Category: Macro

The Smiddy and Ladybirds – 11 May 2019

Posted on by Zogman

In the morning we went to a funeral. After that the day started.

In the morning we went to Crawford’s brother’s funeral. Funerals have a tendency, like black monkeys (or black dogs if you prefer) to stay with me all day. This one certainly did. We went home, got changed and drove to The Smiddy near Doune for lunch.

The drive helped to take the feeling away. That and the sunshine that we enjoyed all day. Baked Potato with Veg Chilli helped too. Scamp had her usual Macaroni and Cheese with Chips. We hadn’t really intended having such a full lunch, but the food in The Smiddy is usually very good and difficult to refuse. Outside I went to take some landscapes shots in the beautiful light that always appears near this restaurant. I did get a few, but then I managed to grab the photo that became PoD. Ladybirds doing some very unladylike things! From there we drove through Doune to Dunblane and M&S Food (more food? I hear you ask). After that it was a straight run home.

Tonight’s topic in Every Day in May, number 11, was Spring. What is more springlike than daffodils and it was a single daffy that became my sketch/painting today. I liked the blurred background, but Scamp didn’t. She liked yesterday’s painting and I didn’t. I’m glad we don’t agree on everything. That was about it for today. Scamp has more plans for the garden and maybe has a storage place for the new table. I ripped out some weeds from the retaining wall at the back of the garden and noticed that quite a few of the facing bricks need replacing. Managed to rip out a fairly large nettle and got a lovely sting from it right through one of Scamp’s heavy duty gardening gloves. Scary things, nettles.

Tomorrow looks like an even better day than today. If it lives up to predictions, we may go somewhere nice. Destination unknown at present. If not we may go dancing. It’s a wait and see kind of day.

I like Thursdays – 9 May 2019

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Thursdays are generally good. All the time in the world to do things. Why then am I still writing this blog at almost 11pm?

Spent most of the morning clearing up the back bedroom. Now it looks a bit better and the rubbish went into a black bag. Well, most of it anyway. Some was spared for a while, I’ll put it in a six month virtual box. Anything left in that box after six months will go into another black box. After lunch I took the black bag along with a clutter of plastic pots and containers, some paint pots neutralised with soil and compost and took the load to the tip.

Then went for a walk along the Luggie Water. First time I’ve been there for quite some time and with a bit of occasional sunshine, the green leaves down there were gleaming. PoD was a trio of fern croziers starting to unfurl. So many hues and shades of green if you care to look.

The topic for Every Day in May was “The first thing that comes to mind when you wake up”.  I chose Breakfast.
A plate of muesli and a large mug of Assam tea. I foolishly chose to use the Paperchase A5 sketchbook because I’d used one a year ago and it worked well for me. Unfortunately Paperchase have changed their paper and the pages in the new sketchbook are much more absorbent than the previous one’s. That’s why there’s a fair bit of ragged edges to the shadows. The paper isn’t properly sized in my opinion. Such a shame.

Tomorrow we have nothing planned. We’ll just have to see what turns up.

Lazy Sunday Afternoon – 28 April 2019

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Not only the afternoon. The morning was lazy too, as was the evening.

Today I was cooking a spare rib for my dinner, and following the advice from Samin Nosrat (no, that’s not an anagram, it’s her name), I sprinkled it with Salt and put it in the fridge. Tick off Salt. Left it there for the required time (more than half an hour and no more than three hours). Then I took it out, unwrapped it and browned it in a little Oil, so that’s Fat ticked off. While I was doing that, I prepared that overworked slow cooker with herbs in the bottom (Parsley, [no Sage], Rosemary and Thyme – Simon & Garfunkel1 joke) and chopped onion on the middle layer. When the meat was well browned, I laid it on top of the veg and deglazed the pan with some Red Wine, which takes care of the Acid part and added it, with a little water to the pot. Finally I turned the heat setting to High for half an hour and that Heat completes the mantra of Salt – Fat – Acid – Heat that Ms Nosrat recommends in her book. After half an hour I turned the heat setting to Auto and left it to do its magic for four or so hours.

In the meantime I went out for a walk and found St Mo’s abuzz with insect life. Spiders (which I realise aren’t insects, but arachnids), flies and ladybirds. It was the seven spot ladybird (Coccinella septempunctata) which made PoD today. Never seen a ladybird face to face before. I also saw some different pine cones in the process of being fertilised. Didn’t get a good shot of them, will try again, maybe tomorrow.  While I was out, Scamp was planting some of her sweet peas.  The first lot to be planted where they are expected to flower.  I need to plant some carrots this week.

