Being a lady

I seem to be rather busy - though I have to confess that some of this busyness consists of coffees and lunches with friends. But then there are the two choirs and the church magazine and the family and the garden and walking and general faffing about. How do other people, eg Lynley of Lynley Quilts, manage to make a quilt a week, when I'm still plodding on with the rainbow quilt I started in April or so?

Anyway, there isn't much reportable, other than the garden, which is still colourful, such as with the lilies (above) that I bought at the Chelsea Flower Show. 

And these cosmos and sedum,

and Japanese anemones - pestilential but pretty - 

and these autumn crocuses - though I'm denying that it's autumn - 

and nicotiana

and fuchsia

and various things in pots

and verbena bonariensis, which I love, though it sets seeds willy-nilly

and more cosmos. 

I was up town the other day and things were beginning to look a bit autumnal.

I was up town again today. Not a bad view as I waited for the bus home. 

But this was exciting: Anna of Thimbleanna was in Edinburgh with her aunt last week, and she kindly invited me to go to a Scottish baking afternoon at a cookery school. I thought it might be quite tiring, but it wasn't at all. We sat at a kitchen island and were brought everything we needed, already weighed out. All we had to do was a little ladylike mixing and then put the results in baking trays or cake tins, which had been pre-lined by someone else. And whenever bowls or spoons were used, they were whisked away and replaced by clean ones. We weren't allowed to put things in the ovens ourselves (health and safety) so someone else did that, and then took them out in due course, and it was all carefully timed so that everything was cool at the same time. Then we were given a plate and told to take whatever we wanted from our own goodies - cranachan cake (raspberry with oatmeal), meringues with cream and strawberries, cheese scones and shortbread - and go through to a dining room, where we were plied with tea, coffee and prosecco and sat eating and having a nice chat. 

I could easily get used to something like that!

And it was lovely to chat to Anna and to meet her aunt, who is 89 and looks about 65. She has 7 children, 27 grandchildren, 35 great-grandchildren (with more expected) and a great-great-grandchild. Wow!

Stitches

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This was a plastic shopping bag for sale at the supermarket, and I took a photo of it because I thought - quilt pattern! Maybe I think too much about quilts? I would not make it in orange, however. 

We took a little train trip down to the Borders last week to have another look at the Great Tapestry of Scotland. 

We've seen it before, but there's always something new to look at. It's in Galashiels and this (above) is Gala Water. 

There are 160 panels in the Tapestry and it's the longest such thing in Europe.  The last time we went, we only looked at the first half before we ran out of brain, so this time we started half-way through. 

I could so easily get into embroidery; and it would be much more portable than a quilt. (However, I don't need another hobby to add to my two choirs, my editorship of the church magazine, my quilting, gardening and walking.) The Tapestry (only it isn't; it's embroidery) is about the history of Scotland. Here's a chap walking behind a newly modified kind of plough. 

Here's a panel about the East India Company, and Scotland's (doubtless scurrilous) involvement. 

A jolly lion. 

A lady curling - a Scottish sport on the ice. I do like all the different stitches used. 

There's a whole panel, Margaret G-F, about your famous relative, the poet Hugh McDiarmid. It's not a wonderful likeness but they've got the hair! (The panel's not dirty - those are just shadows.)

I can't remember what this depicted, but again, the stitching is great. 

1000 stitchers from all over Scotland took part in this - mainly, but not exclusively, women. They're all named beside their panels, and we recognised the names of a few people whom we vaguely know. Scotland's a small place. 
 

Flowers and such like

The house I grew up in had two greenhouses, in one of which was a large, twining hoya carnosa.  When I got married (52+ years ago) and left home, I took a cutting, and this is it, still blooming away. The flowers are waxy and scented, and drip sticky nectar, so you couldn't have it sitting on your best furniture, but it's pretty and it reminds me of home, and my dad. I think I've only repotted it once, which I imagine is why the plant remains conveniently small.

We went on a walk with the walking chums on Saturday in East Lothian, and saw, among other things, Saltcoats Castle, which I'd never heard of. It was apparently built around 1590, but has been left to dereliction and is mainly unvisited. Scotland has lots of castles and not all can be carefully preserved. There was an ancient pear tree growing beside it.

A couple of us tried one of the pears, but it was like biting into soft wood - pretty dry and tasteless. Our horticultural expert said that the tree could be hundreds of years old, and our newer varieties have been bred to be soft and juicy. I suppose that, in the middle of winter hundreds of years ago, with food scarce, you might be happy to stew these pears and eat them. 

It's very good farming land round here. 

6 miles - we had a good time in perfect walking weather. 

On Sunday we went up to visit Son and family. We went to Dundee Botanic Gardens, and Medium Granddaughter, now more or less recovered from her ruptured appendix, enjoyed playing with the sensitive plant. 

It's lovely to see them. I wish they lived nearer, though. I hate motorways and am always very frightened on them. 

Our garden is mainly over, but the annuals still put on a good show. 

Yesterday was Daughter 1's birthday and she had the day off, so we met at the art gallery for coffee

and then went to the Andy Goldsworthy exhibition. He's an artist who creates art with natural objects, mainly outside. Here, he'd done some stuff inside, such as this corridor between cut branches

and this pattern made by removing one side of bracken fronds and arranging them in a serpentine shape. 

This was inspired by the Rockefeller Center, which has flags from each of the US states flying outside it. Goldsworthy got the reddest earth he could from each state and used them to dye fabric, hoping to signify that borders can be transcended. This would be nice!

But we all liked his outside work best. And there were lots of photos of it: ephemeral art works he's created over the years. Here, he's arranged yellow and black leaves in and around tree trunks. 

 

These are foxglove flowers cupped into one another. 

It was an interesting exhibition. He has a lot of patience!

Musings

Life is .... well, I was about to say "quiet at the moment", but in fact it's quite busy, mainly with unremarkable events such as both choirs starting up - the one of which I'm chair having had a party and  a committee meeting, both involving a certain amount of organisation on my part - and a visit to the optician for a check - that sort of thing. We've been on various minor walks, including to the Botanics, where I said hello to my favourite tree. 

I wonder if I dare try growing some of these nice big asters aka Michaelmas daisies? I have the little ones in the garden, having foolishly accepted some bits of it from somewhere, and I spend quite a lot of my life rooting them out. Must ask our gardening expert friend if the big, jolly ones are less invasive. 

The Botanics meadow planting is nearly over, but is still quite pretty. 

I was interested in this notice, which tells us that Fat Hen - which is growing prolifically in their meadow beds - came to Britain from central Asia about 10,000 years ago and arrived in Scotland 6,000 years ago. It was used as chicken feed, and "we did not plant it here". But it planted itself!

Why am I writing all this? 

And why, I wonder do people on Instagram post videos of themselves crying? It's a strange phenomenon - the ones I see (I don't seek them out) are young women, weeping about genuinely sad happenings such as their husbands leaving them/dying or their children having terrible diseases. I can entirely see why they're so sad, and want sympathy. Sympathy is very nice, when one is sad. But I can't see why they film their tears, complete with nose-blowing. I suppose it's just an extension of the way people on the media talk about their "mental health", when as far as one can see they just mean that life's a bit difficult and stressful and they're fed up. Some people do have mental health problems, of course, and that's awful. But I wish we could keep the term for those who are seriously unwell with them, rather than the stressed and a bit unhappy. 

Getting old and grumpy? Me? Surely not.