Category: Musings
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Cuckoo calling and schadenfreude
We clocked several new plants on our pleasant amble through the marshland yesterday. All identified with the iPlant app, beginning with ‘fox and cubs’ and moving on to the pink flowered ‘Endres cranesbill,’ the ‘bush vetch’ and the ‘blister sedge,’ and finishing off with the ‘long-headed poppy.’ The plants were a delight enough for us,…
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The tyranny of history?
We ambled along the same routes that Robert Burns would have taken two hundred and fifty years ago, as we twirled around the town of Dumfries yesterday on our busman’s holiday*. We visited the imposing mausoleum erected some thirty years after his death, that replaced the original simple stone slab marking his burial site. We…
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The things you miss . . .
Our walks over the past two days have been intriguing more for the things we didn’t immediately see than for those we clocked with only a casual glance. Within the beautiful cluster of aquilegias, growing wild beside the storm drain, a bumble bee was busy, searching for nectar inside the wrinkled blossoms. I wouldn’t have…
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The humbling grace of time
We made an unhurried trip to Kirkcudbright yesterday afternoon to visit the monthly Producers’ Market there, and then after acquiring our consumables (heath honey; cheese melt; basil plants; sea weed and juniper smellies; beer), we ventured into the Kirkcudbright Galleries across the road to see the Galloway Hoard exhibition. But it was only much later…
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Joy of the little jobs
I find that maintaining a never-ending list of things to do, just here on my laptop desktop, is one way to achieve some sort of peace of mind. It’s good to see that I’ve accomplished something, whereupon I copy, cut and paste that job into the SORTED section along with a little tick. I don’t…
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Return of the European goldfinch
We’ve missed them, these brightly coloured little birds, though chaffinches, sparrows, dunnocks and the blackbirds have been here throughout the winter. I kept them nourished from the feeders that are designed to keep jackdaws and rats out, though the unwanted creatures are getting better at filleting out morsels even so. But late yesterday morning two…
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A tidy conservatory . . .
Most of the time it’s a utilitarian usefulness that the space affords us. We never seem to have the time to sit and enjoy, but rather we’re busy in other rooms doing other crucial things. Yesterday I started clearing the staging (it had held the chitting potatoes, for example, and then seed trays) and then…
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The feeling of being needed
I often feel that I’m not needed, and that can be hard to bear, after insinuating myself into a variety of positions where it seemed only I could facilitate. We set up a robust swing for the grands, a decade ago, but found that a garden bench swing was also needed for ourselves. We did…
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A slight act of selflessness . . .
I wondered why the marjoram label was regularly covered with compost. We noticed it buried again as we went out for a short walking interval between rainy spells. I moved to clear it off, but my hand froze mid-air. The cat droppings were a good clue. We made our progression around a new-to-us circuit, on…
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Adventures near and far . . .
I asked my beloved, why is this flowering tree used in May Day festivals when as we see it’s only in full bloom two weeks into May? Because we’re farther north than you might have realised, she replied. And of course I had to agree. So that was our little near-to-us adventure, and another fillip…
Roads to Joy 