Category: The Magnificent
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Almost unfeasible delights
The incredible floribundance of the mallow in the front garden, pruned last autumn with what felt like devastating ruthlessness, has given way in our amazement to the solitary, somehow unfeasible blossom of a giant decorative onion in the back. How can it possibly sustain itself? I feel that way about life, sometimes. How has this…
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Sunset glows after torrential rain . . .
Work has commenced here in our Holmview garden, in a fair few places. The gate that was a barrier has been taken down, as I’ve mentioned in an earlier entry here on my pursuit of joys. The carving out of a place for our new greenhouse is now ongoing (to the left of the decorative pots, in…
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The surprise of the old, informing the delight of the new
In 1883, James Faed the Younger presented a large painting titled ‘The Town Park’ to the Royal Burgh of New Galloway. This painting is stored with great care in the main hall, behind protective panels at the front of the large room. I’ve never seen it, but thanks to ArtUK we can consider it in…
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A single flower . . .
Sometimes the beauty of a single, solitary bloom is enough to take your breath away. This lonely tulip in our new-to-us garden was one such. I’m reminded of the William Blake poem, Auguries of Innocence, of which I suspect most of us are aware only of the first quatrain: To see the world in a…
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A morning enchantment
A roe deer was a welcome visitor to our garden at dawn today, and she looked directly at us while I fumbled for my phone camera, bringing it into play only in time to catch her white bum! So I looked for the closest image around that reflected just how near she was to the…
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Joys of the unexpected . . .
After the heavy rains, and the extensive flooding throughout the Glen Kens around Loch Ken, the sharp frost meant that the ground was solid enough to amble along upon. So we ventured into the mossy wood just beyond the frozen fairways of the neighbouring golf course. As we moved deeper into the hazel generations, I…
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Joys of sharing . . .
I reckon that folks throughout the Allen Valleys have been loving James Little’s photographs for at least the past five years, if not longer. The very first one I clocked was his drone image of the enchanted setting for the Cricket Ground, and I loved it so much that I knew I wanted him to…
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Like a murmuration of sunlit clouds . . . ke-e-ep dancing!
The dance of starlings is awe-inspiring, as they gather together to swoop and dive, in a display that ostensibly befuddles predators. I thought that the clouds the other evening, as the sun set behind our sheds, seemed very reminiscent of that floaty swirling activity. Not to mention the lovely dance put on in honour of…
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The gleaming in the gloaming
My beloved tells me that ‘gloaming’ is dusk, to those of a Scottish persuasion, but the Oxford English dictionary suggests that twilight is also gloaming, and astronomical twilight is either just before dawn or just after sundown. So I hope today’s joyful title makes reasonable etymological sense, anyway. There are so many metaphors for that…
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Ineffable delight of the alpine orchids
Orchids seem so exotic, and possibly because of that it’s a wonderful pleasure to find them growing wild on our own little patch of Eden. On such a sturdy flower spike, or inflorescence, put out by the broad-leaved marsh orchid that’s found an excellent habitat in these upland fellsides, upwards of 40 separate blooms cluster,…
Roads to Joy 