Foozled

 

Life continues its giddy whirl. I don't quite know why I feel the need to fill every day with ceaseless activity (well, not ceaseless, but constant) but I do. Such as making this dragon quilt for Medium Granddaughter, at her request. I have no idea whether she remembers asking for it (she's only 5) but anyway, it's coming on and I'm having fun. 

For some reason we had very few commitments this week so have been getting on with a few tasks that have been on the agenda for some time. For example,  we won't have any more grandchildren (sigh) so have been selling or otherwise disposing of various baby items, such as these two cots. The one on the left used to be our own children's cot, so it's far from new and we're offering it free. The one on the right is virtually unused so we asked something for it and sold it to a delightful young couple, she obviously pregnant. 

We're also selling, we hope, both a double and a single buggy (stroller). 

People do ask fairly dumb questions. Such as - for the free cot - "How much are you asking for it?" (It says in the advert that it's free.) And, "Does the double buggy fold really small?" I could only think to say, "Not really very small. It's about twice the width of a single buggy." I mean... 

I made the mistake of using both Facebook Marketplace and Gumtree and am slightly foozled trying to answer questions from potential buyers on both sites. However - think of the space we'll create in the house! 

Daughter 2 and family are at Center Parcs on holiday with her in-laws. They're having a lovely time

and are enjoying the blackboard in their lodge. "Draw a fairy, Mummy. Now make it fly."

As I write this, I'm being distracted by more messages from potential buyers. So I shall, for the sake of my sanity and possibly yours, desist from doing this. 

Summer sun

Life whizzes on at an alarming rate and we're busy busy busy with gardening, family things and a bit of socialising. We went to Vogrie Country Park with the Edinburgh Two the other week and walked through the woods...

looked at frogs in the river - and stuff like that. 

I had a coffee outside the art galllery and it was chilly for June. But I was served by a girl from Sicily, who said it was 48 degrees there. I'd much rather be chilly. 

But then it got warm. The garden is flourishing. 

Summer. 

I love it. 

The indoor plants are flourishing too. 

Big Granddaughter decided to get her hair cut much shorter. 

And Big Grandson got the Brio out. 

Daughter 2 and her husband have built a climbing frame for Littlest Granddaughter in their new garden. It was quite a lot of work. 

And we walked along the coast with our walking friends. 

Such a lovely day, with nice people. 

When all the family were at ours the other weekend, Medium Granddaughter asked if I could make her a dragon quilt. Whereupon her little brother asked if I could make him a dinosaur quilt. Well, obviously yes! I didn't have any fabrics featuring dragons or dinosaurs so sent for a couple of each. The trouble with buying fabrics over the internet is that sometimes the patterns don't turn out to be the size you expect. Those middle dragons are rather large! - though I like them. Hmm. By contrast, the dinosaurs are maybe too much the same size. Needs some thought. 

And back to the garden: it's clematis time. 

I love them. So do snails.

Big Grandson (who's about to be 11! - how did that happen?) loves drawing street scenes and trains, such as this picture that he WhatsApped yesterday. The perspective isn't quite right but there's a lot of detail. He has about six sketch books full of pictures like this. It's so interesting, watching them all grow up - a consolation for getting old. 

Family activities

And talking of bears, I came across this one. He was my mother's so I suppose he's 100 years old, or nearly. My mum would have been 100 on May 9th, though in fact she only made it to 90. Teddy (his name; not very original but there we are) is a bit worse for wear but nevertheless is going to see me out, never mind Mum. Hmm. Life is fleeting etc. 

Mr L is away for a few days in Wales with some chums who like railways, helping at a beer festival in aid of the Welsh Highland Railway Society. No, he's not Welsh, but he likes Wales and their narrow gauge railways. I've been doing quite a lot of gardening in his absence. One has more time when one doesn't have to cook. Mind you, I'm looking forward to his return in a couple of days. 

Here are the Edinburgh Two yesterday, playing in a slightly ironic way (but they enjoyed it) with the Duplo that we got out for their little cousins. Earlier, Big Grandson was lying on the floor, drawing in his sketchbook. "Ah," he said contentedly, "it's all about the chilling..."

Today I went to the Botanics, not without difficulty since Edinburgh is as usual being dug up and I encountered two sets of temporary traffic lights with big queues. And then when I got there, the gardens were closed because of high winds. It is, granted, windy, but not that windy, I'd have thought. 

So I went for a walk in Inverleith Park and then down to Stockbridge to have the coffee that I'd been planning to enjoy at the Botanics. 

It was fine but the view wasn't very Botanical. 

