Category: weather

Down The Green – 7 May 2023

Posted on by Zogman

It was a dry but cloudy morning and we were up and out early.

Scamp suggested we go down Glasgow Green for a walk. Why not, I thought. It’s been ages since we’d gone a walk down The Green on a Sunday morning and this one looked promising. No boots needed today because the sky was clearing and I was sure it was going to stay dry. It did.

The car park at the old Templeton’s building was busy, but there were spaces, not many, but we only needed one! Parked and walked down to the McLennan arch at the west end of the Green. We walked back along the banks of the Clyde, but not before I got some shots of the Albert bridge reflected in the almost still waters of the Clyde. I also got a caught a couple of squirrels climbing trees. Further on the old boathouse is now re-opened as a community hub and there were quite a few folk taking advantage of the brightening weather to prepare boats for rowing practise on the river. We walked on to the suspension bridge and watched the rowers going through their paces. That’s where I got the PoD which is a view from the suspension bridge, looking down towards the city.

We walked on as far as the bridge over to Richmond Park and then headed back to the car along the way we’d come. Lots more folk out today, some pushing prams, some running some cycling and some like us, just out for a morning walk.

There had been roadworks on the way through the east end to get to the park, so I decided to go back via the motorway. Little did I realise that there were even more roadworks in that direction. At first we thought they were removing the stupid cycle lane that nobody ever cycles on and we cheered. Then we realised they were removing the wee line on bumps that marked the width of the cycle only to replace them with a wider concrete kerb and still nobody will cycle in the lane. It will look good on the council’s propaganda, but that’s all. I really should just have gone back the way we’d come it would have been quicker. Hindsight is the only 20-20 vision.

Back home it was just past midday and the sun was shining (occasionally) . Scamp was delighted and for the first time this year she got the folding seat out and the Pimms and sat in the garden for an hour or so. While she was reading in the garden, I was drawing. Today’s prompt was A Chair or An Armchair. I’d already chosen what I was going to draw. It was a wood and leather chair I saw in the Burrell Collection in Glasgow recently. It was one of a pair and was extremely comfortable. It was also quite low, which made it difficult to get out of! It reminded me of a Gerrit Rietveld chair I made a copy of many, many years ago. I had a photograph of it and that’s what I drew it from, then splashed some paint on it. In the end I was quite pleased with the result.

Dinner was a beautiful fillet of Sea Bream perfectly cooked by Scamp so that the skin was crispy. Served with Jersey Royal potatoes and broccoli. Gone in minutes!

Spoke to Jamie later and heard his tale of woe. The cost for the new roof of the house has increased, Simonne’s car needs an expensive engine part and their boiler is dead and needs to be replaced. They won’t have heating for three months We were without heating for three days at the start of the year and we knew how hard that was. However they have an elegant solution to the problems of getting shower. If I could remember all the details I’d explain it to you! They can still smile though, so it’s not all bad news.

Tomorrow we might go shopping. It looks like it will be wet.

A dull day with bright intervals – 3 May 2023

Posted on by Zogman

Not all days are filled with sunshine.  A little goes a long way.

The weather fairies got it right for once. They predicted a dull day with occasional showers, and that’s what we got.

We had half intended to visit the Japanese garden today, but the weather kind of put paid to that idea. It was just dull and dreary. But it did brighten up by midday and the clouds seemed to hold the heat in, so I gave the Skye chilli plant an afternoon in the garden where it could soak up the warmth, if not the sun.

Scamp was determined to give the grass a second cut and with the mower this time, unlike yesterday’s strim of the back grass. That necessitated moving all the pots onto the paths, cutting the grass and then moving them all back again. Of course, as chief pot shifter I managed to put them back in the wrong places and that would never do now, would it. Scamp followed me round putting them and me in our place. We had just finished cleaning the mower when the rain started. A few minutes earlier and it would have been a rush to get everything in before the mini deluge.

The next task was to drive to Tesco to post a parcel and get one or two things we needed for lunch and dinner. Those “one or two things” filled a trolley by the time we were finished and cost a lot more than we’d intended.

