Category: Trees

Another day too good to waste

Posted on by Zogman

Up fairly early and out for a walk in the woods.

Scamp drove us to Drumpellier where we joined the conveyer belt of folk out for a walk in the sunshine. It really was a beautiful day and there were literally hundreds of people in the park, all carefully socially distant. How many times have we walked on that same conveyer belt but never investigating the woods? What an opportunity lost. This was our third trek into the cool shade of the trees. Lots to see if you look. Today we saw a Jay. Years since I’ve seen one with its bright blue band on its wings. Almost got a shot of it on the wing and looking as if it was heading straight for me, but it was out of focus. I did get a static shot of it and, although you can see the blue stripe, you can’t quite see its head because it was in shadow. Pity. We walked on and tried a new path, but found it just lead on to the road backtracked and found a path we’d been on before. Followed if for a mile or so then chose a new one, just to see where it went. It turned out to circle the cricket pitch we’d found last time. From there, all the paths were ones we’d already investigated. Walked back to the car and stopped for an ice cream on the way. The place was even busier now. There was even a bloke busking to a pre-recorded backing track. Never seen that in Drumpellier before. He didn’t seem to be making much.

Back home and after lunch Scamp got the folding seats out and set up in the sun. It seemed a sensible way to spend a warm afternoon on the last day of May. The month started with us driving down to Irvine to go to the first High Tea of Peter’s two day birthday. Along the way it had been a month of stretching our wings, getting gradually further away from the house and the walks round Broadwood, although the weather hadn’t always been great. Wettest on record some said, but it was dry today and the sun was out and I was listening to Rebus on my headphones.

Later I went out for a walk because I wasn’t sure I had any decent shots from today’s walk and could hardly believe that there were two dragonflies circling the small pond the boardwalk crosses. They were busy making more dragonflies, so paid no heed to me, but were far too far away and too fast to catch with a camera. I did see a couple of damselflies too, but they were too skittish, probably avoiding the bigger dragonflies. The best shot I took was just a branch of May blossom. It looked ok.

Dinner tonight was a salad with tuna pasta and curry rice which was just ok. Scamp had boiled the rice earlier and I added the curry powder and some curry paste, but it didn’t taste like I expected. However the pasta was lovely and worked so well on a warm day. We sat outside for a while to soak up some extra rays, but I nearly fell asleep and we retired to the house to tidy up and for me to get started on the last EDiM drawing of 2021.

Today’s prompt was your computer mouse. Rather than draw my usual mouse I drew an old corded mouse. It works when no other mouse will. It’s not as flaky as the Apple Magic Mouse 2 and it doesn’t use batteries that fail when you really need them, like the Logitech ones. There’s a place for old tech, even these days.

Tomorrow we’re hoping for another good day and we’re hoping to get out for a walk.

Off on our travels again – 19 May 2021

Posted on by Zogman

Another beautiful morning. Scamp suggested we do the ascent of Barr Hill or drive to Dunfermline for lunch. I thought if we went to Dunfermline I might get a chance to play with try out my 6 stop ND filter at Torryburn on the way home. That seemed to meet with her approval, so I bundled two cameras in the car (the tripod was already there) and off we went.

Parked at Pittencrieff Park and with the Oly in its old brown bag slung over my shoulder and the tripod left to look after the Sony in the car, we walked over the park. Trees were beautiful carrying a full head of blossom. We walked down past the big glasshouse which was locked as expected due to Covid restrictions and round the formal garden which looked well maintained although hardly any of the flowers were blooming. Just too early in the year for that. Lots of primary kids on activities week running races and having shouting matches in the big empty spaces of the park. Two folk were doing a meditation under a bit tree. I don’t know what kind of tree it was, we weren’t close enough to do an ID, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a Bo tree!

We walked over to the aviary and found one shy peacock that would strut along the outside of the fenced enclosure, take a look at us and hurry back. It did this three or four times. All the peacocks and peahens had names and identity rings on their legs. Two old guys were discussing them as if they were family members or friends they met at the pub. Today’s PoD came from there and was just a lucky shot, catching the bird with that “What you think you’re looking at?” look on its face. We said goodbye to the peacocks and the peahens and headed into town. We went in to Nero and I had the best coffee I’ve tasted (except my own) for about a year or more. After the first wave of the pandemic, Nero started selling coffee in takeaway cardboard cups and seemed determined to fill the cups to the brim, diluting the coffee so much it was undrinkable. Today’s coffee, while not up to my or JIC’s standards was certainly a much more palatable drink than those watery waste of taste cups from last year. Even better, the coffees were served in real cups. Surely a sign that things are returning to normal.

