A Scottish Day – 10 April 2021

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

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

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

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

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!

Gardening, Mojave and Cannoli – 19 March 2021

Not quite in that order, but does the order matter? Not to me, it doesn’t.

Let’s start with Mojave. On this beautiful spring day I decided I’d back up the iMac and install Mojave. I’d downloaded it a few months ago. Said goodbye to Sierra and ran the installer. Oops. Got this message “This copy of the Install macOS Mojave application is damaged, and can‘t be used to install macOS.” Ok, no problem. I’ll just download another copy, except… Mojave is not listed in the Apple App Store. I finally found out how to download it. You first have to put the original installer in the bin then empty the bin. Next you have to restart the machine. Once it’s restarted, you must use Safari, Apples clumsy browser and then there is a path to the App Store that allows you to download the installer. Why this devious path to a free download?

It’s just a ploy by Apple. They want you to install the most up to date version of the operating system, currently Big Sur. It’s the only version available to download openly from the App Store on Firefox, Chrome or any browser except Safari. It seems that the reason they keep hiding older versions of the OS is to keep you moving on to a new OS every year or so until you can’t upgrade any more and a new computer is the only way to upgrade the OS. I’ve read this explanation many times today in different words, but all with the same theme. Apple was always seen as wearing the white hats, but like politicians, they’re all as bad as each other!

That was the morning. Later in the morning we were off to B&M to shop for a new pot for the Pieris that has been looking a bit sad since the end of last year. Also we needed new rechargeable batteries for the solar powered lights in the garden. Got both and both fitted in Scamp’s car. After lunch we were back out again in Blue this time to get ericaceous compost to pot up the plant and another bag of general purpose compost to top up the raised bed. Got both and some other incidentals.

Then the hard work began. We struggled to get that pieris out of its old pot, but it was jammed in solid. There was absolutely no give. Eventually I’d to use a hacksaw to cut the pot away. Then lifted it into the new pot and packed the ericaceous compost gently into the gaps. That should give it some growing space for a year or so. Scamp gave it a good watering, but it will need more tomorrow. I’ve rarely seen roots so packed into a pot.

We agreed that tonight we’d have fish ’n’ chips from the chippy in Condorrat, so I headed off just after 4pm. I saw the daffodils when I was leaving the house. They were shining well in the sun, so they made an easy PoD. While I was waiting at the chippy, I was eyeing up a couple of meringues in the window. Got my order in and while I was waiting I noticed a rack of cannoli, little Italian deep fried pastry shells with a sweet ricotta filling. Just to test them, I got two meringues and two cannoli. They were just as good as any we’ve had in Italy. Only surpassed by ones we bought in a cafe in Venice. The meringues were also delicious.

That was one busy day with a lot of hard work done. The pieris looks happier already. The lights are on in the garden. Hopefully tomorrow will be more relaxing.

Frogs – 8 March 2021

Hundreds of them. All of them, it seemed, busy making more frogs.

The day started wet, but we watched the weather monitor (the birdbath) carefully and eventually when the ripples from the raindrops disappeared, we knew we had a window of dry weather.

Without waiting for second bidding, we were out and walking down to the shops. It’s not a very exciting task, a walk to the shops, but it’s a measure of the boredom we all feel that this everyday occurrence becomes the highlight of the day. The visit was successfully completed and lunch was served.

I went out for a walk after lunch and that’s where I saw the frogs. The pond was bulging with them, all with one thing on their minds, making babies. Well, eventually there will probably little froglets, but the frogspawn was being laid down thickly today. The frogs were too far away for a decent image with the kit lens I had, so I went back to get the long zoom. However, either it or the adapter, or more likely both were having a hissy fit and the lens just wouldn’t autofocus. I gave up in disgust and went back with the macro which is longer than the kit lens, but considerably shorter than the zoom. The result of which is the lack of any good frog photos for PoD. Instead I have promoted the arty photo of some catkins to that spot. Tomorrow, if I get a dry spell, I’m hoping to take the recalcitrant combo of lens and adapter and use them in manual focus mode to grab the shot of the frogs for tomorrow’s PoD. No promises, just a possible work around. One last thought on Frogs before I leave the subject for today: If you’re reading this on computer, you can click on a link on the right hand side for “A Year Ago Today”.  If you navigate from there to the 8th March 2020, you will find how predictable frogs can be.