Came home and found the beef rib cooked to perfection. Well, nearly perfection. One half of it was a bit tough (or Cheugh [pronounced chuch] if you speak Larky) and the other side simply slid of the bone. I think that was the secret. The tough side wasn’t attached to the bone. I’ll test the method again with the next short rib. It seems to work.

Watched the Baku GP which was a bit of a let-down after the excitement of the qualifying session.

That was about it for the day. We were too lazy to go to Mango to dance tonight. It was that sort of day, really.

Tomorrow I’m intending to get the Micra booked in for MOT and hopefully dance at night.

  1. I noticed that Garfunkel was performing in Glasgow Royal Concert Hall the other week. Also appearing later that week was a Simon & Garfunkel tribute act. I just wondered if the real Garfunkel went to see them and also if he’d got in free if he said he was “With the band”? ↩

A day in the kitchen – 26 April 2019

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Started about 9.30am and just kept going.

First thing to do was get the Lamb Tagine on the go. After chopping and frying the onions, then adding all the spices and the lamb it all got bunged into a slow cooker with the dates and apricots. Got it up to temperature and took it up to the back bedroom to do its work. That’s the benefit of a slow cooker, it can be working away anywhere with a mains socket.

<Technospeak>
Time for a bit of relaxation playing with some old photographs I’d backed up yesterday to a new USB-C drive. First time I’d used this supposedly revolutionary system. Allegedly capable of 10Mbps compared with the 5Mbps of USB 3. I can’t say I noticed the difference, but the big benefit is the connector to the computer. It’s reversible, unlike the normal male USB connector that only goes one way round. How long has it taken someone to realise how annoying that has been? Anyway, it was great editing those 10 year old D70 photos in new software. So easy to over-process, though.
</Technospeak>

Back in the kitchen it was the pakora. One lot of cauliflower and one lot of onion and potato. Both both lots fried and then stored to cool with some retained for lunch. They tasted fine, with a nice crunchy batter.

Meanwhile Scamp was beating the living daylights out of some cream for a cake that was baking in the oven while an ice-cream maker was churning away in a corner of the living room. Another time-saving machine that can be plugged in anywhere.

By now it was well into the afternoon an I was just about to go out to get some photos when I remembered the bread. It wasn’t bread yet, it was still flour in the cupboard, yeast in another cupboard, butter in the fridge, salt on the work surface and water in the tap. Soon, however they were all in the bowl of the mixer being battered into a bread dough. I kept the dough in the bowl, parked the bowl next to the slow cooker to keep it warm and finally got out for that walk. Halfway through the walk it started to rain. It’d been predicted all morning, but I’d been too busy. Got very few photos, but the PoD was the little pink flowers. Haven’t found out exactly what they are yet, but hopefully someone on Flickr can ID them.

The visitors arrived about 8pm. The pakora had been heating in a too-warm oven for too long, they were frazzled! Luckily Scamp had made some of her “Just Soup” which she served with some bacon on top and it was much, much better than my pakora. The lamb tagine was excellent, even although I say it myself. Scamp’s signature dish of Pears in a Red Wine Sauce served with Yoghurt Ice-cream was even better. Finally the cake was a moist sponge with lemon curd cream. Didn’t like the cream, but the sponge was lovely.

After a long night and an even longer day we dragged ourselves off to bed just after midnight. It was a good night. Not great, just good.

Tomorrow a relaxing day with minimal cooking.

Marie Kondo rules OK – 19 April 2019

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Today I ignored the beautiful sunshine for a while and started tidying up the top three drawers in my chest of drawers in the back bedroom. Marie Kondo, you have a lot to answer for.

It’s been coming for a while, but when Scamp was out buying Tesco today, I got started clearing out the top two drawers. Actually I’d already started on the top drawer yesterday, but hadn’t managed to file very much in the big round filing cabinet in the corner. Today was a more concerted effort. Using partly the Marie Kondo mantra of “Does this spark joy?” and partly my own “Keep, File, Chuck” method, I managed to get rid of a few more things, then allocate a particular space to the ones I wanted to keep. What was the top drawer is now the second top, because the boxes I was using for the ‘filing’ wouldn’t fit in the top drawer. The chest of drawers is designed in the architectural style where the highest drawer is the shallowest and the lowest is the deepest. It’s the way Victorian and Edwardian architects designed windows in big houses. Look some time and you’ll see how it works. So, the top drawer now only holds paper and sketch books and the second top drawer holds two main categories of objects:

  • File (pens, knives and stuff) They don’t necessarily Spark Joy, but they are useful or essential tools.
  • Keep (photos, flyers etc). They are not tools, but they remind me of something. They all Spark Joy.