After lunch, the rain went off and the sun shone. Today’s prompt was for Dandelions or whatever was in bloom. I thought I’d take a walk in St Mo’s and grab some photos of likely candidates for the Dandelion painting you can see here. There were quite a few as you can imagine and I soon had enough material to work with. None of the dandelion photos were really any use for Flickr photos, but I found a little fern ‘crozier’ that looked interesting and a branch of Hawthorn flower buds just ready to open. Both of them found their way into Flickr and PoD went to the hawthorn buds.

Dinner was a Tesco stir-fry. If you ever get the chance of one, don’t take it. Old tough cabbage and a handful of bean sprouts and carrots do not a stir-fry make. I’ll stick to M&S in future. Cheap sometimes is nasty.

Tomorrow I’ve the dentist in the morning, but the rest of the day is free … so far.

Rain – 30 April 2023

Posted on by Zogman

It was hard to decide if it was just starting to rain, or just finishing a spell of raining when we woke. In actual fact it was just trying out the different textures of rain to see which it liked the best. That too was a difficult decision for the weather, and one it toyed with for a good few hours before finally choosing to stay dry and allow the sun to shine.

There were things to do today. There was milk to buy and a sensible plain loaf, a cake wouldn’t go amiss either, cakes never do. There were people to bump into. People I hadn’t spoken to for years. The people, or person in question was Mary Jane Hunter, ex of Cumby High. She and Scamp had a lot in common apart from height. They had both had cataracts removed and corrective lenses inserted that took away their shortsightedness and gave them a totally new view on life. It’s nice to meet folk you got on with years ago and who you still admire.

Back home Scamp had covered the draining board in the kitchen with an off cut from a waterproof table cover and was potting up her ten Cerinthe seedlings to separate them and to give them a chance to develop better roots. I liked the idea and planted out some Acer seeds my brother had given me last autumn. They had been in plastic bags in the little greenhouse to keep them dry while they ‘conditioned’. Apparently the exposure to sub zero temperatures is needed for them to germinate once they are planted out in soil.

Dinner tonight was Potatoes with Carrot and Onion Mash. Protein was Hoggit Shoulder Steak for me, bought at the farmers market in Embra yesterday and Salmon for Scamp. Unfortunately for her, the salmon just didn’t taste ‘right’. So it was a vegetarian dinner for her. My hoggit was excellent soft and delicious. (2mins 30seconds per side and 5mins resting time). I couldn’t eat it all, so I’ve about a third of it sitting in the fridge for tomorrow or Tuesday. Bananas fried in Rum was requested was requested for pudding. It was excellent too. Hot, sweet, sticky orange flavoured rum coating bananas sliced long ways. Sounds messy and it was, also sounds a bit sickly and it was, but we both enjoyed it. Can’t remember exactly where I first saw it being made, but I think it was on a cruise, years ago.

Because of the rain, I couldn’t be bothered wandering around St Mo’s, getting wet and not finding anything worth photographing, so today’s PoD came from the garden. It’s an Aquilegia playing host to a family of greenfly. I think I might have to evict them soon. As usual with macros, I didn’t see the greenfly until the images had been loaded into the computer.

Spoke to Jamie and Scamp was delighted to hear that he has taken her advice and cleaned all the glazing panels in his greenhouse. They have had a few days of good weather and have almost all the flowers planted now.

We have no plans for tomorrow, and it looks like more rain.

Off to Embra – 29 April 2023

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It was not a very nice day today, so we got the train to Edinburgh to see if it was any better there.

It wasn’t. It was just the same smirr falling from the same sky on different buildings. So we put our hoods up and walked Morrison Street then through the canyon at the Conference Centre and on to Lothian Road where we stopped for coffee at Nero. Thankfully the coffee was better than the watered stuff we seem to get in Glasgow nowadays. I must try the Black Sheep coffee shop in Glasgow to see if it’s an improvement. After coffee and a pastry each, we walked through the Farmers Market (which does seem to have its fair share of farmers and fishers) and I got myself a shoulder slice of hoggit which is a beast that’s older than a lamb and younger than a sheep. Murdo rears hoggits. I always try to get meat from Annanwater Farm in the farmers markets, because it is consistently good quality.