We had ‘white pasta’ (Fusilli a la Carbonara) for dinner, but on Val’s recommendation, I used Pecorino cheese instead of Parmesan. Scamp said it tasted different but neither better nor worse. I didn’t like it so much as the usual parmesan. Pecorino is much milder and creamier than parmesan. Maybe next time I’ll use a mixture.

Fred phoned me tonight and we talked for an hour or so about various topics including politics and the new comedy series “Drawers Off” where five amateur ‘artists’ take turns at being a partially nude model for the others to paint or draw. Last week was quite interesting, but not quite the quality of art I expected. Tonight’s was just cringe worthy, both Fred and I agreed on that. If you want to see what I mean take a look. It’s only a half hour slot and being at 5.30pm on C4 there’s nothing to scare the horses, except perhaps the final ‘art works’.

Tomorrow looks like wind and rain which might be fine for the frogs, but not so good for the photography. We’ll just have to take it as it comes. Oh yes, and we might hear an announcement from Her Majesty the Nicola about a slight loosening of the rules governing group meeting outdoors.

A walk in the woods – 6 March 2021

Different woods.

It being a beautiful morning, Scamp was raring to go out … somewhere … anywhere. By the time we did get out the sun had disappeared and the clouds were sliding in. Those same milky white clouds that have dogged us all week. We walked down to Broadwood Loch and followed the path clockwise, which like yesterday was against the natural flow of people on the Broadwood Travelator. Again we took the first available exit and walked through the woods where we found a single deer, a hind, grazing beside Orchardton Pond. It stood for a few minutes inspecting us before it returned to its grazing. It was not in the least fazed by these humans pointing things at it. I suppose it must get used to the people walking along this path. I’m sure it wouldn’t be so happy being next to the Broadwood Travelator.

We left the deer to its breakfast and walked deeper into the woods following a winding path between the trees which eventually brought us back to the main path where we continued to walk against the flow until we were back on familiar ground along the ‘exercise machines’ path and from there back up the hills to home. My back was aching carrying one small and one big camera. I really have to be more sensible about these things. One camera is enough with a couple of lenses, but not the great weight of the 105mm macro or the old 70-300mm tele. A walk is no fun when you’re carrying a heavy load. Anyway, I’d pointed a piece of glass at a deer and got a few shots, one of which I was certain would make a decent PoD. As it was, there were quite a few decent shots, but I settled on this shot of the deer hind as my PoD.

Exercise over for the day, I settled down to finish yesterday’s Sudoku and then to select eight photos to send with my bi-monthly (that is every second month, not twice a month) email to my brother. Actually I was running a bit late this time as ‘Every Day in February’ had stolen away so much time. That took most of the remaining afternoon and is in fact, just posted!

Dinner tonight was courtesy of Bombay Dreams which is soldiering on as a delivery service. Quite the best Indian food in Cumbersheugh by a long way and enormous portions. Also the hottest Rogan Josh I’ve had anywhere and the squeakiest Paneer that Scamp has eaten. Half of it was consumed tonight and the remainder we’ll keep until tomorrow, possibly for dinner tomorrow night.

A gentle dance practise tonight just to make sure we (for ’we’ read ’I’) remember it for tomorrow’s lesson. I got both the rumba and the waltz correct … second time around. That was quite good for me. We were both happy with it.

Tomorrow looks like rain. I doubt if a walk will be on the cards, but you never know.

Round a different pond – 5 March 2021

… and into the woods as well.

