Category: Wild flowers

Going for the messages – 12 September 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Just the run of the mill shopping run.

Scamp accepts that Tesco deliveries are a lifesaver at times, but prefers to see what she’s buying, and I have to agree with her. We did a fairly big shop and while we were going round I bumped into Fred and had a wee blether with him. He gave his apologies for not being able to get to the “Beer in the Toon” tomorrow and I understand the pressures he’s facing with his and his wife’s health. Hopefully some day soon we’ll be able to have that beer.

After we’d got through the tills and paid for the messages we trundled them to the car and found that there was nowhere to put them in the back seat because the bag of bottles we took for a trip to Tesco last week were still there taking up space. After a few grumps from me followed by an icy silence, Scamp drove straight to the council skips and we dumped the bottles into the overflowing plastic skips. One job done.

Back home lunch was a roll filled with cheese for me and one filled with Dairylea for Scamp. Honestly I didn’t think they made those Dairylea triangles any more, but it looks like they do. A second roll filled with jam became the lunchtime dessert.

After that we just lounged about for a while doing nothing in particular. Then I took the camera out for a walk in St Mo’s and got today’s PoD which was a little furry hoverfly sitting on a Scabious flower. Nice bit of sunshine on the background created some lovely patterns from the leaves of the bushes. While I was out, Scamp was picking the remainder of the James Grieve apples and beginning to prune the tree into a better shape. I had one of those home grown apples after dinner and it was a bit sharp, but perfectly edible.

Dinner tonight was Carbonara made the proper Italian way without cream, but with an extra egg yolk instead. It worked well.

That was about it for a cool day that was beginning to look like autumn was just around the corner.

Tomorrow I’m intending to head in to Glasgow and Samp is out to lunch with Mags.

Dancin’ – 10 September 2022

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We drove over to Brookfield in beautiful sunshine.

We arrived early, mainly because there were no football matches on today as a mark of respect for the death of the queen, so the road was fairly clear.

First today was a reprise and a cleaning up of the Charnwood Cha-Cha, which we managed fairly well. Next was a new Foxtrot routine. We only did about half of it, but it was looking quite good. A lot more technical than the older foxtrot we learned earlier in the year. After that, things started to go downhill rapidly for me. Stewart announced that we were going to learn a new sequence dance called there Balmoral Blues, and nodded to us, because we’d attempted it on Thursday by watching what others were doing and following them. Today was different. Today we were learning the proper version and it seemed to have many more steps than Thursday’s version. Jane said she hated this dance and by the end of the lesson I fully agreed with her. None of the figures seemed to gel with each other. It just looked like a hodge-podge of moves. Lastly was the waltz we’d been learning. I think my brain had shut down after the Bloody Balmoral Blues. I’d had enough. I just couldn’t figure out where we were and what came next. I apologised to Scamp and sat out the last five or ten minutes and watched other suffer.

We drove home by our alternative route through the Clyde Tunnel which cuts out the dastardly Kingston Bridge. It worked its magic again and we only had about five minutes of queueing on the other side.

Back home, Scamp went out to get chicken for tonight’s dinner and told me to get up and go out for a walk in the sunshine to brighten my mood. I took her at her word, but it wasn’t until she came back that I was kitted out to go for a walk in St Mo’s. Lots of butterflies, Peacocks, Red Admirals and maybe a Tortoiseshell. Lots of bees and hoverflies on the Scabious flowers too. PoD is a Common Carder Bee. Ended my walk by going down to M&S and sourcing a fish pie for tomorrow’s dinner.

I’m still searching for my next phone. I did think about an iPhone 13, but after some good advice from Hazy, I may review the Samsung again. Now it’s your turn Jamie and Simonne. I’m looking at either an iPhone 13 or a Samsung S22+ with 128GB. Hoping it will give me a decent camera and enough storage space for my needs. Do you pair have any suggestions?

Tomorrow is the Cumbernauld 10K.  We may go and cheer the runners on if it’s not raining and if we’re up in time.  We will not be running!

More rain – 4 September 2022

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We’re never happy. Either there isn’t enough rain or there’s too much. Today the moans were about too much.

Not real moans, but it would be good if it would rain all night and leave the days for us going for walks.

