Sunday, May 31, 2020

Partial lockdown week 10 - Sunday


Today my good friend Joyce came to coffee, two metres away, in the garden. That was so nice. She's the one for whom I'm making the quilts out of her late husband's shirts. I've finished the one for her but am still quilting the one for her son, so she opted to get them both together in a few weeks. I hope she likes them! Again we cooried into the shade because it was hot. 


The lupins and irises are looking good. The irises immediately behind the lupins are actually a beautiful blue - see below - but the sunlight on them makes them look white in the photo. The ones behind them, under the tree, actually are white. (I've noticed that Americans tend to spell lupin as lupine. I wonder if they pronounce them "lu-pie-n" - pie as in apple pie. We pronounce them "lu-pin" - pin as in needle.) I'm so amazed that the lupins haven't got aphids - this is the first time for about ten years that they haven't. I do love them. Maybe I'll dig up some of the astilbe, which isn't good this year because it's been SO dry (look at the grass!) and grow some more lupins in their place. Lupins are easy to grow from seed, though I would like a crimson one and maybe a pink - or a yellow? - so to be sure of that, I'll probably have to buy plants. That's in the far-off future when going to a garden centre seems like a feasible idea.


We had a Zoom call with all the family and my brother's too this afternoon. This was lovely, though it does reinforce how much I'm missing them all. 


We went for a shortish evening walk. If we lived a little bit up the hill, we'd get this view from our house. Sadly, we don't.


We went along the old railway path, looking down at Carrick Knowe golf course, where as far as we could see there were no golfers. But it's never very well used, which has always had me thinking that it was wasted as a golf course and would be better as a park. But then, someone would need to maintain it.


It was still warm but the path was pleasantly shady


and full of wild flowers, like this rose. 2 ish miles.

Things I would like to do - apart from seeing the family:

Go to Arran (with the family).
Go up town and have a cappuccino.
Browse round a book shop.
Wander round the Botanics.
Have lunch at Swanston and walk around there.
Go on a train trip to Berwick and walk around.
Visit Crieff.

And then - but these aren't going to happen:

Have a chat with my mother.
Have a chat with my grandmother - now that I'm only 14 years younger than she was when she died. It would be nice to talk as old ladies!
Go to visit my Norfolk aunt and stay in the lovely house she lived in... that has now been sold. We had so many wonderful holidays there with her.

Ah well. Tomorrow is another day, which we're lucky to have.

I said I'd blog every day till lockdown was over. It's only very slightly over; but I'm getting slightly (more than slightly) repetitious. So - possibly I should ease off a bit.

6 comments:

  1. Our state flower here in Texas is a type of Lupine called a bluebonnet. Very similar to your beautiful lupines. I hadn't thought about how we spell it, but I've always pronounced it "lupin". I've been enjoying your pictures from your daily walks!

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  2. Cooried? You got me again with an unfamiliar word! I didn't have a clue that lupin(e)s were like bluebonnets. I don't know that we have many of them in Washington, at least to my knowledge! Wonderful that you got to have a coffee date with a friend. I have one scheduled for tomorrow. I'm wondering when I should quit my daily blogging too. I'm enjoying it though, so I might keep going for a while longer.

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  3. I think you need to continue blogging if only to improve global knowledge of Scots words!
    And when you get your train trip to Berwick, give me a shout, we'll come and meet you and show you some of the even nicer parts around here.

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  4. Please continue to blog. You got me thinking.....I'm the same age my English grandmother was when she passed. How lovely it would be to meet up now and have a visit. She was a Christian and I wonder if we will we know each other in heaven? It's a comforting idea to see her again. Patty McDonald

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  5. We do say lupine, the last syllable sounding like the pine tree. There is a lovely children's book, based on a true story, called The Lupine Lady. And "corry" or "corrie"? I don't know that word at all. I do enjoy your blog and will always be happy to read it! And last but not least, I would love to have a conversation with my dear grandmother. She lived within walking distance of my home and school and we were very very close. I think of her all the time.

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  6. Sorry, the book is called Miss Rumphius but if you search our amazon.com for Lupine Lady you will find it.

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