Category: St Mo’s

Yet another hot day – 18 August 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Out to the dentist in the morning.

I was lucky to get an appointment at the dentist. I had my six monthly check last week and today, a week later, I had one of my teeth filled. Not for the first time either, it’s the second or maybe the third filling I’ve had for the same tooth and it’s all my fault. I just keep probing the repaired tooth and occasionally I’ve bitten down on a hard sweet and cracked the tooth. I’ve now had a “good talking to” and for the next week I’m banned from chewing anything tougher than an apple. I’ll do my best to comply.

So it was that lunch was half a nice soft Ginsters pasty. Scamp had gone shopping after I returned from the dentist. I was attempting to solve a couple of problems that were still lingering with the new iMac. It’s beginning to look more like a usable machine now, not just a bag of disconnected parts.

After lunch Scamp started to clear out some of the clutter we’d built up over the years. Many sheets of ancient documents and invoices went into the shredder and then into the compost bin. Chopped up paper apparently makes great compost when mixed with vegetable and fruit in the big black box at the back of the garden.

While she was doing that, I went for a walk in St Mo’s and got a photo of a Painted Lady butterfly that became PoD. They are occasional visitors to Scotland, but are less rare now than they were.

Scientists have discovered that the Painted Lady butterflies do indeed migrate south each autumn but make this return journey at high altitude out of view of butterfly observers on the ground. Radar records reveal that Painted Ladies fly at an average altitude of over 500 metres on their southbound trip and can clock up speeds of 30 mph by selecting favourable conditions.

We were dancing Rumba at Kirsty’s class. Very slow and precise and quite enjoyable in this hot weather. Kirsty taught three separate parts of the routine and then encouraged us not to dance them in order, but to take them in any order the leaders chose. No directions, but the leaders had to guide the followers by hand pressure alone. I found it difficult and demanding, but worth practising at home. Our one hour slot just disappeared!

Tomorrow I believe we may be taking some stuff to the Council tip. Especially if Scamp has her way!

 

 

Just a normal day – 13 August 2025

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But a normal day, with extra heat. Hottest temp recorded on Scamp’s phone was 30ºc.

We went shopping at Tesco and then started filling up the new fridge. Once that part was looking more like we’d expected, Scamp started on the old freezer. We managed to get most of the food transferred and the freezer too looks better.

I went for a walk in St Mo’s later in the afternoon looking for some photos. What I found was hundreds of butterflies. Mostly Peacocks, but also a few Red Admirals. I don’t think I’ve seen so many butterflies in my life before. I know I’ve said that before, but it really is a remarkable sight. I made sure I was well protected with Smidge, from the clouds of biting insects that I was sure were waiting in the wings.

Despite being surrounded by butterflies this afternoon, they didn’t feature on PoD. That honour went to an Emerald Damselfly that I saw clinging to a grass stem.

When I got home, Scamp and I had a seat in the garden for a while with a Soda & Lime each. Then from nowhere came a little sprinkle of rain. We took the seats in and the rain stopped. So my chair went back out while Scamp stayed in the house to take a call from Annette. Again those sprinkles started. They never got really serious. Just drips from the clouds but maybe a sign of things to come.

Thunder showers are predicted from tonight until midnight tomorrow. Maybe they will cool the weather down and we’ll get some comfortable sleep.

I’m not saying we’re looking forward to tomorrow, but we are looking forward to hearing the result.

The last day of July – 31 July 2025

Posted on by Zogman

And what a whirlwind month it’s been. There have been a lot of flowers, some insects, the occasional dummy and spiders. There have been a few hoverflies and one or two damselflies but no dragonflies. Not really any landscapes, but a few still lifes or should that be Lives?

Clothes pegs! There was one instance of clothes pegs in the rain. One PoD got Explore. I liked the texture in that one. Then the obscure ones, like the painter on the Cherrypicker, the entrance to a church and the ladies blethering! And bees lots of different bees and a barrel load of butterflies of all shapes, colours and sizes. Quite a collection!

Today has been a bit of a struggle, but I’ve learned a few tricks and need to learn a few more with the super fast, but clumsy new iMac. I think I need to consult one of the experts again to fill in the gaps in my knowledge.

If all else fails, I’ll start again with another month of Five Stars.

PoD was a wild geranium surrounded by Cranesbills.

No real plans for tomorrow.

Just a little rain – 27 July 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Not torrents of rain, but just enough to keep the plants watered. That’s all we want.

Not a busy day by any means. A fairly easy Sunday. The most work I did was to sew a button on my walking trousers. I can never work out how to direct the needle into the correct buttonhole. It’s such a simple thing, but it evades me every time. I finally got it done and it’s in the washing bag now ready for a shower.