After lunch we did go for a walk. Down to Broadwood Loch, over the dam and round the exercise machines, which are gradually being swallowed up by the grass that surrounds them. On the walk we found some pretty purple and yellow flowers that looked a bit like potato flowers, but they seemed to produce bright red berries that the birds didn’t eat. That usually means they are poisonous and after a bit of research online it turned out that they were Woody Nightshade, also known as Bittersweet and were indeed poisonous. The flowers looked so good, they became PoD.

On the way back past Broadwood Stadium we chanced upon a different kind of berries. Lots of lovely fat, juicy brambles in easily accessed clumps beside the car park. We managed to pick just over 700g of berries which, added to my 550g from Friday gave us over a kilo of the black fruit which is now chilling in the freezer, ready for Scamp to boil it down with some apples to make juice that will in turn produce bramble jelly.

Speaking of apples, we had our first apple from our tree today. It was a bit tart, but perfectly edible and without any wasp bites of flaws. Lots more to come, but we were discussing today how best to support the poor tree, because it’s leaning over, pulled down by the weight of the apples. Perhaps Scamp’s right when she says we should reduce the amount of fruit we produce on it. It seems such a shame to remove fruit, but I suppose we have to consider the health of the tree too.

Dinner tonight was Chicken Escalopes.  Chicken breasts bashed flat with a rolling pin before being dipped in egg, then breadcrumbs and fried in the frying pan.  Really, really good.  Of course, Scamp made them.

Spoke to Jamie and thanked him for my fancy tea. He had been buying it online but it seems that there are shops, mainly in the south of England, but there is also one in Scotland. Good to hear from him that he’s beginning to settle into his new job.

We’re hoping to continue our search for a suitable birthday present tomorrow. Somewhere in Glasgow I’m led to believe.

White Rabbits (x3) – 1 September 2022

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Scamp was feeling a bit dizzy this morning, so instead of taking Shona out for coffee, she came to us instead, for tea.

It was really a ladies morning with the two of them going over Shona and Ben’s recent visit to her cousins in London and Warrington. There was so much talk going on that there was no time to show her our holiday snaps. Just before we left to take her shopping, a parcel arrived for me! It was a surprise packet of tea from Jamie. Not your ordinary tea either, this was Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster tea. It’s peppermint and blackcurrant flavoured in a black tea base with ‘sparkles’ that glitter when it’s brewing. It actually tastes quite good. Maybe not quite as good as the bright blue “Intergallactic Space Juice” that came as a concentrate and was added to Sodastream bottles, back in the late ‘70s and early ’80s. Thanks for that, Jamie. It certainly brightened my day.

Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster was of course a cocktail created by Zaphod Beeblebrox in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

We dropped Shona off at the Town Centre and headed back to Tesco for some messages. After lunch I took the camera out for a walk in St Mo’s, but found very little to inspire me. However, back home Scamp had managed to get a photo of a Peacock butterfly on one of our multicoloured buddleia bush. This is probably the first butterfly to visit these “Butterfly bushes” and is certainly the first this year. I think she was quite pleased to beat me to the photo. I managed to get a few shots of it when it returned to the bush, but none are as good as Scamp’s. She must have a really good camera!

It was Mince ’n’ Tatties for my dinner and Bubble ’n’ Squeak for Scamp’s. Both good old fashioned plates of food. I managed to keep a few spoonfuls of the M&T to have for my lunch tomorrow.

PoD was a ball of thistledown waiting for the wind to distribute it to the four corners of St Mo’s. I liked the way it seemed to be bubbling out of the flower head.

Scamp has an appointment at the health centre tomorrow morning to let one of the nurses have a look at her ears and hopefully see if that’s what’s causing the dizziness although it seems to have settled down as the day progressed. After that she’s off to a Witches meeting at Moira’s. I’m thinking about getting the Dewdrop back on the road and going hunting brambles, if the weather holds.

Coffee with Isobel and a question answered – 30 August 2022

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We were out this morning for coffee with Isobel at Costa, so almost coffee.

As usual Isobel was an entertainment. Full of stories of a visit to see the wreck of the Sugar Boat on an afternoon cruise from Greenock. The ship, the MV Captayannis was loaded with raw east African sugar for the Tate & Lyle refinery in Greenock. It was deliberately run aground to prevent it sinking after a collision with another ship during a storm in the Clyde in 1974. Apparently the remains of the ship can still be seen from the esplanade at Helensburgh, but Isobel’s trip started across the Clyde estuary in Greenock. I must admit, this is the first I’ve heard of the Sugar Boat and its story. We must go and have a look for it the next time we’re in Helensburgh. It’s actually visible on Google Maps about halfway between Helensburgh and Greenock.