It was dry in the morning, but cold. Scamp’s wee red car needed a run to warm it up, charge the battery and get the wheels moving, so she got to choose the destination. She chose Drumpellier. It being a Friday, lots of folk were off work and lots of folk had chosen Drumpellier as a place to walk with their pals or push a pram, some even joined the two together and went for a walk with their pal while pushing a pram. Multitasking. Even worse, half the car park was cordoned off to allow the Council workies to get their machines out and lay new footpaths. Spaces in the car park were at a premium, but Scamp found one and just drove into it and we were there.

We walk counterclockwise round the loch. It’s really too big to be a pond. Counterclockwise was not the correct way. Almost everyone else was walking clockwise. Almost everyone else was walking round the loch too on the main path. Scamp doesn’t do that. She likes to leave the main path and take the roads less travelled. That isn’t a metaphor for anything, she just likes the less busy paths. With all that in mind, we took the first available turning away from the main path and discovered the woods. Oak and beech woodlands in Coatbridge isn’t what I was expecting, nor were the deer we saw in bit of bogland between the wooded paths. We only took two paths and easy ones at that, but we both agreed that we’d go back again some time, all being well. We’d also take the path less walked and avoid the conveyer belt everyone else was travelling on. At the end of the path we walked through the Peace Garden and bumped into two guys, one in a wheelchair and one walking. Both retired, the one in the wheelchair hadn’t been out of the house since November. I’m glad he and his pal, both photogs, got a dry day, even if it was cold.

In the afternoon, after lunch I went for a walk in St Mo’s on my way to the shops, but nothing I saw replaced the PoD I’d taken at Drumpellier. It was a wee child’s toy sitting on a stubby branch of a tree . Hopefully whoever lost it will find it again some day soon.

Don’t have any plans for tomorrow. It may involve another walk and then again it might not. It all adds to the mystery of life.

We have snow – 27 December 2020

Just a little scraping of snow, but it’s there.

It must have arrived during the night, but thankfully the tanker that brought it must have been almost empty, because there was so little there. We expected more to arrive during the day, but were disappointed, although there were some who rejoiced in the fact that the paths would be clear of the white stuff.

We didn’t do all that much today. I did finally put on my boots and take a camera with a couple of lenses out to St Mo’s in the afternoon. One of the lenses I took was my favourite wide angle Sigma 10-20mm. It works really well with the adapter. It focuses and responds to aperture adjustments. I realise this means nothing to most folk, but I’ve always liked this lens. It’s big and heavy and was expensive when I bought it, but it produces great images. Thanks to a fairly cheap adapter it still produces them. The Sony recognises its firmware and crops the frame to an APS-C size. It’s a pity it doesn’t fill the full frame, but there’s nothing I can do about that. I’m just delighted it still takes great photos. It was the lens that took PoD which was in the woods behind the pond at St Mo’s. Behind me was a clutter of broken Bucky bottles, beer cans and deodorant cans that allegedly some people sniff for a cheap high that has the benefit of making you a nicely perfumed corpse.

Back home, Scamp was making a trifle with pieces of Pandoro which is Italian Christmas cake. Very light and fluffy and usually dusted with icing sugar. Today it formed the base of a beautiful trifle. It was Turkey Casserole for dinner, but it wasn’t the best turkey in the flock I think. Nothing to do with the cooking, it appears from a few complaints that Tesco wasn’t the best place for turkeys this year. I suppose you could say it WAS the turkey!

Tonight we played Tin Pin Bowls, so called because all the component parts fitted neatly into a small tin. Scamp won, but I think she cheated. After her resounding win we made origami Christmas Trees, and then origami Penguins. Another of her impressive Christmas Prezzies. Great fun was had by both. The penguins actually looked fairly realistic, when viewed at the correct angle … and from a distance!

Tomorrow we may move on to more advanced origami and after a couple of bowling lessons I might manage to get a strike. It’s forecast for more snow.