We both wanted to get a cheap Hoodie, just to keep in the car for emergencies. Right next door to Nero was Primark. Less than £20 for two hoodies seemed like a bargain. They’re not top quality, but they will serve the purpose they were bought for. We walked back to the car, not stopping to count the boarded up shops that won’t open again for some time. Some shops that have been in the town for years have now disappeared. That’s sad. Dunfermline was a bit of a ghost town before Covid hit, but not even the ghosts have gone, it seems. Maybe it will rise from the ashes, but it might take some time.

Drove back via Torryburn where I was hoping for high tide, some heavy clouds and a bit wave movement. Unfortunately, the tide was right out, the sun was shining and you couldn’t even see any waves. We didn’t even get out of the car, we just drove home.

Stopped at Tesco to get yet another birthday card (count back 9 months from mid May and that might give a clue to the reason for those births 😉). Scamp got herself a pair of leisure trousers.

Scamp had bought me a tray of Calabrese yesterday, so when we got back I planted a row of them in the raised bed and watered them in. I don’t really think they will need watered, because we’re due some heavy rain tomorrow. I also completed today’s prompt which is “The View From Your Window” That was tough. I’m not totally happy with the result, but it’s finished and it’s uploaded now, so I’ve completed today’s challenge.

Tomorrow, because of the weather forecast, I think we might go for a drive if we’re going out at all. I don’t think a walk will be on the cards.

Walking in the woods – 24 April 2021

Posted on by Zogman

The woodlands of Coatbridge. Not the first thing that springs to mind when I think of Coatbridge.

Coatbridge used to be a centre for heavy industry with a dirty old dilapidated canal running through it. Now it’s cleaned itself up quite a lot and most of that dirty old canal has been drained or filled in and where that failed, it’s been gentrified. We used to restrict ourselves to a wet walk around the pond whose name is really Lochend Loch. The path was really a conveyer belt with people in both directions, keeping left and stubbornly completing their exercise for the day. It was only recently we discovered the paths into and around the woodland that covers the majority of the park. The forests are a mixture of deciduous and coniferous trees and the paths are wide and winding. Some gentle climbs and some slightly more demanding. All easy walking, really. It’s difficult to get lost with the park being bounded by a railway line, a road and the pond, oops Loch. Wandered round today and chose a new path we hadn’t travelled on before and found a cricket ground. A cricket ground in Coatbridge! Who knew? The walk finished with an ice cream cone which seems to be becoming the icon of this spring’s warm days.

Back home I fashioned the remains of yesterday’s pizza into another shared pizza. It wasn’t quite as memorable as yesterday’s, but it filled a wee space. After that and after a cup of coffee, Scamp seemed determined to tidy things up an I got my shorts and boots on and went for a walk in the woods of St Mo’s. I’d tried a few shots of blossom and horse chestnut flowers in Drumpellier, but I reckoned there was better to be found in St Mo’s. Actually it was the blossom from Coatbridge that got PoD and a little mini tree got second place. None of the chestnut tree pictures got a sniff at the place on Flickr. Maybe once the candelabra flowers open up they will get their place in the sun and on Flickr.

Dinner tonight was a disappointing curry from Bombay Dreams. Pakora was only just warm and my Chicken Tikka Bhoona had too much ghee and too little flavour. Scamp’s seemed to be a bit better. Not their best offering.

Tomorrow may be the last of the warm spring days and we might go for another walk somewhere interesting and not too far away.

 

Spring Cleaning – 15 April 2021

Posted on by Zogman

We had some things that either weren’t working or were surplus to requirements. We took them on a one way trip to the skips.

Scamp had been collecting bags of broken and tired looking things that were lying around the house or garden. Thankfully I was excluded from the collection although the description seemed to fit me quite well. We gathered them all up and took them to the skips. Drove back via the garden centre where we got a parsley plant, some violas and a couple of packets of seeds with compost to plant them in. Real compost this time with real soil in it, not just the dust and fibres that we dump from the hoover.

Back home and after lunch Scamp started to clear out the bin shed which, just to confuse things doesn’t have any bins in it now. Now we have wheely bins four of them that clog up the front door. Thanks for that NLC. Just what you want at your front door, four smelly bins. Anyway, I was called in to supervise the operation and ensure that all the stuff she had earmarked for the next skip deposit really was rubbish. We came to an agreement on almost all of the garden accessories. I held on to a bag or two of cement, but that was really just so she wouldn’t get things all her own way and so I could use them as bargaining chips in later discussions.