Scrambled egg for Scamp’s lunch. I also had a scrambled egg, but that was unintentional. It was meant to be a fried egg, but the egg had other ideas and eventually I gave in and let it have its way. I added a couple of rashers of bacon to keep it company. The bacon wasn’t scrambled.

In the afternoon Scamp an I went for a walk to the shops and on the way back, I took a walk through St Mo’s while Scamp carried the messages the remainder of the way home. She had some cleaning to do in the house and I was looking for inspiration. I ended up with just a couple of reasonable shots of what might be sycamore keys hanging from a branch. That became PoD on a dull day.

Dinner was Chicken and Pea Traybake which Scamp made for a change. It tasted better than mine, I think. Possibly it was because she used bigger chunks of leek and probably she’s just a better cook than me.

Spoke to Jamie in the evening halfway through a boring F1 GP from Spa. I managed to pick his brains about his coffee maker which I might splash some cash on some day in the future. I also explained my reason for getting a new computer. The old one I’m writing this on is really going downhill fast and it can’t be upgraded. Apple can be such a pain in the backside sometimes.

Hoping for a little bit more rain tomorrow and maybe another shopping expedition to Tesco. What fun!

Walking with the bees – 25 July 2025

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Other insects were also there. Some stingers, some biters and some that just buzzed round my head and deserved a good slap for annoying me.

Before that, Scamp was out early as usual on a Friday, to go to FitSteps. I decided to stay home and do some work for a change, mainly because it had started raining. Before she left for her class, Scamp gave me instructions for using the new liquid for the washing machine and when she left I emptied all the dirty washing into the washing machine and set it chugging through the load.

Next I’d some clearing out to do on the iMac. Just some old files that I no longer needed. The oldest were no longer suitable for the eight year old iMac, so must have come from its predecessor, the Mac Book Pro, running Snow Leopard! I think they must belong to the clockwork version. I also managed to check the security files, passwords and such. Before I knew where I was, the washing machine beeped to tell me its work was done for the morning. That meant I had to hang up the washing inside as it was still raining.

Lunch was a ‘Piece in Corned Beef’. I’d forgotten I had some in the fridge and didn’t want it going to waste. By then Scamp had returned hot and bothered after a heavy exercise session with Kirsty and the rest of the girls. She made some corrections to my handling of the damp clothes. I will write it up some time soon to ensure I don’t make the same mistake another time.

I went for a walk down to the shops by the convoluted paths round the back of St Mo’s school since the pupils are still on summer holidays. However it was the bees that grabbed my attention. I’d doused myself well with Smidge insect repellant first and walked down the narrow path with shoulder high wild flowers on both sides and it seemed that every plant was covered with bees searching for nectar and being covered with pollen as a result. I made the mistake of setting the camera to Continuous Shooting which means that if you hold the shutter button down, it will just keep taking photos until it has filled its buffer or you remove your finger. Even on ‘slow’ mode I still managed to capture 70 photos in a short time, most of which ended up in the bin. Today’s PoD was a White Tailed Bee feasting on a Creeping Thistle flower.

Dinner was beans, and chips with an egg for Scamp and a couple burgers with chips and jalapeños for me. A fairly decent dinner.

The rain had drifted by the time I was walking down the path behind St Mo’s and the sun shone for a while in the early evening. Not a bad day.

Nice to see where you are staying Hazy and Neil. Pity about the birds messing on the seats. Be more strict with them and tell them to clean up their act!

Possibly going to Dunfermline tomorrow.

Out early to speak to a Genius – 22 July 2025

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I’d a 10.35am meeting with a genius. Not an everyday occurrence, but this was a problem solving mission and only an Apple Genius would do. Scamp, meanwhile went for a coffee in the Benugo cafe in JL.

After lugging my big heavy iMac to the Apple Store, I met a big friendly giant Genius who was going to sort out all my problems. He didn’t actually solve all the problems, but by watching carefully what he was doing I managed to remember the sequence he worked through to get the Desktop back and other stuff too. The rigamarole below took him about 10 seconds, but undid a lot of the damage last week’s outage had created. He seemed quite impressed that I was running the system on a couple of SSD drives and told me to connect the master drive to the new Mac if I was getting one and use it to enter all the complicated stuff for me. I didn’t want to tell him I’d done that about four or five times already over the years.

<Technospeak>

Find ‘System Settings’ from the Apple menu

Click on my name

Choose iCloud

Choose iCloud Drive and then ensure that the top two buttons are set to ON.

