Edinburgh tram?

We've been away for a couple of nights to Crieff Hydro, an hour and a bit north of here. This hotel means a lot to me and our family. My parents took us there every summer from when I was three till I was eleven, and then we've all been back a lot since in various familial combinations. We took our children. Now we go with them and the grandchildren, and sometimes my brother and family. Mr L and I had our honeymoon there. Both my parents' ashes are scattered on the Knock, the hill behind the hotel. 

Of course things have changed a lot since I was first there in 1953; and we've liked some changes more than others. But much of the charm stays the same, such as, when one first comes in, the view through the spacious ballroom (which hosts Scottish country dancing some evenings) into the Winter Garden, a large room with huge windows on to the beautiful view. One sits there and drinks coffee with one's family. One waits for the children to come up from the pool there. One has a light lunch there. It's the heart of the hotel. 

Or, that's what it was like.

The owners have now put a huge oval bar in the middle of the (ex-) ballroom. Tastes vary, but surely no one thinks that this is a thing of beauty? 

As transport-mad Big Grandson points out, it's reminiscent of an old Edinburgh tram. But with added plastic greenery dripping from it. 

And the Winter Garden has been turned into an extra restaurant, with tables set from early morning for lunch and thus nowhere to sit with the family and drink coffee. Big round banquettes (is that how you spell them?) help to block out the light. 

With added fake trees, and other plastic plants. 

I know that with the world in a mess, saying that I'm heartbroken seems a bit of an exaggeration. But I'm very sad. 

Anyway, we had as nice a time as we could, all things considered. We climbed the Knock, as we always do. I wonder when the last time we manage it will be...? 

This is one of my favourite views of all time. 

It's so peaceful. 

I always look at this distant white house and wonder what it would be like to live there. 

Failing the Winter Garden, we visited the town and its lovely shop, selling art and glass and so on (I managed not to buy anything this time, well done me) sat in our room, read books and did the crossword. 

And then we came home again. I like two-day holidays. So little packing. You don't need to worry about the house plants or the garden. So it wasn't all bad. 

 

More flowers. And death cleaning.

This is the time of year when my amaryllises (is that the plural?) flower all at once and I don't really know what to do with them, because they're huge. I have three pots of them and they sit in a spare room looking boringly leafy for 11 months, and then have their fortnight of glory downstairs. In fact, they badly need to be repotted and split into at least 8 pots, but do I want 8 leafy pots sitting around all year? I do not. The year before last, I did some splitting, and got rid of 3 pots to friends. Next year I must do more of this! The trouble is that I can't bear to throw them away. And you can't really persuade people to accept them apart from when they're in bud and look promising. I've had the original bulb for... oh, it must be twenty or more years. 

Talking of getting rid of things, I've made a resolution that every Monday morning I'm going to throw something away or take it to a charity shop. Thus if I live to, oh, 96, my children won't have much to do with my stuff when I die. So far we've kept this up for two weeks but I'm determined to continue. Books don't count. We do take books to charity shops anyway. But we have a lot of books. 

A member of the choir of which I'm chair died suddenly on Saturday. She felt unwell all week, then felt better, then felt worse and died on the way to hospital. She was at choir the previous week, apparently fine. Keep decluttering, Pam. I mean, she was 78, but I'm 75. 

It's spring in the garden. 

Lovely lovely. 

I've done quite a bit of tidying, but there's still more to do. However, weeding this hyacinth bed was a pleasure. The scent!

This is my little shady reading corner for hot weather. But it's not hot yet. 

Pink and yellow don't really go together, but I think they're fine here. Every year I buy quite a few hyacinths at the supermarket to have in the house over a couple of months, and then I plant them in the garden afterwards. We've been in the house for 36 years, so it's quite a hyacinthy garden. I  hope the people who come after us in the house don't concrete the whole thing over. 

In London, Littlest Granddaughter looks at a new book on the stairs. 

In Dundee Botanic Gardens yesterday, Small Grandson runs on stepping stones. We were up to see the family, which was very nice, though Dundee Botanics aren't a patch on the Edinburgh ones, and they charge you £5 entry fee, while the Edinburgh ones are free. I think the Edinburgh ones should charge, really; but I'm very glad they don't. 

 

Parks

It's all about the flowers at this time of year. We went to our beloved Botanics and admired the many rhododendrons. 

Oh, the pinkness. 

I also really like this, which is apparently a hacquetia epipactis variegata. I don't remember seeing it before but I thought it was pretty. I'm not normally a fan of green flowers, but these are definitely as much yellow as green, and so bright against the brown earth.

We all have muscari, and they're frankly a bit of a pest, but they're also a lovely splash of blue after a grey winter. 

Lots of hellebores, which are not huge fans of my garden, though I have a lovely one in a pot that's lasted several years. 

 

The open greenhouse is full of colourful alpines. 

Then this morning we found we'd had some overnight snow! But it didn't last. 

I went down to Saughton Park to meet a friend for coffee. This bed is really just heather and pieris, but they make a nice bright splash,

as do these polyanthus. It does the eyes and the soul good to see colour at this time of year - an annual miracle. 

 

Happy Birthday, little (not so little) L!

It's Biggest Granddaughter's 13th birthday today (13!!) so yesterday we had a celebratory lunch at Swanston and then walked up the hill behind the brasserie, past the old Swanston Village. It was a beautiful day. 

The hills still had some snow on them, but it was quite warm on the lower slopes.  

You can see how near we are to the city - no distance at all, really. Just a golf course away. 

