Flowers and decisions

It's definitely autumn now, but there's still a lot of colour in the garden. Here's a nerine. I've tried to grow them for years and had given up, when suddenly, this year, two appeared in the front garden and this one in the back. They've clearly been sulking for ages and just decided to flower now. The ones in the front must be a different variety, because they're a bit peely-wally, ie pale, and are now more or less over. But this one is lovely. I hope it acquires some offspring. 

I don't even know what this is. Looking on the internet, I wonder if it may be an argyranthemum. Anyway, I bought it somewhere or other and it's been flowering for months. 

This bed has a variety of things: verbena, begonia, busy Lizzie. And the garden refuse bin in the background... And of course there are a lot of plants that are way past their best, but I didn't point the camera in their direction. Don't believe all you see on the internet!

Cosmos - lots and lots of pink ones too, 

nicotiana in many hues - can't believe I didn't grow them for the first time till I was 74! I love them.

And even the last of the sweet peas. I haven't deadheaded them much recently but they're still flowering. 

The trees in the streets near us are very autumnal too.

First world problem: our downstairs bathroom is... oh, probably 30 years old. It's still mainly fine, but the vanity unit is getting past its best and needs to be replaced. I really like the tiles I chose 30 years ago, and am reluctant to junk a perfectly good loo, washbasin, bath and shower - and spend a lot of money in the process - to get an entirely new bathroom. But on the other hand, will we be able to get another vanity unit that fits in the space, and would we be better to get a more modern-looking bathroom anyway, to make the house look more desirable to someone viewing the house when we sell it? Not that we have any plans to sell it any time soon, but who knows what the future holds? 

With the kitchen, which is only slightly younger, we decided a year or two ago to have it repainted and leave it at that. A new kitchen - ours is fairly big and has a lot of units - would cost a fortune, and any new people would probably have different tastes. And it's fine - not falling to bits at all; just not a currently fashionable style. 

When we had some redecoration done in several rooms a few years ago, I said just to paint everything white - partly just because it was easy - but also because it's neutral, with these same imaginary house-buyers in mind. And the painter said to me that one should never decorate with the future inhabitants in mind, because who knows what they'll like? Which was a good point. And now I'm a bit bored with the white. 

There you are, Daughter 2 - I did manage to waffle another post out before going down to hold the fort in London tomorrow. For you, anything. See you soon! 

SO busy

It's been a while since I last posted, though I don't suppose anyone has really noticed except our London daughter, who reads this for scraps of home, I think. 

It's been BUSY. You wouldn't think that the retired life would be full of things to do, but somehow it is. It's entirely, or at least almost entirely my own fault, since I could in theory sit at home all day and read books. And sometimes that sounds quite tempting... But, though I'm very much not out there saving the world, I don't seem to have a lot of time for thumb-twiddling. Being chair of one of my choirs generates quite a lot of work, though frankly it would be easier just to do it all myself than to negotiate decisions with the 6 other people on the committee, who all have helpful but varying opinions. And then there's gardening and quilting and meeting up with chums and singing in two choirs and learning the music for said choirs and editing the church magazine. 

On days that I'm not doing other things, I'm getting on with various tasks such as - oh, here we go - Blogger's put the photos in reverse order again. Well, the list at the bottom shows some of the jobs that I had to do the day before going down to Daughter 2's house in London to try to help a bit while her actor husband is away for some months, working. 

And then, in reverse time order: 

we had a lovely walk in the Botanics with the Edinburgh Two and their dad on Monday. Look at how tall Big Grandson and Big Granddaughter are getting! Big Grandson towers over me and his sister looks down a good couple of inches on me too. 

Then on Saturday, we went for a walk with the walking gang around West Linton.

We had perfect autumn weather, with not a leaf moving. 

If one ignores the symbolism of the dying of the year being like one's own (and others') death, autumn can be lovely. 

Especially when spent with good friends. 6ish miles that day.

This is Littlest Granddaughter opening her birthday presents. She's 8! How time flies, etc.

This list was just to rationalise the fact that I'd spent a whole day pottering around. I did more after I'd given up writing the list. The foost bin, by the way, is the little kitchen bin that we put stuff in for the compost heap. Foost is a Scottish word for mould, but I don't actually leave it long enough before emptying for it to get mouldy. Foosty. Daughter 2 named her similar bin thus, and it seemed apt. 

Better go and do some Duolingo before bed. That's another thing. Why am I polishing up my French and German and trying to learn Gaelic? Am I going to use any of these? Most unlikely, to any extent. Is it saving me from dementia? Well, let's hope. 

Edited to add: the first sentence in the German lesson I've just started was -

Ich habe die Maultaschen mit Pilzen noch nicht 

.

which means, I haven't yet tried the dumplings with mushrooms. I can't imagine using this. Though I do quite like mushrooms. 

Balerno to Slateford

We went up to see Son and family the other day. Here are the children feeding deer at a deer centre. 

I'm sure the deer are perfectly well fed, but they were all very keen to eat the pellets, cunningly sold to us by the centre. 

It was a lovely day. 

Today we did the recce for a walk we're leading with the walking chums in November. It was a perfect autumn day. 

We walked along the river path from Balerno to Slateford. It's all in the city, but feels like the country. 

It's mostly along a former railway line. Here, a tunnel has been painted inside, much of it illustrating the poem "From a Railway Carriage" by Robert Louis Stevenson, who often visited Colinton (on the route of our walk) because his grandfather was the minister there. It's a poem that, in my youth anyway, was much anthologised for children, and we learnt it off by heart. 

From a Railway Carriage by Robert Louis Stevenson Next

Faster than fairies, faster than witches, Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches; And charging along like troops in a battle All through the meadows the horses and cattle: All of the sights of the hill and the plain Fly as thick as driving rain; And ever again, in the wink of an eye, Painted stations whistle by. Here is a child who clambers and scrambles, All by himself and gathering brambles; Here is a tramp who stands and gazes; And here is the green for stringing the daisies! Here is a cart runaway in the road Lumping along with man and load; And here is a mill, and there is a river: Each a glimpse and gone forever!

It's a good poem, full of rhythmic energy, and the painting was splendid.

Here's RLS himself in the tunnel. 

And here's the rather pretty church. 

The path was mainly very easy and the weather beautiful. This is through the window of a grotto along the way. 

Still, by the end of the 6+ miles we were quite tired, and glad to reach the Water of Leith Visitors' Centre for a sit-down and a cup of tea. We're 77 and 75, after all. It was a wonderful day, though. 

 

Richmond again

We've been away for a long weekend with our walking friends to Richmond, in Yorkshire. We were there last year and had a good time so decided to return to the same house. 

We walked both on the Saturday and on the Sunday. Richmond is quite hilly, as is the surrounding countryside. 

It's also wooded. This was a lovely walk - five or six miles, not too strenuous. 

On the second day we walked down through the town to the river.

We admired Richmond Castle as we did so. The building of it was started in about 1070, and we thought we might visit it on the way back. 

This walk was harder: there were about fifteen stiles of various levels of difficulty and wobbliness, a slanting, tree-rooty, muddy path above a steep fall down to the river, lots of steps, miles of muddy and stony paths which were quite hard to walk on. It took us much longer than we expected. 

And by the time we stopped for lunch, we really needed to sit down! 

Still, it was fun, especially in retrospect.

We didn't visit the castle, though. We went back to the house and lay on the bed. One of us (not me) had quite a big nap. 

 

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.