We walked on to the Grassmarket with its collection of stalls selling what is really just tourist tat. While we were there we had a look at the menu for Petit Paris, but decided it would be too busy on a weekend. Better to go on a weekday. The crowds were thickening now. Some of the individual in the crowds were very thick, standing in the middle of the road taking a photo of the castle on their phones, oblivious to the horns of cars blaring right at their backsides. They thought this was Scotland. Land of tartan and kilts and castles, but no cars!

As we climbed up the curving hill of Victoria Street the crowds and the queues got thicker. Thick enough to stand in a queue, in the rain, to walk round a Harry Potter shop. Needless to say, there weren’t many Scottish voices in that queue. We walked on. Eventually we got to JL Edinburgh. This was what JL looked like in Glasgow before it became a clearing house for all the second hand stuff that folk found they could live without. Scamp found stuff there that were on her shopping list for today. I walked round the “Toyshop” on the 5th floor and just looked at stuff that I couldn’t, or wouldn’t afford.

When we left JL we went looking for somewhere to eat, eventually settling on Wagamama. We had to wait for a table, but in out of the rain, thankfully as the rain was getting heavier as the day wore on. We were served by a Japanese lady who was careful to point out that my Grilled Chicken Ramen would be a bit ‘bland’ and when I asked for her suggestion she chose Shirodashi Pork Belly Ramen and she was right! Scamp had Chicken Raisukaree curry which looked very pretty and apparently tasted great apart from the ‘squeaky’ sugar snap peas!

Suitably fed we walked to the station just as the train was pulling in. We were entertained by two Edinburgh intelligentsia. The lady was the ‘numbers’ person and the gentleman was the investor, preparing to make his first million just as soon as he was old enough to buy a scratch card. It was an education, especially because they were both deadly serious.

Well, the rain hadn’t stopped all day, but by the time we got home it had dried up and at about 6pm a watery sun shone for a while.

PoD turned out to be two workers on the top of a multi storey block. I’m guessing they’d a current Working At Height certificate.

No plans for tomorrow.

More driving, fewer photos – 26 April 2023

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Scamp was off today for lunch with the Witches. I was messing about with computers again.

She got picked up by Jeanette just before midday. That left me with a few hours to myself. Never a good thing. Usually I fritter those hours away doing ‘something on the computer’.

I have a 2TB (1TB=1000GB) external drive that was intended to hold just photos, but over the years, I’ve dumped other stuff in it too. I’ve a few 1TB external drives that could be cleared out to make room for the ’non-photos’ on the bigger drive. That would give me enough space to allow me to expand the photos on the 2TB to the most up to date version of Lightroom. It’s a lot of work, but it will be worth it in the long run. Today was the dummy run to see just how much ‘non-photo’ data was clogging the drive. I struggled with it for a while, but eventually decided I was wasting a good photography day, plus I’d another plan in my head.

Originally I’d thought I might go for a run to Milarrochy Bay on Loch Lomond, to photograph the famous tree that stands in the water, but the weather wasn’t looking great for that. Instead, I thought I’d go looking for Busy Lizzies to replace the ones that the frost got to a couple of nights ago and I drove over to Dobbies in Milngavie, but there were no Busy Lizzies, to be found, not even Lazy Lizzies. So I drove back almost to find somewhere photogenic.

My best guess for a decent spot was at The Stables which is a pub/restaurant on the banks of the Forth & Clyde canal. Parked at the restaurant and went for a walk west along the towpath and grabbed a few photos and watched the double decker Airbus A380 flying serenely overhead before banking into final to Glasgow Airport. I didn’t take any photos of it. Sometimes it’s better just to watch.
I wasn’t totally satisfied with the shots I had and walked east to see if there was any more interesting views. Bumped into a couple about our age on what looked like brand new Raleigh eBikes. The bloke was at pains to say that they weren’t total electric powered bikes, you had to pedal too, but the battery kicks in then and helps you. I could see how that would be a great benefit if you were climbing hills, but they were cycling on a flat tow path. Not much of a challenge. However, I wished them well on their travels and they did offer to pose for a photo, but I passed on that.

