In this life
Monday, March 17, 2025
Lottery
Tuesday, March 11, 2025
Time flies like an arrow...
Thursday, March 06, 2025
Spring
Spring is a-cumin in and Littlest Granddaughter can play in the park after school.
The great excitement in her life is that she's now got two guinea pigs. She's thrilled! I hope they live long lives...
Daughter 1's garden wall fell down during Storm Eowyn (well, it was pushed over by a blown-down buddleia in between it and the fence next door) and today Darren the Patio came and sorted this out.
It's now all fixed and much smarter, with a smaller wall which can be weeded behind, and slabs for putting pots of flowers on, maybe?
My friend Janet wanted a fish tank with fish in it, but her family persuaded her that it would be a lot of work, so she got her friends and family to colour in a fish each and she's mounted these. I sent the daughters a photo of the finished "tank", and asked which one they thought I'd done, and within something like 20 seconds, Daughter 2 had screenshotted (is this a word?) the correct one and sent it back to me. How well she knows me! I wasn't surprised at the correctness of the answer, though the speed did surprise me somewhat. (It's the lower middle one with a yellow face, blue body and stripy fins. It's a bit pale compared to some of the others.)
Crocuses and daffodils splashing their colour in the garden. Gosh, a garden - or at least, mine - is a lot of work at this time of year.
These come up by themselves, but I've been slaving away cutting down last year's herbaceous perennials and waging war on bitter cress and that little willow herb with surprisingly long roots. Still, it's all worth it. I do love flowers.
Friday, February 28, 2025
Offspring and snowdrops
Son and family came down at the weekend when Daughter 2 and Littlest Granddaughter were here, and Daughter 1 and family came over too, which was nice. Here are quite a lot of them playing with Lego. The person in blue, sitting on the sofa and bending over, is Big Grandson (13). He is currently rather long-haired. However, he does have beautifully thick hair and is still a lovely boy, though I would prefer that his hair didn't get any longer.
We also played hide-and-seek in the garden. Here is Small Grandson, hiding (not entirely successfully) on a bench.
But now, sadly, Daughter 2 and Littlest Granddaughter are back in London, getting trains.
So Mr Life and I went to an exhibition. I like this painting by James McIntosh Patrick (1907-1998). It's of Stobo Kirk in the Borders. The light and the shadows and the roof shapes are very pleasing.
Coincidentally, Mr L and I were down near Stobo yesterday, to visit Dawyck Botanic Gardens and to wander among its snowdrops.
We did this last year too, and I probably took exactly the same photos then.
There are millions of them. Well, I didn't count them. But certainly tens, if not hundreds, of thousands.
It was very lovely. Isn't spring just wonderful?
Saturday, February 22, 2025
Guests
It's mid-term in England so we've got visitors - Daughter 2 and Littlest Granddaughter.
She has been very busy.
Playing with the dolls' house,
making apple jigsaws and then eating them,
playing with slime. (We went to the corner shop to get the newspaper. I handed over the coupon and LG saw a bottle of slime with an alien in it. "Sorry," I said, "I didn't bring any money with me." "Oh," said the helpful chap behind the counter. "you can pay me tomorrow." Oh, great... So what could a granny do?)
The Edinburgh grandchildren came over as usual on a Friday, so Littlest Granddaughter wanted to make Biggest Granddaughter a birthday cake (her birthday is in a couple of weeks, but LG won't be here). It had to be in the shape of a heart because LG loves BG SO MUCH!
Sunday, February 16, 2025
Snowdrops in the cold
We passed the oldest house in Portobello.
Monday, February 10, 2025
How to spend lots of time
been doing much
except cutting up fabric (and tidying the garden a bit).
After cutting the fabric up, I've been sewing it together differently.
I don't like orange at all - it makes me feel slightly ill -
but you have to have it in a rainbow. Luckily I've finished the orange stripe and am now on to the yellow one.
Such a waste of time. But such fun. And I do like having something to show for my days. Something, I suppose, to leave behind.
I didn't invent the pattern, but am copying it from a photograph that I found somewhere, a couple of years ago maybe. Thank you to the clever designer; I wish I could give you credit.