Ways of the world

It's spring here, despite the awful goings-on elsewhere in this sad world. The garden flowers on. 

And is beautiful.

We went to the Botanics, where it's also spring, and lovely. 

On Sunday we walked at Fisherrow and Musselburgh with the Edinburgh family. I do love living near the sea. 

There's a playpark, which is still of considerable interest to Big Granddaughter but not so much to Big Grandson, who is growing up. Well, they both are, obviously. Big Grandson's feet are now the same size as mine and he comes mid-way up my forehead. (Granted, my forehead isn't as far off the ground as some people's.)

Today we went up north to play with Small Grandson while Doctor Son worked once again on his day off. There's a lot more paperwork involved in being a GP than people imagine. We found a digger in Dundee, digging up what looked like perfectly good grass and daffodils in a park. Small Grandson was very interested. We couldn't imagine why it was doing it until Son later suggested that it was maybe for a wildflower area. This seems possible: the digger was scraping up a lot of the topsoil too. 

It's strange in many ways, being oldish. Practices that were once the thing to do, or at least perfectly acceptable, no longer are. What to do in the garden, for one. Garden programmes and magazines tell us to leave a patch of lawn unmown or nettles to flower. Well, hmm. I can absolutely see the reasons for doing this, but in my little patch of heaven? There's little enough space to grow the things I love, let alone encouraging - can I say weeds? And then there are slugs and snails - all part of ecology, undoubtedly, but it's hard to love them. I don't spray things, though, and do have lots of nectar-bearing plants, so do my best. But I like a neat lawn - now regarded as a desert by gardeners who like the more unkempt, more nature-friendly approach. Guilt... .

My friend is how out of hospital - having been there since her stroke on January 4. I wrote her over fifty letters (on paper) while she was there, because she liked getting them, but am going to move to emails, since she now has easy access to a computer. She can walk a bit on sticks and climb stairs with an effort, and her mind and speech are unaffected, but she has a long way to go.