That drawer is much more organised than it was before, but may not stay that way.

The third drawer is still a work in progress. It has much more Spark Joy items than the other two and will need a bit more willpower to encourage me to put things into the ‘Chuck’ pile.

Halfway through Hazy phoned and we had a long discussion about gardens, cats and birthdays. Heavens, we also managed to fit in Christmas plans, which seem to be firming up quite nicely.

After lunch which was delicious Cheese and Beetroot sandwiches, we started on the garden. I wanted to plant the Calabrese which is like broccoli, but Scamp suggested that it might be a good idea to put up the pea frame first, to prevent disruption of the growing plants when it’s actually needed. I agreed and got it built up quite easily. Planted the Calabrese while Scamp did all the rest of the garden work.

Sat out for a while in the sun with a glass of wine each because it was a beautiful warm spring day and Good Friday too. Found today’s PoD crawling round a garden bucket. It’s a Nut Weevil and is probably the reason my chestnuts aren’t growing this year, as the adult insect bores a hole into the nut and lays its eggs inside. The grub hatches, eats its way out and it’s goodbye Chestnut. It made a nice photo though.

Tomorrow we may go to Embra. Hoping for another sunny day. Central heating seems to be fixed by the way. Oh, yes and Hazy, I’ve got the two backups downloaded tonight. One from the old website and one from the new. Belts & Braces, that’s me!

Gardening – 5 April 2019

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It’s that time of year again when we buy plants that die a few weeks later in a late frost. Next month we buy the plants that will grow.

Hopefully that won’t be the case now that we can put them in the wee poly greenhouse to harden off.

We’ve got a new garden centre in the town. It used to be Dobbies, then Dobbies was taken over by the mighty Tesco and that started a downward trend. They still traded under the Dobbies name, but only the larger outlets flourished, if you excuse the pun. The little centres were just left to rot. That was certainly the case for Cumbersheugh Dobbies. It got so bad that it was better to buy your plants in B&Q or Homebase. Nothing looked as if it was being cared for, neither the plants nor the buildings. Eventually I stopped going and by the look of the car park, so did most people. Now it’s been taken off Tesco’s hands by Calders, who started up in Kirkintilloch and have made a good go of things so far. I visited the new Calders yesterday to get the Rhubarb and the Calabrese. Today we went back to get compost and also picked up a little golden leafed plant who’s name escapes me at the moment. It’s a little bit of winter colour. We were both impressed with the change, and the car park was full, but it’s early days yet.

Did a bit of digging for Scamp’s new regime in the garden. Simple stuff like spreading old compost over some of the beds and getting tubs ready for new arrivals. Some pruning noted as needing done. If we get a few warm, dry days next week we’ll get some more things done.

Scamp fancied a recipe for Chicken Curry that used the slow cooker to do the hard work and I’m all for that. It tasted really good, but we both agreed that there was too much liquid in the sauce, so we’re intending to have another go on Sunday. I like the idea that you stick everything in the slow cooker and leave it to get on with it for four hours.

PoD is a set of camper van planters seen at the aforementioned garden centre.  Very tempting, but nowhere to show them off.

Tomorrow we may go in to Glasgow on the bus.

A walk to the harbour – 25 March 2019

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Today, a longer walk around the bay to the harbour.

Rather than walk around the entire bay to the Castillo and the harbour, we decided instead to cut a corner and walk across the sand. Watched the fish for a while in the harbour and people-watched the kids feeding them from the little paper cones of fish food. There was little else to see there but we stood for a while watching a bloke on a fly board jetpack doing loops and swoops while hundreds of smartphone videos captured the display. We didn’t. Jaded tourists us. We walked along past the looky-looky men selling knock-off sunglasses, baseball caps and designer handbags and had a beer in a posh bar with a great view over the bay. A view you had to pay for in the price of the beer €5.80 for two small beers, less than half a pint each. Almost UK prices. Still it was worth it for a seat in the shade and the view. While we were in Caleta we bought some cards to post home.

Walked back to the hotel and sat by the pool for a while. I did a bit of drawing and Scamp read. There was a man there almost completely covered in tattoos of red Indians or to be more PC, Native North Americans who was carrying his little girl and as he passed he said to her “Mind you don’t drop me now!” I thought that was so funny. Maybe you had to be there! Wrote the cards and posted them in the hotel. It’s so complicated now abroad, there are so many different mail systems you have to check which stamps you are using so you know which box to drop the cards in. Wrong box and there’s no guarantee the card will arrive at the recipient.