Scamp was showing Isobel some of our holiday photos and then chanced upon a picture on her phone of a mystery flower that’s growing well in our garden. She showed it to Isobel who immediately recognised it as a Japanese Anemone, and to be honest, it does look like a very large anemone. We’ve been puzzling over that flower for well over a month now, but now Isobel has solved the problem.

We came home via the village to drop Isobel off at her house and then via Tesco to get some messages. Dinner tonight was to be Paella and we needed chicken thighs for that. Of course we bough a lot more besides the chicken. Back home and after lunch I struggled with today’s Wordle and was getting nowhere with it, so I did what I usually do and put it aside and went for a walk in St Mo’s. Not a lot of activity today, but I did get an animated looking group of dandelion seeds. They look as if they’re dancing in the breeze, but actually they’re caught in a spider web. I took a few insect photos too, but nothing spectacular, so the dandelion seeds got PoD.

Paella was ok, but the chicken thighs were a bit cheugh (chewy). Maybe my cooking or maybe not Tesco’s finest. Whatever, it filled a wee space.

We watched a fairly interesting program on the history of University Challenge which is 60 years old this year. I didn’t realise it had been going for such a long time. It was only fairly interesting because there was really far too much padding in it. A 30 minute program made to fit a 60 minute time slot.

I’ve talked Alex into going to the Kelpies tomorrow, rather than Glasgow again. If time permits, we might even get a half hour in Culross.

Dancing, Dodgy Cars and Coast – 27 August 2022

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Drove to Brookfield for dance class, but with half an eye on lunch at Coast!

The traffic was fairly heavy going both ways on the M8, but we had left slightly earlier than usual and had time to spare. Car did a strange thing, it beeped three rapid beeps then the engine appeared to turn off and immediately on again. That’s a bit disconcerting and something I’ll add to my growing list of problems when I take it in for service next month.

Dancing was almost all about ballroom today. I think the teachers are aware that we haven’t had much actual teaching recently and were attempting to fill that gap. We started with the Vogue Waltz which we originally learned at the Perth weekend, so it was really a reprise for us. Next was the Charnwood Cha-Cha which we kind of knew. By “kind of” I mean that Scamp kind of knew it, but I was floundering! Finally we did the Jet Lag Waltz which was totally new for us at least, although some of the others seemed to know it. That’s a lot of different dances to get through in an hour and a half, but we were able to film the Jet Lag Waltz and hopefully Scamp will be able to decode it, chop it into manageable pieces and feed it back to me. I hope so, because next week the teachers are off to Tenerife for a week.

After a Midnight Jive to finish today’s session we were driving to Langbank to have lunch in Coast. That’s when I found out that half my stored destinations had disappeared from the memory of the sat nav. I’m beginning to think that the glitch in the morning caused that information to disappear. This really is the craziest car I’ve ever had the misfortune to drive. We did eventually get a route to the restaurant, but it was a different one from the route the Nissan app had given us yesterday!

The restaurant was fairly busy, but not too busy. My main course was the same as I’d had the last time I was there, Spicy Sausage Rigatoni Ragu with Penne pasta replacing the Rigatoni (a sign of the times). Scamp had Smoked Haddock and Salmon Gratin which she had had at the sister restaurant in Falkirk. We are creatures of habit. Both meals were declared excellent.

We drove over the Erskine bridge then through Bearsden and Kirkintilloch to get home avoiding a third day of the misery of the Kingston Bridge. It probably took longer, but we were travelling all the time. One little misfire from the blue car on the way home.

Back home I took the opportunity of some sunshine to take some more dragonfly photos in St Mo’s, but PoD went to a hoverfly feeding on a wild Scabious flower.

Watched a fairly boring Belgian GP Qualifying and later caught up with Shetland!

No plans for tomorrow. Maybe a day of not driving?

Cabin Fever – 15 August 2022

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Cabin Fever was setting in. I can’t stay cooped up for long.

