Category: Ageing
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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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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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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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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…
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Life’s resets . . .
As I neared sleep, after a lovely day, I had an idea for a ‘joy’ entry that I had to email myself about in case I forgot. This morning I was glad I’d had the presentiment to make a note. I was thinking about the resets we may undergo in life. How many do we…
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The joy of things to do . . .
I suspect, could be wrong mind, but I suspect that one of the main reasons old(er) people turn to drink is because they’re impossibly bored. I’ve definitely found, for myself, that retirement days sometimes seem to stretch into oblivion and beyond, and I wonder what on earth I can usefully do with myself. But not…
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Six grasses and two cuckoos
We began with the hairgrass, and eyes opened to new possibilities, proceeded to identify five more species of grass along the marshland twirl. Thanks iPlant/PictureThis. Common velvet, meadow foxtail, false oat grass, reed canary grass and rough bluegrass. And many of our stops interspersed with competing cuckoos calling for a mate. The marshland feels like…
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A tiny forest for a tiny garden
Although a large garden is full of delights, it’s also a lot of work. You notice that kind of thing when you get older. And you wonder, can we ever keep this up? Eventually, perhaps, the answer is no, we can’t. So downsizing from our smallholding in Sparty Lea seems like a compelling option as…
Roads to Joy 