sender Policy Framework, but you probably knew that already, didn’t you. As it happened, my connection got reset and I didn’t really have the time or energy to restart it. Instead I phoned Scamp to say I’d drive up to the restaurant and hand her the key. I was going that way anyway because I’d had my fill with computer techy stuff for the day. I’d already struggled with the rather overbearing IONOS for half an hour and got nowhere at the end of it. The previous domain manager,1&1, was so much easier to work with.

It was another lovely morning, but as I was leaving to drop off Scamp’s key, there was a definite dampness in the air. By the time I got to the restaurant it was raining and by the time I has driving away it was pelting down. I was heading for Fannyside Moor. My quiet place. It was still raining when I got to the parking space beside the Scots Pines but I didn’t mind sitting in the car for a while until the rain blew away. It didn’t take long and the sun was coming out drying out the road. I walked along the road for a stretch looking for a chrysalis I’d seen the last time I’d been there, but it was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps the moth or butterfly inside had performed its transformation and flown away. I hoped it had.
The breeze was driving the clouds around the sky. That’s why this area is so interesting, the colours and shadows on the land change constantly and there are very few buildings to get in the way. I saw a tiny little ladybird, probably about 4mm diameter, but wrong lens, too slow to spot it and didn’t get the shot. I watched the swallows or swifts (I’m not a bird spotter, so I can’t tell the difference) flying low over the ground. Traditionally a sign that bad weather is on the cards. I headed home before I got caught in another downpour.

Scamp had just returned when I got home and we compared our day. Then I decided I’d pot up some strawberries from an old broken hanging basket that wasn’t hanging anymore. I managed to get four of them planted in the top of the terracotta strawberry planter. The last one is now in the raised bed which I think is full.

PoD was a landscape shot looking south over Fannyside Moor.

No plans for tomorrow.

Faceplant – 10 July 2023

Posted on by Zogman

It was quite a nice morning today until we were leaving the house. Then the rain started.

We were off to Callander today. Quite a pretty place except on Sundays when the ‘Blue Rinse Brigade’ invade it in their droves. Driving from Stirling in their wee cars at 30mph everywhere. Thankfully, we didn’t see any today because it was Monday and they’re not allowed out on Mondays.

The River Teith or to give it its proper name, Eas Gobhain (upstream of the road bridge it’s the Eas Gobhain, downstream it’s the Teith) was running high today, almost, but not quite overflowing into the carpark. We took a walk round the circular path that follows the river (you choose which one it is!) which was running fast as well as high. The poor wee ducks seemed as if they were jet propelled going downstream, but struggled to make any headway going the opposite direction. It was a fairly short walk round an are of wetland. From there we walked into the town, but just as we were deciding to turn back, the rain which had all but disappeared, chose to return. We bought what turned out to be a sourdough loaf and a couple of fruit pies and headed back to the car.

It looked as if the rain was on for the day, so we drove over the bridge and back to The Smiddy restaurant which was busier than normal. Then Scamp had the great idea of sitting in one of the covered booths and buying lunch from a pop-up cabin on the site. Roll ’n’ egg for Scamp, Roll ’n’ bacon for me with two coffees. The rain seemed to be following us and once we’d had our lunch, we headed homeward.

Dinner tonight was Giovanni Rana tortllini pasta (basil and pine nuts) with butter and cheese. The bread we bought was as tough as old boots, although I haven’t actually eaten boots, this is what I think they would taste like. Being sourdough, it should make good toast.

The PoD went to a wide angle phone photo of one man fishing Eas Gobhain. There were about a dozen folk watching him, but they were expunged with Photoshop. They were cluttering up the place.

The Faceplant? Yes. Tonight it was torrential rain and Scamp thought her wee pepper plant was going to get bashed, so I volunteered to bring it in. I took one step outside and my foot slid from under me and I fell, face first into the soggy earth. I think Scamp got as big a shock as me. I really should have taken a selfie, but I didn’t. I just laughed and brought all three plants in. Two chilli plants, one sweet pepper plant plus one extremely muddy and wet me! I got off lightly. Just a couple of scratches and a severe telling off.