It had been a wild night, with more thunder and lightning during the night. Also a lot more rain. Torrential rain that came along with the thunderstorm, but also just sheets of straight-down rain that soaked the gardens and grass. That was the kind of rain we needed. The torrential rain just runs off the hard baked ground, but it’s the gentler rain that soaks down into the roots of the plants and trees and that’s what the roots will soak up.

In the afternoon I decided it was calm enough to risk a short walk round St Mo’s. A chance to see what difference the change in the weather had made. There were slugs and snails everywhere. It looked like they were having a party. I suppose slugs especially dehydrate in the heat and so need to get out into the wet to absorb the water into their bodies. Snails can survive for longer by retreating into their shells. I’d taken a camera of course and my PoD was a little Scabious flower with pink among the blue petals. Also, as it was still raining, there were some water drops to add some fine detail. Everything seemed to shine in the sunshine through the rain. I felt better for that short walk.

Still feeling tired and the cough is still there, but Scamp is a looking and feeling a lot better. We’ve agreed to do another test tomorrow.

Busy, Busy, Busy – 3 August 2022

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I easily completed my 10,000 steps today!

The morning was the best bit, but the worst weather. Just plain dull, but we sat and read and puzzled for a couple of hours.

After lunch we walked over to Condorrat to post a birthday card. Scamp didn’t want a walk round St Mo’s because she had lots to do, and so had I, so we came home and moved some stuff around. Removed some things an added in other things. You’ve all been there. You’ve all had that last minute, or last hour, or last day rush. Finally we decided we’d got as much done as we could.

Scamp settled to watch the athletics at the Commonwealth Games and I took the Sony and the new lens for a walk in St Mo’s, just as the sun broke through the clouds and there was blue sky up there too. Unfortunately there was very little doing on the insect front, maybe because of the strong wind, and I thought I was going to come home empty handed, but then I spotted a couple of Honeysuckle flowers just starting to bloom and got a nice contrast between the magenta red of the flowers and the bright green of the background. The day was saved.

After dinner, more finessing of the bags and making real last minute adjustments. Making sure all the paperwork was correct and eventually the padlocks went on. What we don’t have, we’ll need to do without.

PoD went to the Honeysuckle twins.

Don’t know what tomorrow will bring, it’s certain to bring it early!

A toy off the rack – 27 July 2022

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It was coming today, but not until evening. Who would want to be a DPD driver.

It was an early rise for us lazy folk. The lady with the long cotton bud and the questions was coming between 9.30 and10.30am.

She arrived right between those times, and this was to be her last visit to us because from now on we’ll get a sampling kit sent to us and once it’s been used we’ll post it away for checking. The questioning will be done online. All those folk who’ve stood in the rain with masks on, dispensing the sampling kits and asking the questions finish work at the end of the month. I felt quite sorry for her because she seemed to enjoy the work and the meeting people. However, the cotton bud down the throat and up the nose still had to be done today and the questions had to be answered and logged for one last time. I think we’ll keep it on for a while anyway, if just for the free test.

Scamp went off after that to get some essentials from Tesco and I started working out how I’m going to get tomorrow’s picture for Flickr Friday. The topic is ‘Kiss’. My plan involves two ‘Troopies’, male and female kissing. Not as easy as you might think. While I was working on it I got a text from DPD to say that the lens would be delivered between 7.09 and 8.09pm tonight. I had hoped it would be here earlier, but it was not to be.

When she returned, Scamp had bought bread and some bananas. That was lunch sorted for both of us. After lunch, Scamp wanted to cut the front grass because it was a lovely warm day and there’s just the chance t might rain tomorrow and you can’t cut wet grass. While she was doing that, I thought I’d better be gainfully employed, and used the new radiator brush to clean out the inside of the back radiator. It’s amazing how much gunge gets stuck in the vanes of those heaters.

With that done, I offered to cut the remaining grass. I hadn’t realised how technical, cutting a couple of square metres of grass is, but with plenty of instruction from Scamp I got it finished. Or almost finished because she was pointing to a bit I’d missed. Then I was unloading the clippings the wrong way too. I gave up and went for a walk in St Mo’s.