Next task for Scamp was to plant the violas and between us we completed an in depth investigation on the Gypsophila which then became a post mortem. Neither of us could find any life in the plant. However, on reading some trustworthy reports on the Interweb, it appear that the plant dies back in autumn and it is recommended that it is cut right back in spring. That’s exactly what we did today! It may live to flower again in the summer.

I went for a walk in St Mo’s in the late afternoon just to grab some photos. Instead of the Sony I took the little light Panasonic GX 80 and one lens. Today’s PoD shows that it’s perfectly capable of producing good photos from its small sensor.

We watched the first of the Sewing Bee tonight and I have to agree with Hazy that cats were never meant to wear coats. I think the same about dogs. Real ‘dugs’ have a thick coat that protects them from the cold. To some eyes they may seem ‘cute’ in their little knitted woollen jackets, but they don’t need them! The contestants were the usual mix of crazies, fanatics and chancers. Haven’t picked a likely winner yet, but if my choice of winner of the Landscape Artist of the Year (Canada) is anything to go by, it’s stick a (sewing machine) needle in a name and that is the likely winner, or that’s the one who will go out first.

Tomorrow we are exercising our legal right to travel anywhere in the length and breadth of Scotland. We think we know where we’re going. Tune in tomorrow to see if we made it!

Walking in the woods – 14 April 2021

Posted on by Zogman

Off to Motherwell in the morning to get lost and then found.

We parked in the little carpark. Really too small a carpark for such a large area to walk in. Having said that, it’s never been empty and it’s also never been full, so maybe it’s just the right size.

It was a beautiful day. Around 7am it had been bright with blue sky and sunny. However when I went to make breakfast at around 9am a heavy mist had appeared from somewhere and it had blotted out the sun. Made breakfast for us and went back to bed thinking that today was a write-off. I needn’t have worried because by 10am the mist had disappeared, although the folk in Kilsyth were still holding on to it because mist, fog and low cloud seems to roll down from the Campsies on one side and from Cumbersheugh on the other. We were back on track again.

So it was a perfect day for a walk in Barons Haugh. This time we were heading over the hill and down to the bird sanctuary with its hides, then followed the Clyde downstream past some posh, make that ‘very posh’ and ugly houses. Then on to an underpass to Strathclyde Park. Stopped there for a few slices of apple that Scamp had thoughtfully sprinkled with lemon juice to stop them discolouring and give them a bit of freshness. Unfortunately the only way back was to follow the path we’d just travelled. As I’ve said before, I don’t like walking the same path in both directions. Next time we’ll do a round trip.

What did we see today? Lots of flowers for a start. One I still can’t ID. It might be a Summer Snowflake which I’ve never heard of before, but it made PoD. We also found one single Snake’s Head Fritillary. I’ve never seen one in the wild, but I did try to grow some once. They flowered, then just disappeared, never to return. We found an island in the Clyde. It had once been a car. You could clearly see the four wheels. It was upside down and had been there long enough for a tree to start growing from the chassis! How it got there remains a mystery.

Climbing back up the hill to the car was a bit energy sapping, but taking it slow and steady got us to the top. We passed and then were re-passed by two young guys on bikes. I don’t think they’ll cycle that road again. This wasn’t a path to cycle on a Halford’s bike. I hope their legs were in better shape than mine. When we got home I had to walk about for a while to east the cramp in my calves. I feel much better now, but tomorrow the stairs might be a trial.

I don’t think we’ll be going far tomorrow. A trip to the skips is on the cards, just to get rid of some junk.

A Scottish Day – 10 April 2021

Posted on by Zogman

In other words, four seasons in one day.

It was still below zero when I was making breakfast. I did toy with the idea of getting dressed and going out to take some photos, but that was as far as it got. I decided instead to go back to bed after I’d set the iMac to do a backup. I browsed the Audible site to see what books were available and more importantly, after a warning from JIC and Hazy, listening to the readers. Some of them were terrible and were rejected immediately. I under the “Valley Girl” description Hazy. I think I’ve settled on one, but I’ll have another listen tomorrow.