No plans for tomorrow. The plants can stay outside and get wet.

 

An early rise … – 8 June 2023

Posted on by Zogman

… then off to the sun!

Writing a blog takes a lot of time and effort, but I like reading the blogs from past years and little things that caught my eye or imagination. With that in mind, these two weeks of blogs will be in a different format, but hopefully they will just as interesting.

  • Flew to Dubrovnik then got a coach to the ship
  • Had to have our passports stamped more times than was realistically necessary.
  • After that we were on the ship and could have that all important first Holiday Beer.
  • Most folk were away to Dubrovnik old town, so we had the salt water pool, the unheated salt water pool(!) all to ourselves.
  • Dressed for dinner later, as was expected.
  • Even so, much more relaxed than P&O
  • Finished the day at a party on the pool deck.
  • Scamp had a Pina Colada! I had a G&T.

PoD is a collage of views of Dubrovnik from our wander round the decks of Marella Explorer 2.

A day at sea tomorrow.

Grass Cutting and Water Drops – 24 May 2023

Posted on by Zogman

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.

Outside toilet – 1 May 2023

Posted on by Zogman

Today the weather fairies got it wrong. They predicted a dull day and it turned out bright and sunny.

I have a lot to do on the first day of the month. Screensavers to be created, files and folders to be moved, folders of pictures to be backed up and then rejected photos to be deleted. Today was no different. Eventually, when all was running normally again, we decided we’d better go out and make the best of the day before it all slipped away.

Scamp wanted to go to Drumpellier for a walk through the woods, and so did an awful lot of folk on this surprisingly sunny May Day. All around us seemed to be dark and cloudy, but for once we were sitting in the sweet spot, at least we were when we finally found a parking place.

Off we trudged on the conveyer belt with all the other folk walking round this big pond. But we knew we could get off the travelator and into the woods. It’s good to see the colour returning to the trees after so many weeks of bare branches. There were a lot fewer folk on these paths through the woods and at times we seemed to be the only people walking these pathways. Eventually we found our way back to the main circuit at the far end of the loch. I had taken a few shots in the woods, but not very many. We walked round to the ice cream van and had a cone each. With raspberry, but without a flake. Scamp was quite firm about that. No 99s today, even if it is a bank holiday.

We sat on a bench, eating our cones and watching an asian bloke with two little girls in tow, in tow, but not under control. Poor man was run ragged chasing one then the other to keep them from falling into the loch while the girls just seemed to ignore him, so that they could throw stones in the water. Just weans having fun and taking more than a little leeway with their dad.

As we were walking back to the car I saw a photo opportunity with three gulls on the big Whale’s Tail sculpture that sits out in the water. I climbed over a couple of rocks and sat down on one to get a nice low viewpoint for the shot across the water, when I heard a woman’s voice behind me saying “What’s he doing?” Another woman answered, “I think he’s doing the toilet!” Then a man’s voice said “He’s taking photographs!” Oh, the ignominy of it. To be thought to be performing your bodily functions outside in Coatbridge. I’d never live it down! However, it did make me smile. “Doing the toilet”, indeed! No wonder photogs get a bad reputation.

We drove home before the polis came. After a late lunch and after checking that I did indeed have a PoD, I set to work on the first sketch for a long while for Every Day in May, or EDiM for short. The first one is complete and can be seen on Flickr and Facebook. It was tough going. This was the best of three attempts.

Today’s prompt was A Waffle.
I don’t eat waffles as a rule, although I can be enticed into having one when we’re on holiday.
Today’s sketch was of what I would have if I did eat waffles. My toppings would be blueberries and strawberries, plus maybe some melted chocolate, just to make it little bit less healthy!

Some interesting topics this time round.

Hoping for some more bright sunny weather tomorrow to get out and about in.