I didn’t get much today, because there wasn’t a lot of insect life about. A couple of Ringlet butterflies was all I found. I was just heading for home when I got a message from Scamp asking me to get a lettuce from the shops. I phoned her to say I’d no money, but if she wanted I’d meet her and we could walk to the shops together. On the way to meet her I found today’s PoD. It’s the seed heads of a Sweet Cicely plant. I’ve photographed them before, but didn’t know their name. Mr Google did. When we got back there was just enough time for a relaxing G ’n’ T in the garden.

Dinner was a salad with lettuce, potato salad (last of our ‘earlys’) beetroot and prawns for me. I’m not really keen on big prawns served cold. I’d wished we’d got some small fresh prawns at the shops. Never mind, it was food. Plus there was strawberry jelly and ice cream for dessert.

Just after 7.30pm the driver delivered the box from MPB. Inside was a red box. This is important. It appears that there is a group on YouTube who have proved that lenses that come in red/orange boxes are better than those that come in white boxes. It’s probably utter tosh, but this was a red box, so I knew we were good!

It’s a neat little lens. Solid feeling and it does indeed produce a distorted wide angle view. Unfortunately it was starting to get dark before I could get any decent images, so tomorrow is testing day.

Tomorrow we have no plans. I thought we were going to a tea dance, but Scamp decided to err on the side of safety. Probably quite right.

 

Wet again – 25 July 2022

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Then after a long heavy shower, the sun shone and the clouds drifted away.

During that heavy shower I was trying unsuccessfully to repair the boot switch of Scamp’s wee red car. I took cover in the car and hoped the rain would go off because I hadn’t realised just how cramped it is in the back seat of an old Micra with the parcel shelf and the boot cover for company. Also, I was feeling the call of nature!!

Eventually the rain eased off enough to make the short trip to the house doable without getting thoroughly soaked. The boot is now locked and won’t be able to be opened until I get the switch mounted properly. The last time I fixed it, it was held together with that amateur mechanic’s standby viz: Duct Tape and Hot Melt Glue. I’m thinking I might try something more substantial this time as the tape was holding, but the hot melt glue was just sitting there, getting in the way. Allegedly you can buy replacement switches from a bloke in Wishaw of all places. Not sure I’m that desperate yet.

Back in the house and feeling a lot more comfortable, I had, what I can only describe as, a slab of bread and roasted cheese for lunch. The loaf it came from was far too soft to cut with the bread knife, really so I had cut a thicker than normal slice to make sure it didn’t crumble away (it made sense at the time). Actually it tasted better toasted than it had yesterday, just spread with butter.

Now that we were pretty sure the rain had gone, we went for a walk over to St Mo’s. There was nothing to see there and Scamp wanted to get a card in Condorrat, so we extended our walk to the paper shop in Condorrat. The next thing she wanted was a voucher from M&S to go with the card and we walked back the way we’d come and onward to the shops. We got the voucher and something for tomorrow’s lunch and walked home.

On the way Scamp got an email with a cabin number we’d requested, so then two computers were utilised to find where that cabin was located. We found it, but it was nowhere like where our initial email a couple of weeks ago had said. Never mind, another box ticked!

I still didn’t have a photo for today, so I went for a walk around St Mo’s again and this time took more heavy duty armoury with me in the form of the A7iii and the 105mm macro lens. Got some photos that looked worthwhile and came home, because in a change from tradition, Scamp had offered to make dinner tonight. Monday is always pasta and I am usually the pasta chef. Tonight it was pasta, Scamp style. It was Macaroni ’n’ Cheese and it was quite the best she’d made for a long time. Not one morsel was left on the plate.

When I looked at the photos, I knew something was wrong. Almost all of them were absolutely filthy. Not dodgy filthy, you understand. No, dust all over the sensor left black marks on the images. It must have been from the old Sigma 10-20mm lens I’d used, or more likely from the adaptor. It took about an hour with a magnifier a blower brush and a fine white paintbrush (that’s never been near paint) to carefully remove most of the dust. After that, cleaning up the actual photos was fairly easily done, but time consuming. PoD went to a wide angle shot of some wild flowers in St Mo’s.

We got some photos from Jamie showing off his tomatoes. They look great. I’m afraid none of ours are turning very red yet. I suppose that’s one of the advantages of having a ‘real’ greenhouse. Well done Jamie.

Tomorrow Scamp has an appointment with the hairdresser and I’ve just realised she might need her car, so I’ll have to tidy it up a bit so it doesn’t look such a sight!