It took the sun quite some time to raise the temperature above the zero mark. There was frost on the roofs of the cars and it stayed for quite a while in the shadow areas of the back garden. We weren’t all that bothered about rushing out, because we were waiting (im)patiently for the post. Eventually he arrived and yes, he had a parcel in his hand. Inside was a little snake shaped paint brush holder. I’d been meaning to make one of these since I saw a tutor using a brush holder in a video I’d been following. His was just a piece of wood with slots cut to hold the brushes, but this was shaped like a little green snake hand painted by the look of it. A brilliant prezzy Hazy, even if the Royal Mail were hoping to keep it for themselves. Thankfully they relented and handed it to me. It will go into the painting room as soon as I get the table cleared. At present it’s a propagating table for my Aquilegia flowers.

Eventually, after lunch we did go out for a walk in  the sun. Once round the pond at St Mo’s for Scamp then she exited in the general direction of the shops, while I went into the wooded area looking for interesting photos. That’s where I found today’s PoD. It’s another horse chestnut bud, but this is from a bigger tree than the last one and is a bit closer to opening into full leaf. Such beautiful detail in the veins of the leaves.  When I  got home we had a snow shower which looked as if it might lie, but it soon went off and the lying snow melted away,

Dinner tonight was a Chinese stir-fry made by Scamp. I don’t have the skill to work fast enough to make a stir-fry without burning it.

I messed around with two of the front runners to replace Lightroom, but neither of them offer much of an advantage over Lightroom, so I suppose I’ll just keep it running for a while, maybe using the free cut down version of Capture One if I need it.

We had a quick dance practise tonight and although we made a decent attempt at the Rumba, Tango and Waltz, our Salsa skills are decidedly rusty now and maybe we’ll be feeling the effects of that more energetic dance tomorrow.

No plans for tomorrow, other than doing the Tesco order! Such fun.

 

The North wind did blow – 5 April 2021

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And we did have snow.

Thankfully not a lot of the white stuff, but the evidence was there, on the cars and on the grass. It soon melted in the sun. A beautiful looking morning with blue skies all around and bright sun. However, one look at the outside temperature told a different story 0.7c is pretty cold, even for early spring. I thought we might stay in the warm for a while before we risked going out for a walk. Just to give the world a chance to warm up.

An hour or so later some clouds were arriving from the north and we felt it was time to go out and stretch our legs. Out of the wind, it was quite pleasant, but facing into it, you really did feel that icy blast. No more snow, but a bitter cold. We walked down and round the end of Broadwood Loch, over the dam and down the long winding path past the exercise machines then up the hill to the shops. Not a lot needed today. Just some mozzarella cheese and some fruit and veg. Then it was back home to make lunch.

Yesterday I’d made paella for dinner and as usual I made too much. Scamp had the idea of making some arancini with it. Little balls of left over rice and peas stuffed with mozzarella, dusted with flour, dipped in egg then rolled in breadcrumbs before being deep fried in oil. Scamp was doing the making of the balls and the stuffing with breadcrumbs, plus the dusting with flour. I was doing the dipping in egg and rolling them in breadcrumbs until I had enough to slide into the pot of hot oil. We had about three or four each and that was more than enough for a lunch. They were tasty, but if I was making them again (and I hope we will) I’d use a bit more mozzarella next time.

The lovely sunshine and blue sky kept calling me, especially as the clouds had cleared away again, leaving a sparkling day. However it only took a moment to remember that cold wind that would blow away any enjoyment of a walk in St Mo’s. Anyway, I had enough photos from the morning’s walk I thought. I spent the afternoon watching a tutorial for a piece of editing software I’d got a free, not time limited, copy of. It’s a cut down version of the full editing package which costs an arm and a leg. It must have been one of the best video tutorials I’ve seen. Hardly a stumble in the guy’s explanations and everything clearly presented. No histrionics either. So many people, mainly americans, have to shout at you and dance around when they’re supposedly teaching techniques. No, this was an adult, confident in his ability. He did do a bit of soft selling at the end, but didn’t push the full price version. I was impressed.

It was spaghetti with a tomato sauce for dinner, but the star attraction was home made Sticky Toffee Pudding with loads of sauce and custard. Delightful, Scamp!

Today’s PoD was a branch of blossom caught on our morning walk. I could get used to this morning walk regime. It means we have to get up fairly early and get out. It also leaves time for me to go for a photo-walk later in the afternoon if time and weather permit. It’s so easy to just vegetate on cold days like today. I should have gone out in the afternoon, but my time wasn’t totally wasted. The PoD was processed in the new software which is called Capture One. I knew you’d want to know that JIC.

