Month: June 2022
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Spring garden blossom
It’s no longer spring, and the garden is really a series of plants in pots on the gravel and deck, here at Spring Cottage, but the blossoms greeting us on our arrival were fulsome and real. We tied up the drooping Scottish thistle, falling from its own magnificence, and positioned the ruby snapdragons tighter against…
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Very wet today . . . lovely!
A couple days ago I clocked a column headline that gave me pause, and this morning I returned to Ian Jack’s piece and read it carefully. He explains, with some precision, why we need a new story about the ‘glorious’ weather construct that we put on sunny days. To which I would add, after a…
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Conscientious reading today
Today, although there’s some driving ahead, mostly my job is to read and to think. Read conscientiously, looking at submissions from the lovely Writers Groups I belong to, thinking and reflecting on the turn of phrase, the development of the creative effort. I may snuggle down into reading for pleasure as sleep beckons, but mostly…
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Oh we do love to be beside the seaside . . .
Early Monday morning, everyone is struggling to wake up and pack up for the off, after a delightful weekend of fish and chips, pizzas, and then a complete Sunday dinner. Food and drinks have been in copious supply, just like the sunshine. It seems the whole country was filled with sunshine, actually, as the reports…
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Forget it, corvids . . .
We’ve finally finished sorting out Mr Duck’s patch with biosecurity netting. It turned out that the rails I had laying around were exactly the right size to be supports for the jackdaw-proof netting, and so the task was relatively easy to facilitate. The challenge has been that the jackdaws, especially if they go in two-by-twos,…
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Palpable relief?
Over time, I think it’s natural to develop work-arounds, ways of accommodating when things don’t go according to plan. So if the fan oven element could not be repaired, or if the problem was deeper in the electronics somewhere I couldn’t reach, there was still the other side which works without a fan. Work-arounds are…
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The shock of discovery
I often find myself dropping down an Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole on my various researches. Sometimes I’m shocked, and that shock brings, I must confess, a frisson of delight. Wow, I think to myself in the idiom of my early adolescence, that’s amazing! Or scary! Or embarrassing! Whatever, it’s the shock that stimulates. Today…
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Green Island
The midgies swarmed the shoreline, but they didn’t follow us out onto the loch. We were prepared, nevertheless, with our anti-midgie spray, our hats and mesh netting but these accoutrements weren’t necessary after all. I gradually got the hang of the oars in the oarlocks and we moved steadily toward our first destination. But on…
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Our first salad from our downsized delight . . .
They say you need to pick the baby leaves of the mixed salad crop so as to enjoy their special piquant flavour and delicacy, and so that’s what we did last evening just before dinner. Very tasty with slices of cherry tomatoes and avocado in a simple olive oil and white balsamic vinegar dressing. Delish!…
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Clouds of Dame’s Rocket
But the clouds of blossom are so enchanting, and apparently its evening scent so complements the visual delight, that perhaps we can forgive this dame’s rocket for its rampant colonising along the river bank. I love the appearance of these wild flowers at the bottom of the track. Up in our own little patch, we…
Roads to Joy 