Time flies like an arrow and all that

A certain amount of not-very-much has been happening around here. In London, by contrast, Littlest Granddaughter has been dressing up as a ... mouse witch, maybe? So fierce. 

I don't think that January in Britain tends to be anyone's favourite month, and around here it's been unusually wet and dreary. However, look - the first snowdrops are flowering, so I shall take that as a sign of spring. The garden's not looking its best (understatement) because all the things that were still blooming, at least feebly, in early December were cut down by the frost and are now piles of brown goo. I shall have to gird my loins and get out there to do some chopping down, so that in a few weeks the spring bulbs will be visible to cheer the wintry heart. 

Our standard walk along by the golf course demonstrates the apparent deadness of the season. But of course there are buds on the trees and fresh nettles and dockens burgeoning at the side of the path.

Yesterday, however, it was sunny, so we did a recce for the February walk that we're leading. It's just a town one, near here, mainly through parks, and Mr L and I are familiar with it, but one has to work out the timings so as to be somewhere suitable to eat sandwiches at lunch time. We usually go to a cafe for coffee, cake and chat at the end of the walk and it's not that easy to find one that will have room for a sizeable group of muddy people at a slightly-difficult-to-predict time. On this occasion we've cunningly organised the walk to end at our house, so there's no crucial timing needed for this.

We walked along the river, which is very full indeed after all the rain.

This heron looked somewhat bedraggled, but I imagine it was enjoying some sunshine at last. 

And on we went, through Saughton Park, with its bandstand.

And along beside the tram line

to the Dovecot in Corstorphine.

This, as I've written before, dates from the 1500s and was built so that the doves that lived in it could provide fresh meat and eggs for the people who lived in the (long gone) 14th century Corstorphine Castle. I'm glad that I didn't live then for many reasons, my vegetarianism being one. I doubt if vegetarianism was much of a thing then. There are 1000 nesting boxes, which are still used by visiting pigeons, but no one now eats these more fortunate birds. 

We established that the nearby St Margaret's Park had benches and indeed picnic tables for us to lunch at on our group walk but then it started to rain (we do not need more rain). So we decided not to walk home as planned but instead got a bus. 

I'm still quilting Little Grandson's quilt but it's not going to be finished by the time we go up to see them on Tuesday. However, not too long to go now. And then I must get back to the archives, which I spent quite a while sorting during lockdown but then abandoned, so that I can't quite remember where I am. But I must make some Decisions. Sorting into boxes is easy enough. Throwing out my parents' holiday albums, less so.