Another brightener today was seeing the first swallows and this is week 14.  Fairly late this year, but what a welcome they had, flying all the way north from Morocco and arriving into a snow storm!  Whatever would they be thinking?

No great plans for tomorrow, but if it’s as cold as today which seems likely, I may do some fancy Tear and Share bread baking.

 

Huntigowk – 1 April 2021

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Or April Fool’s day if you’re not Scottish.

We had a late rise today, because although the weather looked good, it might be trying to fool us into going out and getting wet. Just to be sure, we had an extra lazier morning than usual. However I did manage to get Thursday’s Sudoku completed. I also kneaded some dough for a loaf, so maybe not all that lazy after all.

As lunchtime approached Scamp volunteered to drive down to the shops to get some ‘messages’. While she was out I backed up the nearly five hundred photos I’d taken in March, and that was after I’d culled an extra three hundred! Belts and braces style, they are backed up twice in two different drives, so this took quite a while. When Scamp arrived home, in addition to the usual stuff, she also brought a chicken. So that was tonight’s dinner sorted.

After lunch, Scamp wanted to get started again in the garden. Especially she wanted to plant some flower seeds and chop out a chunk of the Astilbe plant that grows beside the kitchen steps. I like the plant, she doesn’t, but I allowed her to chop out a section to give to Isobel who doesn’t have one in her garden. It’s a pretty plant to my eyes, but I agree it does spread quite aggressively. I hope she warns Isobel about that.

While she was working on the planting table in the back garden potting up flowers I got ready to go for a walk. I’ve been waiting for weeks for Tiso to open because I really need a new, decent pair of boots. I checked on line to see when they would be allowed to open and found to my surprise they had been open since 1st March! Just to be sure I was right, I phoned the shop and sure enough, they were open from 9am to 5pm all week. I think there is a loophole here. Cycle shops have been allowed to open for some time and Tiso has a large bike shop in their building. Whatever the reason, I’m intending going in to visit them tomorrow to get the aforementioned new pair of boots.

Walked over to St Mo’s and expected to see the tribes of braves and squaws slugging their firewater and practising swearing at each other, BUT… Instead of tribes of marauding teenagers, I found a neatly stencilled sign announcing a Pop-Up Fairy Garden. Behind the sign, and around all the trees were fairies, fairy doors, magic treasure chests and even a fairy washing line. Absolutely gobsmackingly brilliant. It must have been a lot of work by someone. I had to take some photos of it, because it was a Pop-Up and because it was done by fairies, I knew it might not be there tomorrow. My favourite was the fairy washing line and it made PoD. Thank you, whoever you are.

After the photoshoot at the Fairy Garden I went for a short walk in the woods, found the Larch Pineapple and got a few shots of it in a gentle breeze. Much easier than trying to hold the branch still in a gale with one hand while operating the camera with the other. Happier with this photo. It’s on Flickr too.

The bread was baked in the oven and when it came out, the chicken replaced it. As usual, it was delicious served with broccoli and rustic chips.

A parcel arrived by DPD from Perth. I ordered coffee on Tuesday night and it arrived today. That is consistently good service and consistently great coffee.

Quick practise of the Telemark Turn in Tango. It took a few tries to get that spin to work again, but we haven’t practised for a few days. I have to keep working at these things otherwise the muscle memory fades.

Tomorrow, hopefully, a visit to a cycle shop for a new pair of walking boots.

 

 

 

At last, a pineapple – 29 March 2021

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It was a windy old day today and a lady arrived and asked us to stick something down our throat and then up our nose. What a fun day.

We’ll get to that in a minute, but before that I cleared my painting table and put the potting tray on it along with four flower pots and one of those plug trays that look like the inside of a chocolate box, vacuum formed for those who used to teach about such things. A bag of that disgusting peat-free compost and a trowel completed the inside gardening accoutrements. I already had the seeds in the room and I proceeded to fill the pots with compost and sow Yellow Aquilegia, Strawberry Aquilegia and plain old natural Purple Aquilegia. Next was the plug tray. It too was filled with the same compost and into it was planted peas that I’d harvested last year with this exact purpose in mind. Two peas to each compartment. They might be Boogie or Ambassador or some other pea, I’m not sure. I took everything back down to that windy garden and watered all the seeds with pure rainwater and put them in the greenhouse and zipped it up to keep out the wind and hopefully to capture some of the sun’s warmth. Let’s see what appears.