Done

I later found that I could also mess about with the bottom buttons too, but didn’t.

</Technospeak>

Packed up the big heavy iMac again and took it back to dump in the car, then I went to have a coffee with Scamp in the cafe and told her whole story.

We went down to the JL basement to look at fridges and freezers and fridge / freezers. Scamp found a few she liked and we made a shopping list of them, but we bumped into a very helpful salesperson who told us that JL have a cutprice sale of goods on the first Sunday of every month. I think we might be going there to see what they have. Just to finish off the morning, we bought a DIY fan, because it’s still quite warm and this big old fashioned fan will help to keep us cool.

PoD turned out to be a couple of Red Clover flowers. I found them during a walk round St Mo’s.

I was a bit disappointed with the amount of cleaning out I’ll need to do before the iMac is ready to give up it’s place at the table and meet the new challenger, but nothing is perfect in this life, as Scamp always reminds me.

Dinner was an M&S stir-fry. Not the best one I’ve ever had. Too sweet for me and Scamp didn’t like the Singapore noodles. I don’t think we’ll get that again.

Watched Bakeoff the Professionals tonight and wondered where they get the ideas for the challenges.

Tomorrow Scamp is intending to meet Shona for lunch. I think I may be ironing out more of the ‘puter problems.

 

 

Now that’s better – 13 July 2025

Posted on by Zogman

A slightly cooler day. Much more like what we expect in Scotland in July.

I wasn’t feeling great in the morning and ended up having toast and tea for lunch while Scamp had her usual Sunday fry up. After a pretty lacklustre Laura Kuenssberg offering we allocated each other jobs to do in the garden

It may have been cooler, but there was still a lot of work to be done. Scamp was determined to get both the front and the back grass cut and I let her get on with it after I’d moved all sixteen plant pots out on to the path to allow her a clear run with the mower. I also evicted at least twenty slugs from their previous living quarters under the pots, then rehoused them in the bushes in front of the house.

The sweet peas have been growing at an astonishing rate and really needed some extra support. The wind was getting strong too, so I cut and tied some bamboo canes to prevent the sweet peas from getting broken. I know they aren’t as delicate as they seem, but wee bit extra wood and twine wouldn’t do any harm. They now reach almost 2m in height. Scamp thinks we will need to pinch out the growing tips to force the growth into the body of the plant. I think she’s right.

With the tasks and the front and back grass successfully cut, we could rest for a while. I still had to find a PoD and walked round St Mo’s to see if there were any contenders. The first thing I saw was a curved and twisted bunch of sycamore seeds, probably not this year’s growth, but almost definitely last year’s. That was PoD, but further into my travels, I came upon a Clouded Border Moth. Tiny little thing smaller that a 10p coin. First time I’ve seen one or even heard of one. Must look out for them.

Dinner was a demo by Scamp of the best ways to make an omelette. She did her’s one way and I did mine as directed. Both ways worked and both were different. I’ll try to repeat the exercise this week.

Spoke to Jamie and found that their temperature yesterday was almost exactly the same as ours, about 400 miles apart. It’s a strange world. I think they might be considering buying an air fryer. I know Scamp says they are bulky and probably not much use to us, but it might be interesting to hear their opinions if they do get one.

Hope the temperatures continue to drop gently for a few days and that there is some rain, both for England and Scotland. The gardens need it.

 

A late night leads to a late morning – 12 July 2025

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We were slow to rise today. Too much moon gazing last night.

It was going to be another hot one today, in fact the temperature did reach 29ºc in the afternoon, as predicted by the weather fairies. We did attempt to sit outside at the front of the house, but had to give in and move to the back garden, despite a whole bunch of children from next door, all having a wonderful and noisy time splashing in a paddling pool. Water and Sun are the main constituents for fun when you’re under 10, I think. I can’t really testify to that, but I do remember going with my mum on a bus that took us down to Millheugh and going paddling among the rocks in the shallow water to catch minnows which we called Minnens. I also remember stepping on a broken bottle there and getting a taken back to the doctor’s in Larkhall in one of my mum’s friend’s car to have it checked out. I’ve still got the scar to this day. No stitches nor anything, just a big plaster and either TCP or Dettol.

Back to the 21st century, Scamp and I had lunch inside because it was too hot outside today. Later we found a fairly cool spot in the back garden after the noisy weans had gone somewhere else. Scamp and I went for a walk in St Mo’s which is where today’s PoD came from. It’s a Common Blue Damselfly and it sat there posing for ages. A big blue dragonfly was patrolling the pond at the time, but it hardly stopped its circuit, so I didn’t get a photo of it. Sometimes they choose a resting site, a boulder or a bulrush that it will cling to for a while as it scours the pond for interlopers, but not today. Too busy.