Meanwhile, in London, Littlest Granddaughter had her lunch in a tent

while her parents put up some curtains. They've been curtainless ever since they moved in - there were no curtain rails, which was the problem. And now, hurray. 

I

n the paper today there was a retrospective on the first professional performance of Joseph And The  Amazing Techicolour Dreamcoat, fifty years ago this summer. Reader - the chap and I were there at the ice rink. We thought it was very good and the people behind it might go somewhere. And they did. 

Old? As the Queen said recently, you're as old as you feel. I'm not entirely sure she's right, but let's go with it. 

Right, now, off out to the garden again. Annoyingly, it keeps raining for just long enough for me to decide I'm getting wet, and come in, and then it immediately stops; by which time I've started doing something else. Such as this. 

(Hello to Andrew Maclaren-Scott, by the way. How nice to hear from you. I hope you didn't try to go to the Botanics today... And to Suzi - sorry, don't know how to sign in to Google to comment on your blog, but hello anyway. That's a very big dog you have!)

 

Bears and things

Here I am again with another series of old-lady activities. Another, even older, lady had a special weekend, when we celebrated her Platinum Jubilee. We didn't do a lot of celebrating ourselves but we did watch the Trooping of the Colour on Thursday, even though Her Maj didn't appear. I imagine she watched it on telly, just like us. She appeared from time to time over the weekend but she's looking very much thinner than she did a few months ago and I feel that this doesn't bode very well. Her little sketch with Paddington was good, though! 

Daughter 2 and Littlest Granddaughter came up from London on Thursday and then Son and his family on Friday, with the Edinburgh family making appearances too, so that was all very nice. They played in the garden (jumping/riding on Son quite a lot). (As Daughter 2 has pointed out, the above victim is actually Big Grandson.)

and also in a local park, 

and in the Botanics, 

where we admired the blue poppies

and ran around the rockery. 

Another day we went to another local park, where we had a long wait for coffees, so the older ones took their little ones and played In And Out The Dusty Bluebells, which proved surprisingly popular. 

It's allium time in that park. 

Son and family went home on Sunday, and on Monday, Daughter 2 worked at home while Littlest Granddaughter and I went to the museum, where we had a fine time. 

This bear is in Princes Street Gardens.

So it was lovely. But it was not restful. 

It's always difficult when they go away; much worse than before they come. But at least we can get the house tidy. 

When everyone had gone, we went out to East Lothian for a walk and a look at the Dunglass Collegiate Church, which we think we'll include in the walk that we're leading soon. It was built in about 1443 but was used as a barn in the 19th century so doesn't have anything much inside it apart from a few worn carvings. The building itself is intact, though, which is more than we'll be in 600 years. 
 

Change and perhaps a bit of decay

Blogging used to be such a community - it felt like a conversation. In fact, it was. But - as I've said before - so many of my bloggy friends have dropped away - though some are now Facebook friends - that it feels a bit daft to keep putting out into the ether pictures of mundane old-lady activities. People are reading (according to the stats, which I occasionally look at) but on the whole I don't know who they are. So I think I'm inclined to stop. I started in 2006 and things change. 

However, I'll record yesterday, when I saw a consultant about my arthritic hip - he was very nice, if disconcertingly young. I'm now on a long, long list to get a replacement hip. It's not that bad, though, and after seeing him, we went on a 7.72 mile walk (according to Mr L's device) to do a recce for the walk we're leading in a few weeks. It was, frankly, something of a struggle towards the end! It wasn't easy walking because it started along a beach, which was at first sandy (not easy to walk fast on) and then stony. I really love the wonderful variety of colours of stones - but they make for uncomfortable walking. Is it just Scotland that has such a colourful selection of stones on beaches and riversides? I don't know - probably not.  

Then the route led along the cliff top. The flowers, particularly the campion, were beautiful but the path was somewhat imaginary - consisting mainly of slightly squashed long, wet grass - again, a bit of a struggle to wade through. 

One didn't want to fall off the cliff. 

After a few miles the area became wooded but was still slightly precipitous, as evidenced by this somewhat discouraging sign. 

It was still pretty, though. 

Then there was open country, with lupins growing wild. Considering how I have to nurture lupins in my garden, defending them valiantly from slugs, snails and aphids, I'm always amazed at how they seed themselves in rough grass in the countryside. 

We passed a field which from a distance I thought was planted with tulips, but as we got nearer I realised that it was red clover - grown, I assume, for green manure. Isn't it beautiful? 

And there were one or two tiny villages. 

And then we looped back along the cliff "path" and beach for the final three miles or so - which seemed quite long. 

We were pretty tired. We might be getting old. And then we have to do it again in a couple of weeks!