After lunch I had one last walk across the wilderness. Spent some time watching ‘dust devils’ being whipped up by the wind and running along beside the road. PoD is a shot of a green plant growing in a dried up stream bed. Such a bright green on the dull brown dust and grey stones. When I was walking back the clouds grew heavier and darker and the temperature began to drop too.

Dinner was in the à la carte Italian restaurant next to the pool bar. We were sitting next to a lady who was the double of Scamp’s Isobel. They say that everyone has a doppelgänger. Food was lovely. Buffet for starters, then Scamp had Mushroom Risotto followed by Lemon Sorbet and I had Gnocchi with Bolognese sauce then Panna Cotta with a fruit sauce. All great.  When we came out of the Italian restaurant it was raining!!

Show tonight was That Fuc**ng Lion King, so we didn’t go. I really hate TFLK and Scamp isn’t too impressed with it either!

Last full day tomorrow. The last time we were here we were watching an old hotel being renovated. Tomorrow we are planning to see how they’re getting on with it.

Salty Dog – 23 March 2019

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Another warm day

After breakfast we sat in the garden and I painted while Scamp read her Kindle.

Later we walked in to Caleta and had lunch in The Trafalgar, an institution in Fuerteventura. We always visit it if only to get a mug of coffee for Scamp. The only place in Caleta that she trusts to give her decent coffee.

When we got back, Scamp went for a swim and I went for a walk over the wilderness to the Museo de la Sal. A museum of salt is not the most interesting of places, but behind it is the original salt pans and a full skeleton of a whale. I’d forgotten about the skeleton the last time we’d been to Caleta and this time I got to see it. I didn’t actually go in to the museum, but having read Tripadvisor reviews, I didn’t miss much. Besides, you can just walk round the salt pans and the skeleton without having to go in to the museum.

On the way back I got some photos of the tough wee desert plants growing on the dunes and it was one of them that became PoD.

It was a long walk over the wilderness and I my feet were quite sore when I came back.

28,025 steps
12.65 miles

Tomorrow is Scamp’s birthday, so she gets to decide on the format of the day.

Just another Sunday

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No breakfast in bed this morning. There was an F1 GP to be watched.

Up and having breakfast in the living room just after 8am. Interesting GP, slightly spoiled by the fact that Leclerc wasn’t allowed to race against Vettel. Come on Ferrari, it’s called a ‘Race’. If you keep protecting spoilt child Vettel, he’ll actually believe he’s number 1 driver. Be afraid Seb, the Russians are coming in the shape of Kvyat. I’m pretty sure he’ll have you in his sights and team orders won’t mean much then. Still a pretty good race.

Spent most of the afternoon making preparations for the mid-week, then got fed up and went for a walk in the sunshine in St Mo’s. Got a glimpse of three deer, but not before they saw me. I got a few shots of them, but nothing worth PoD. That went to a shot of the male and female flowers on a larch. Such a pretty thing and I only noticed it for the first time last year.

We went to the last ever Sunday Social at La Rambla in Paisley. Great food again. Black Pudding with Chorizo in a Red Wine Sauce was the star. Second was the Patatas Gradtinatas. Like I said yesterday, I’ll miss the food, but not the service. Really, four people working the bar with only one customer. One person took the order, passed it over to another who worked the till (after a long consultation with the menu). Meanwhile the first person poured the drinks and the second person took the money. What were the other two doing? It was anyone’s guess. It’s closing soon, no surprise to us.

Salsa was well run as usual by Shannon. I must say that for her, she works hard at providing social salsa dancing in and around Glasgow. It wasn’t as busy as we thought it would be, but we did manage a couple of hours dancing which was fine for us.

Gems day tomorrow, so I’ll get out of the way.

Minimal driving day – 11 March 2019

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It was agreed that we wouldn’t be driving far today.

In fact we did very little today. Spoke to Hazy for a while and compared blue skies. Discussed gardens and Christmas plans, yes, Christmas plans already!

Started a wee bit of painting from Skye and in the style of one of the paintings I’d seen in the “Biscuit Tin”. Never quite got it finished because, as you’ve probably guessed today was the day for writing up the blog posts and posting the photos on Flickr. Put a pair of headphones on to drown out Gems and just got on with it. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get round to finishing the painting and restarting the Apple Gallery.

Also grabbed a shot of one of Scamp’s sweet pea plants which is just forming its first ‘real’ leaves and that became PoD. That’s the result of being too lazy to go out. Tomorrow I must gee myself.

Salsa tonight was good fun as usual. Six thirty class has now moved on to level 2 and are Improvers. They were doing Enchufé tonight. In the advance class at 7.30 the ‘new’ old move was Swish along with the others we’d been doing last week.

That’s about it. Tomorrow we’re going for the ‘messages’. Wild weather forecast.