On Saturday

On Saturday, our son bought a new car – well, newish – in the town where he’s living, to replace the one that slid into a wall the other week.

He was telling his dad about it on the phone: man-talk of heated seats, electric sunroof, alloy wheels and such fascinating details. After a while, I said, “What colour is it?”

“I never asked,” said my husband and then said into the phone, “Your mum wants to know what colour it is.”

Pause. “Black.”

“That’s a bit boring,” I said. Then, rethinking this, I said, “Ask him if it crashes.”

“Your mother wants to know if it can crash.” My husband listened to the answer. “No, it apparently runs on little tracks fastened to the road.”

That’s ok then.

On Saturday also, I went for a walk in the Botanic Gardens, one of my spiritual homes. It's coming on to autumn but there were still many flowers, such as the rose at the top of the page (yes, it was raining slightly) and the asters immediately above here.

There were frilly Japanese anemones...

... and little cyclamen under a tree.

Look, here's a very old fossil tree from Craigleith Quarry, a couple of miles away.

It still looks quite like a tree...

... despite being 340 million years old. I don't think I'm quite so well preserved even now.

Dahlias - a wonderful bright red on a grey day.

Autumn leaves on damp ground.

Quite a lot of the benches have dedications on them, including this one. The dedication always intrigues me: to "Our spirited parents". I feel that spirited parents might be a bit wearing, myself. It sounds like a euphemism, don't you think?

I wouldn't have known that this was a euonymus, but that's what the label says. Singing colour, though.

If there's anything Scotland does well, it's puddles.

And grey squirrels. Some people don't like them - rats with tails, they say - but the tails make them so pretty and graceful, even if grey squirrels aren't indigenous and are crowding out the red ones.

I love the herbaceous border, though am glad we don't have to cut the hedge.

On the way home, I passed Fettes College, alma mater of Tony Blair and, one hears, part of the inspiration for Hogwarts.