When I walked back to get the car, I saw my PoD. The Gipsy Princess was docked on the far side of the canal and it made my photo of the day. As I was taking the shot, I thought “GIPSY Princess? Is that PC?” Maybe not, but I’m not exactly PC either.

On the way home I stopped at Calders garden centre. It used to have a host of plants, but today it was looking a bit tired, even if the shop and the teashop were doing a roaring trade. No Busy Lizzies here either. I drove home.

It was a venison burger with potatoes and broccoli for dinner. Although she had already had lunch in the middle of the day, Scamp helped me to scoff the remainder of the veg.

One thing that annoys me about the Blue car is the overspeed warning beeps it screams when it feels justified in complaining that you are going too fast, even when the road signs don’t warrant it. In the two and a half years I’ve had the car, it’s been one of the biggest annoyances in it. Today I found out how to silence it. It’s not easy to find, but it is there, hidden under two layers of menu in the Settings part of the display. Silence is golden!

Tomorrow I’m intending to meet up with Alex to visit the Burrell Collection in Glasgow. Rain is predicted.

Strawberries and a drive – 25 April 2023

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Yesterday I said we might go out for a run today, or else we’d stay home and pot up the strawberries. We actually achieved both!

There was quite a cold snap last night, or early this morning. I’d put the strawberries into the greenhouse to hopefully protect them from the worst of the cold. The Busy Lizzies were already in the greenhouse. The strawberries didn’t seem to have noticed the cold, but the poor wee Lizzies were looking a bit sorry for themselves. Scamp took them out and sat them in the sun for a while, hoping aginst hope that they’d recover. It might have worked, but we’ll find out for sure tomorrow.

It was cold in the morning, but the sun was warm, so we made the decision to pot up the strawberries in their tower pot. It’s a terracotta pot with eight hole for the plants and is the same material as an old fashioned flowerpot. That means it needs to be soaked in water before planting or else it will draw the moisture from the compost, so it has been sitting in a bucket of water for about a week. We made up some compost using two different strengths and then added some gravel to assist with drainage. We only had six wee strawberries in their pots all different varieties. Bad calculation on my part. I’m the Maths Man, apparently. It’s just coontin’ I can’t do. It didn’t take us long, working together for once and not arguing … very much and the pot is now sitting in the place Scamp prepared for it.

After lunch, the sky was still clear, apart from a few fluffy white clouds and I suggested we drive up to the Carron Reservoir to get some landscape photos. It was a fair climb for the wee blue car, up the Tak Ma Doon road with its hairpin bends and 2nd gear hills. Then it was feathering the brakes for the run down the other side. Instead of heading across the road at the end, we turned left for a mile or so and found an almost empty carpark where the parking machine was ‘Out of Order’. Even better.

I put my boots on and we walked through the woods and up past the dam. As we got there a small child, we couldn’t determine what variety it was, was running along beside the dam wall with its parents, holding a ‘6’ balloon. Almost at the middle of the dam, and after a gigantic party popper had fired confetti into the air, it let go of the balloon, just a few seconds before a low flying Easyjet plane appeared over the hill. A bit foolhardy, considering the plane was almost certainly on final to Glasgow Airport. However all was well and the screaming trio ran down the grassy slopes and into the woods.

I took some more shots of the reservoir and the scenery behind. Perfect day for landscapes and the surrounding hills just finished off the view. We sat for a while just watching the world go by and the balloon disappearing into the clouds. Then we walked back and drove the scenic route back, along the banks of the reservoir and down the Crow Road then homeward.

Stir fry for dinner tonight then watched another semi-final of University Challenge were the ‘goodies’ won and the ‘baddies’ were vanquished! Later another episode of Magpie Murders teased us with more information but inevitably complicated more than it explained.

PoD didn’t turn out to include the reservoir or the clouds, but was of the woods and a carpet of pine cones.

You’ll hardly believe this, but Hazy has a Split Rock plant Ruby Flush (Pleiospilos Nelii) called Phileas almost the same as my unnamed Lithops! Some people can’t see green cheese … ! 😉

Tomorrow Scamp is booked for coffee or it may be lunch with the Witches. I have other plans which I won’t reveal yet.