The lady arrived, an Australian lady this time. Strange, it’s always been a lady who brings these instruments of torture and asks us questions. This time she was offering another year of tests although we are only part way through this year’s lot. The next tests are blood tests and I don’t think we’ll be taking them. I don’t mind the questions and the swabs, once you’ve done them a few times aren’t really all that bad. However, we were discussing the blood tests and assume we’d wouldn’t be able to do them in the kitchen. If that’s the case, then we might have to travel to Motherwell to the big ‘Tumbling Dominoes’ centre to get the blood taken. In summer it’s an ok drive, but a waste of a morning or afternoon, but in the winter it’s a different story. We’ll wait to see if we get offered them and what the procedure will be, but I think we’re thinking we’re doing enough.

Just after she left our Tesco order arrived with a substitution of Kinder Eggs for the Cadbury’s Cream Eggs Scamp had ordered. This was a surprise to me because I didn’t remember ordering them. Scamp was annoyed because it was meant to be a surprise for me, a good surprise. So the Tesco delivery man is in the same bad books as Alexa, who divulged the content of the delivery that was to be a Scamp’s birthday surprise.

I went for a walk later in the afternoon when the wind was calming down a bit and the rain that had been on all day had stopped. I wanted to see if I could find some Larch Pineapples, also called Larch Roses apparently. I couldn’t find any although the pollen dispensers were there in their hundreds, then, high up in the tree I saw what looked like a ‘pineapple’. I walked round to the windward side of the tree and finally found a couple of ‘pineapples’ just above head height. The wind was gusting strongly on this side of the tree and out of the five shots I took, the one you see was the only survivor of the cull when I got back home, and by virtue of that, the PoD. You can see how the shape of the pine cone is already there in the petals of this flower, because that is what it will turn into, a pine cone.

Hoping for a better day tomorrow. Today was wild and wet, but warmer than it’s been of late. Tomorrow will be cooler as the wind turns more northerly, but hopefully we’ll manage a walk.

A taste of Japan – 20 March 2021

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Have you ever had one of those days when you wake up feeling that something’s just not right and it follows you all day? I had one of those days today.

Oh dear, milky white sky, but the clouds were low too. The Campsie Fells were covered to about halfway down, but from the cloud line down they were in beautiful sunshine. Very strange indeed.

The clouds seemed to take a long time to lift and disperse, in fact it wasn’t until after lunch that things began to clear and we felt able to go out for a walk, but still that strange feeling irritated me for most of the afternoon. Scamp tried her best to lift it, and eventually a walk round Broadwood Loch and her constant chipping away at it finally broke through and the sun shone. From then on life returned to normal. We walked round the loch, but didn’t venture into the woods because I was pretty sure the path would be flooded and that would be no fun. Instead we walked clockwise against the flow of anticlockwise walkers with their dogs, around the edge of the loch. Then it was up the gentle but continuous climb past the exercise machines and on to the shops.

I suggested to Scamp today that we should perhaps declare Friday and Saturday to be no-cook or easy-cook days. When you’re retired you don’t have weekends. Heavens, many people who are working from home during this pandemic don’t have weekends either. So, to give us something to look forward to and to give the week a structure we should treat dinner at the weekend as a stay-home restaurant meal. Sometimes we should get a take-away delivered or walk over to the food outlets in Condorrat to collect a meal, or like today, we could get an easy-cook meal from M&S. Today’s meal was a Japanese food box with Chicken and Teriyaki sauce, Katsu Chicken Curry, Chicken Miso with noodles and a well named Firecracker Chicken. All served with rice. Sounds complicated, but basically you pierce the film on all the trays and bung the lot into a pre-heated oven for 20mins or thereabouts while you relax with a nice glass of red. Pudding was Bramley apple sponge from the same shop. That worked for me.

Between returning from the shops and cooking this complicated meal, I went over to St Mo’s to see what happens when two tribes go to war, and also to get some photos. Lots of rubber-men and rubber-girls staggering around but nobody seemed to be wearing any warpaint, so I presume:

  1. Peace had been declared.
    Or
  2. The batteries had run out on the ghetto blaster.

Perhaps even both. The woods were silent. The woods I went to were at any rate. Earlier I’d photographed some Flowering Currant bushes (Ribes sanguineum) almost exactly a year after my last Flickr picture of them. I also found some larch pollen buds just opening with a nice bit of side lighting and that was the shot that got PoD.

Altogether, my day was a bit like the weather. It started off cloudy but soon the sun shone and drove the clouds away. Thankfully Scamp has that effect.

Maybe a walk down the Luggie tomorrow. Haven’t been there this year I think!