I was on dinner duty today. Scamp had made a lovely light salad a couple of days ago, but mine was going to be different. A mixture of sweet and savoury. An apple, a pear, strawberries, beetroot, cucumber and lots more went into the bowl, along with cooked chicken breast pieces and some lettuce. I was quite proud of my creation. It was based on a salad Simonne had made for us a year ago. It was a success, I’m glad to say.

Thankfully the temperature is going down again as the sun sets. We’re hoping for a slightly cooler day tomorrow too.

Sitting in the sun – 10 July 2025

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Scamp was up early to go to the hairdressers. I didn’t need my hair dressed, so I stayed at home.

Scamp returned home looking wonderful and without a hair out of place not long after I started today’s Wordle et al puzzles. She had about an hour free before her next appointment, this time with Isobel.

When she had left to meet Isobel, I took one of our folding seats out to the front and read another chapter of “Stone and Sky”, the latest Ben Aaronovitch book. It’s probably the most confusing Rivers of London book I’ve read so far. I keep thinking I’ve read it before, but I haven’t. Sometimes it reads like a Young Adult book, sometimes it’s Police Procedural. Sometimes it’s about fairies and unicorns. Always it’s worth reading and now at book ten in the series, it’s getting complicated, but I know it will mostly all turn out fine in the end.

It was hot today. Not just warm, but hot. I think the maximum temperature that was reached was just over 25ºc which is hot for Scotland. Tonight the weather fairies were warning us that it’s going to be even hotter tomorrow. I don’t think I can take much more of this heatwave nonsense!

After Scamp returned with all the gossip from her meeting with Isobel, we had lunch and Scamp went in to Gardener mode and I just kept out of the way. Eventually I decided to take a walk to St Mo’s and get some photos. There didn’t seem to be too much insect or animal activity, so I headed down past the back of St Mo’s school and found today’s PoD waiting for me. As far as I can see the mating insects are Five Spot Burnet Moths, but what is the creature below them, breaking free of its cocoon? Another Burnet Moth perhaps? It doesn’t look like one. Maybe some clever person will be able to ID it.

Dinner tonight was a salad with baby potatoes, beetroot, feta cheese, prawns and lettuce. I’ve probably missed something out, but you get the idea. We washed it down with a half bottle of Bijou white wine. Highly recommended!

And that was about it for today. A hot day due to get even hotter tomorrow. Speaking about tomorrow, we’re hoping to go out for dinner with our pals in Larky.

 

 

Out for a spin – 8 July 2025

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Just a run round old haunts.

We spoke to Hazel on a bright sunny morning. We had a good blether about people we knew and books we’d been reading. Caught up with what the foxes were doing, which was appropriate, because foxes were playing a big part in my book today.

Once we were all up to date with each other, Scamp and I struggled and complained about Wordle and all its hangers on. We seem to do nothing but moan about the links the setters find for the morning puzzles, but we still do them religiously, every day.

We both agreed that the weather was too good to waste sitting in the house and we went for a drive over to Gouldings Garden Centre in Rosebank partly to have a spot of lunch and partly so Scamp could ogle the plants on display. Scamp had Mac ’n’ Cheese for lunch and I had what was advertised as Chilli con Carne. I’m not so sure there was a great deal of Carne in the Chilli. There did seem to be a little bit of sugar in it though, which was strange. Scamp said her Mac ’n’ Cheese was a bit sweet too. Hmm were Gouldings kitchen trying to mask something in their lunch menu? Maybe.
When we were leaving with a handful of plants each, I bumped into an ex-teacher, with his wife. It’s been ages since I’ve met him, but he hasn’t changed … thankfully.

We drove along Clydeside for a while and then turned off, heading for Kirkmuirhill and found ourselves behind a slow moving tractor on what was in effect a single lane road. It was a slow crawl through Auchinheath to Kirkmuirhill where eventually the tractor turned off and we had the road to ourselves. Eventually reaching Lidl in Larkhall where we got a flowerpot for one of the new plants and a bottle of Hortus gin for me. I think Scamp enjoyed the run in the country and so did I. We’ve now gathered a few more plants for filling up borders and replacing older ones.

I took a camera and a 50mm f2.8 macro lens out for a walk when we got back. Got a couple of decent shots among the many I took. PoD went to a Cucumber Spider wrapping up its prey. The spider is easily recognised. It’s bright green with a red spot on its bum.

Tomorrow I should book my annual bloodletting at the doc’s, since they asked so nicely, and there may be plants that need a new home.