 

The highlight of the day was …

Posted on by Zogman

… going to Tesco. It was that sort of day.

That was in the morning and we needed the usual, bread and milk and came home with a lot more, as usual.

I think that was the furthest I walked today. From the car to Tesco and from the shop back to the car. Oh yes, and a detour for petrol for the blue car.

We had planned to pot up the strawberry plants we’d bought a few days ago, but although the sun was shining brightly, it was cold outside and we put off the garden work for another day. Also, as sub-zero temperatures were predicted for tonight, it didn’t seem fair to subject the strawberry plants to that shock. Let them stay another night in the relative warmth of the greenhouse.

I did get called upon to help Scamp shift a pot of Leucanthemums from the back garden to the front. I suppose I could count that as an active five minutes. Later in the afternoon I set about finding a PoD and today it was a pot of Lithops which have the common name ‘Living Stones’ and I’m sure you can see why. They are quite tiny, the two green ones measure about 1cm on their long axis. They are stemless succulent plants that resemble stones to avoid being grazed by animals in their native habitat which is South Africa. They would never survive in our Scottish climate, so must remain house plants, although they might get a chance to feel the sun on their back for a few days later in the year.

An uninspiring day, really. Last night, apparently the Northern Lights should have been visible here, but there was almost 100% cloud cover when I went to bed around midnight. Tonight the predictions aren’t so good for solar wind activity, but we do have a clear sky!

Tomorrow we might go out somewhere for a run, just to say we’ve been out. Failing that we might just stay at home and pot up the strawberries.

Another bright but cold morning – 21 April 2023

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We had hoped to go out somewhere this Friday morning, but I’d ordered a bottle of rum that was arriving some time today, but before 10pm. Amazon can be so exact with its timings these days!

To accommodate Mr Bezos, and because it was still quite cool outside, We waited until about 11.30 when thankfully Mr B sent an email to say that the delivery would be between 3.45 and 6.45pm. That is a lot more helpful than ‘before 10pm’. So, we’d about four hours to make the most of. We settled on a walk along the canal to Twechar and back. Then maybe a visit to Lidl in Kilsyth. Done!

Off we went. It had been a dry week with hardly a hint of rain, so no boots needed, walking shoes or trainers would suffice. We parked at Auchinstarry quarry where the ambitious ones were intent on scaling the heights of the practise face of the old quarry. The more confident, or just less cautious, climbers attempt the heights of the more difficult (so I’m told) face of the arc of the main quarry where a wrong footing will catapult you into the cold deep waters of the quarry itself. Untold wrecks are allegedly submerged there and many are the tales told about what they contain.

We weren’t going climbing. Too old and sensible for that, besides the clanging of the carabiners would drive us crazy. We were walking anti-clockwise from Auchinstarry, around the old mineral railway line to Twechar then back along the canal footpath back to Auchinstarry. A distance of about 3.25 miles, mainly on the flat, but with a couple of hills. I think we only met a couple of folk on the way to Twechar along the old railway. On the way back on the footpath beside the canal we did have to give way to a few bikes. It was on the way back we realised that the cool east wind that had been on our backs on the outward leg was now in our faces. Also, there is very little to shelter us from the wind on the canal path, while the lower mineral line still has a lot of bushes that act as wind breaks. The upshot is that we should have gone clockwise today. Never mind, we saw a heron steely eyed stalking along the far bank of the canal and further on, Mrs Mallard out with the chicks. PoD was a photo of a house that sits on the far bank of the canal and provides some lovely reflections in the canal itself. It was taken with the new toy, the Sony Vario-Tessar T* FE 16-35mm F4 ZA OSS.
It took us an hour and a half to complete today’s walk and that included time ‘wasted’ taking photos and a wee rest spot on the way back from Twechar. Thankfully the cough I’ve had for the past week or so seems to have gone (fingers crossed and touch wood) and I felt fine, during and after our walk.

We drove down to Lidl for something for lunch and a few odds and ends. After lunch Scamp went out to plant some Antirrhinums and I found that the basil I’d planted earlier in the week had started sprouting. Dinner tonight was a tub of Chilli that Scamp found in the freezer. While not the strongest tasting meal we’ve had, it filled a space.

