Guests

It's mid-term in England so we've got visitors - Daughter 2 and Littlest Granddaughter. 

She has been very busy. 

Playing with the dolls' house, 

making apple jigsaws and then eating them,

playing with slime. (We went to the corner shop to get the newspaper. I handed over the coupon and LG saw a bottle of slime with an alien in it. "Sorry," I said, "I didn't bring any money with me." "Oh," said the helpful chap behind the counter. "you can pay me tomorrow." Oh, great... So what could a granny do?)

The Edinburgh grandchildren came over as usual on a Friday, so Littlest Granddaughter wanted to make Biggest Granddaughter a birthday cake (her birthday is in a couple of weeks, but LG won't be here). It had to be in the shape of a heart because LG loves BG SO MUCH!

 

Snowdrops in the cold

Yesterday the weather was chilly and damp, and we swithered (good Scottish word meaning that we kept changing our minds) about joining the walking friends - hoping, frankly, that someone would decide to call it off. However, no one did and we pulled ourselves together and went. It remained cold and damp but didn't actually rain, so our virtue was rewarded. There was a smirr in the air; nothing more. This is another Scottish word, which means water particles just hanging, like a very fine but invisible mist. It's a handy word for our climate. 

We walked along by the sea. Can you see it, or the land on the other side? Well, quite. 

We passed the oldest house in Portobello.

and walked on into Musselburgh, where this old phone box has been adopted by the community as a sort of - what would you call it? A shelved plant stand. 

Then we reached Inveresk, a pretty little village, where we visited the garden of Shepherd House. This is a 18th century house which has been lived in since 1957 by a couple, Sir C and Lady F, who have transformed the garden into a thing of beauty, and they open it to the public to raise money for charity - but also, I suppose, because gardeners love to show their plants to other enthusiasts. They're now well into their 90s. 

They have something like 150 varieties of snowdrops, including this one that I really love, with a yellow, um, bit. I thought it might be the calyx but have just looked it up and it isn't. 

I blogged about this garden last year, when we also came to admire the snowdrops.

Sir C, the owner, came out and walked round the garden with us. He's a real pet - 96 and still full of beans. The garden is full of quirky touches, such as this sheep. 

He's better with hellebores than I am. 

This is a window in his summer house. 

He very kindly said we could eat our lunches in their conservatory, which was excellent because we were quite chilly.

So I'm very glad we conquered our laziness and went. It was a lovely day out with nice friends. 

 

How to spend lots of time

I haven't really

been doing much

except cutting up fabric (and tidying the garden a bit).

After cutting the fabric up, I've been sewing it together differently.

I don't like orange at all - it makes me feel slightly ill -

but you have to have it in a rainbow. Luckily I've finished the orange stripe and am now on to the yellow one. 

Such a waste of time. But such fun. And I do like having something to show for my days. Something, I suppose, to leave behind.

I didn't invent the pattern, but am copying it from a photograph that I found somewhere, a couple of years ago maybe. Thank you to the clever designer; I wish I could give you credit. 

Storms

We went to our beloved Botanics today and saw some of the results of the recent storm. This was the tallest tree in the gardens. No longer, sadly.

Poor tree. 

And this one. 

Still, my favourite tree, the Taxodium Distichum (or to put it tactlessly, the bald cypress - it's deciduous, as you can see) seems to have survived with only some twigs blown off. It's so beautiful in leaf, covered in lots of tiny lime green needles in the summer, which turn reddish in the autumn. And when it rains (what? in Scotland?) it seems to be covered in diamonds.

So there are good things too, to distract us from the unbelievable events in the US and elsewhere. Good things such as snowdrops. 

And sunshine, and lovely branches against the sky. 

 

Art and things

Dear old Blogger has been doing some odd things recently, but today it will at least allow me to add photos - though not in the right order. Still, let's not look a gift horse, etc. 

So here's a photo of some nice Edinburgh weather, when I went up town to look at an exhibition of pictures which are at the bottom of this post. 

I've started my rainbowish quilt and have now completed the red row (which is now twice this length). The cutting-out messed with my head a bit at first but I think I'm now familiar with it. Famous last...

Yesterday Mr L was a bit under the weather with a bad cold, so I went alone by train to visit Son and family. Above, you'll see the sun setting on the way back over the bridge.

Here's Medium Granddaughter on a trapeze - and this might (or might not) be Small Grandson running back to queue up for another go. I think it's not actually him but another boy of similar size - but you get the idea. 

And this is the view from the bridge on the way to visiting them - in reverse order. 

But I don't suppose it matters.

It was a lovely day. 

Here are some watercolours that I really liked at the exhibition that I went to on my own earlier in the week. Mr L didn't come because of his cold. I'd have any of these on my wall: some pleasing birds and flowers here. 

Talking of cold - brrr. I like the shadows and the tracery of the branches. 

I really like the shadows on this one too, and the interesting angle. I'd love to own this. 

And these colours would look good on a quilt, don't you think? 

I don't know who painted any of them because I didn't buy a catalogue. 

There's an exhibition of Turner watercolours on at the moment in the same gallery, with a queue of over 2 hours to get in. I like Turner well enough - some of his paintings are a bit misty for my taste - but it was great just to walk past that queue and go to this exhibition instead. 

And that was my week. In reverse. 

Big wind

Well, spring is springing here, or at least the end (ish) of winter is being a bit flowery. Most things are still pretty dormant, but you can always find something colourful at the Botanics. 

Azalias or

skimmias or

witch hazel or 

just a little robin. Traditionally, robins here are known as robin redbreasts, but their breasts are really orange. We didn't have a separate word for orange (as opposed to red) until actual oranges arrived here, and their name then got made into an adjective. So this is really a robin orangebreast. Doesn't have quite the same ring. But Christmas cards tend to have robins with red tummies, such is the power of language versus observation. 

I've started to cut out a quilt. It's to be a rainbowish one, so against all my principles I'm going to have to use some orange fabrics. I have to admit that Richard Of York Gave Battle in Vain. 

We've had a Big Wind, Storm Eowyn, which has done a lot of damage, though thankfully not to our house or garden. This happened on the path beside the golf course (apologies for the blurry photo) but, much more seriously...

this happened in the Botanics: its tallest tree, with 14 others, was damaged beyond remedy.  

This is what it used to look like - the tree right at the bottom of this path. Very sad. But worse things, much worse things, are happening in the world.