My Dark Matter rum did indeed come as promised, just after 5pm and because it was alcohol, I had to give the guy my year of birth! Maybe it’s because I look so young. There you are, I finished this blog with a funny!

I believe there are plans to go shopping tomorrow. That will be fine, because the sunny days have apparently gone for a week or so.

Warm sun, Cold wind – 19 April 2023

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The wind was gusty today and from the east. Never a good combination.

We’d considered going out for a run today, somewhere scenic, but the temperature was just 8.5ºc when we woke and it was taking quite a long time to rise. We sat for a while enjoying the warmth of sun shining in the window while knowing it would be much cooler outside.

After lunch we went for a walk round Broadwood Loch. Unfortunately they are still working on the forest section. Re-laying paths and improving the drainage, apparently. We did see one bloke driving a small dump truck. I’m beginning to think he’s the only one working on this project which started in February and doesn’t seem to have an end date, at least not one that’s been made public. Still the dump truck drives around and it’s keeping someone in a job.

Broadwood is a big featureless walk if you exclude the forest section. Unlike Drumpellier, it doesn’t have any side paths to explore. Today with the bright sun in our faces going down one side of the loch and the east wind in our faces going down the other, it was a bit of a trudge. Thankfully Scamp suggested we cut it short and miss out the walk past the exercise machines and I was happy to agree. 2.7miles we walked and I got two decent photos from it. PoD became a picture of some blossom. Scamp held the branch for me to keep it steady in the gusts. Broadwood is not the most scenic of walks, but I think that’s what I said at the start of the paragraph.

Maybe my exertions from yesterday’s labouring were beginning to take their toll on me today. I just didn’t feel as fit as I should be. Maybe I need to get out more. Two shorter walks a day rather than one long one might be a solution.

Tomorrow we are going to Margie’s funeral. She died on the 8th of April. It will be a long day.

Labourers – 18 April 2023

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I felt better when I woke this morning.

Neither of us had anything much on our to-do lists, so we had quite a lazy start to the day. We completed Wordle and Spelling Bee and watched Scott, who lives at the corner, barrowing sand to his back garden. It must be a nice change for him to be transporting sand rather than the hardcore he’s been ferrying for the last week. I think the idea of having an easy maintenance garden with artificial grass was a good one, but he may have blinded himself to the amount of work it takes to set the whole thing up.

Scamp went for the messages later in the morning and we also settled on Cod & Prawns with Fennel & White Wine for dinner. It sounds terribly posh, but it’s one of the easiest recipes I’ve got, and a one-pan recipe to boot.

Just after lunch we noticed two of Scott’s neighbours carrying some wooden planks round to the garden and we decided if we helped out, the job would be done in half the time. Scamp and I carried two 3m heavy plastic panels between us. We’re still not sure what they are, but by the look of them they were decking panels. They were awkward things to manoeuvre round the corners of the narrow public path, but we managed about six of them in total, then we switched to carrying two 3m lengths of 3” square timber instead (note the seamless switch between metric and imperial there ????).

I thought we’d done enough labouring for one day, but Scamp had more tasks in store. She is rearranging the pots in the back garden and using some of them to create a border at the front of the front garden, to prevent unwanted dogs from crapping on our grass. If that doesn’t work, pepper might be the solution! Allied to this is the fact that the peony rose needs to go in to a more suitable container that will give it some room to stretch its roots. With that in mind, we mixed up two lots of compost and added some perlite, then planted the peony. It’s now in its allotted place under the front window where it will get the sun from morning until late afternoon.

Now we really were finished for the day and we could enjoy a beer. A Broadside Shandy for Scamp and the rest of the bottle for me. The sun was tempting me out, so I added my +1 diopter close-up lens to the 35mm LensBaby and went off to find a subject in St Mo’s. Came home with a few catkin shots, but PoD went to an experimental distorted image from this morning when the sun began to cut through the clouds. It was that same setup of the LensBaby with the +1 diopter. I just liked all the out of focus highlights.

According to the weather fairies, it’s to be a good day tomorrow again. We might go out for a run somewhere. No labouring, I hope.