Littlest Granddaughter decided that she wanted to play the violin. We feel she may have unrealistic expectations, but Daughter 2 asked us to send her own violin down to her, and she found a second hand, half-size violin online to give Littlest a few lessons without committing to a teacher. The violins arrived together. When we were taking Daughter 2's instrument to the post office, we felt a bit like the gangsters in Bugsy Malone, concealing our machine guns. The post office chap was amused. I don't think he'd ever accepted a violin in the post before. 

And in the garden, 

spring

is 

definitely

coming in

at full tilt. 
 

Cakes and flowers

Littlest Granddaughter has a lot of books in which American children set up lemonade stalls. This isn't a thing here, but she likes the idea and persuaded Daughter 2 to let her set up a table with cakes in the front garden. It rained a bit, but she persisted for a while, despite the fact that she lives in a very quiet street without many passing pedestrians. However, she managed to sell five cakes, and was pleased. The power of literature! I read American books as a child too, though there weren't all that many books for children then, compared to now. One I loved was "Thimble Summer" by Elizabeth Enwright. I loved the description of no rain (a foreign concept for a British person) and then the rain coming. And I remember Kewpie dolls being prizes, I think, at a fair. I had no idea what these were (I did look them up on Google once Google was a thing) but it didn't matter. Apart from that, I think the only American books available were the "What Katy Did" ones and the "Little Women" ones. I was - probably still am - quite influenced by Cousin Helen's maxim that everything and everyone has a rough and a smooth handle. I don't think it's made me quite as saintly as her, though. 

My snowdrop is yellow, by the way, to the extent that the bit behind the white petals is yellow, not the usual green. I think this yellow bit is the ovary. It's expensive because it's quite unusual. 

This is the £20 one.

These are the more usual ones. 

Do snowdrops happen in Australia? New Zealand? The US? 

It's been an uneventful week here, though not at all in the rest of the world. Urgh. Might the world be better without men??? Well no, but it's always men who start wars, isn't it? Just a few, horrible men. 

Meanwhile, I've managed to do a bit of gardening this week. Don't know how to eliminate the nasty men, so have been cutting down last year's herbaceous growth instead. Sadly, my left hip has been quite sore. I got my right one replaced a couple of years ago, but the left one has now gone, and because of the waiting lists for the NHS, I think it'll be well into next year before I have it done. The NHS is great, in that it will be free. But sadly there are too many crumbling oldies like me. I could pay and get it privately but that would cost £20,000. We'll see! It's nothing compared to what's happening in other places, but it's been a very mild winter with hardly any frost, so the weeds have been growing and I need to stop them in their tracks, hip or no hip.  

 

Visitors

It's been quite a busy time. 

But first - I've been wanting a yellow-ovaried snowdrop for some years but never managed to find any websites when they hadn't sold out . But look! The excitement! One bulb did cost £20, but I'm hoping that it'll bulk up over, oh, the next 50 years or so. Now I have to remember where I planted it, so that I don't dig it up while weeding. 

It's half term so we were visited for a few days by Daughter 2 and Littlest Granddaughter from London. When I say "Littlest" - she is, but now she comes up to my nose and she's only 8. Granted, I'm not a tall person. Anyway, she decided to paint pictures of some of the jugs/pitchers from my embarrassingly large collection, and ending up painting pictures of them all. I think I have over 20. Why do I? Good question...

Here are some of them after they'd been portrayed. I thought I'd dust the shelves of their cupboard before putting them back. 

Here are just a few of the paintings. It took her hours! 

She also played with the Brio. 

And we went to the light show at the Zoo with her mum. It was quite impressive. 

Son came at the weekend with his family, as did Daughter 1. Big Grandson (who's now 14 and a half) had a nostalgic play with the Brio. He used to spend every Friday and Sunday afternoons constructing complicated layouts. 

Then, sadly, on Sunday everyone went away again. Daughter 2 took the rainbow quilt with her and installed it in Littlest Granddaughter's bedroom. 

You don't notice the orange bit so much when it's under the canopy. 

 

A bit of grump

The main thing that people in Britain are talking about at the moment is the weather, which has been dire since the beginning of the year. Not especially cold - in fact, it's been relatively mild compared to winters when I was young. We've barely had any frost, let alone snow. But it's been damp and grey and depressing - not that I suffer from depression, but even I have found it a bit gloomy. Hence the photo of one of the few patches of blue sky that we've seen. Down south in England, there have been quite serious floods. Here, it's just been dank, with drizzle - very much not gardening weather. I think I've done four short lots of tidying up outside this year, and the garden is very much in need of more. But it's been chilly or raining or both; not tempting. It was faintly sunny yesterday for a bit, and I got out there and did some weeding, but then it rained - not hard, but enough to be discouraging - and I came in again. 

How lovely to find out about Virginia - thank you so much for replying! And also Maureen, who doesn't appear to have a blog when I click on her name in the comments, but who actually does. 

Nothing has been happening here apart from some more cutting out of shirt. And quite a bit of socialising, which is nice but not newsworthy. Although on Saturday I met up with a former student, someone from - maybe twenty or more? - years ago. I must have taught thousands of students in my time. We had 10 or 11 different classes every year, some of them for only 13-week semesters, but some - like the one this student was in - for most of the academic year. She was studying Higher English with the aim of qualifying for going to college to become a primary, ie junior school, teacher. She was at the time a classroom assistant in primary, and felt she was doing much the same work as a teacher for half the pay. I think that she probably wasn't, in that the teacher has to do all the planning and, I assume, most of the marking, and also has much of the responsibility. 

However, this youngish woman was divorced, with two children, and I admired her attitude. Anyway, when the class was over she was keen to keep in touch, which was slightly odd, since she must have known that I had lots and lots of students and couldn't possibly keep up with even a fraction of them. We met for coffee a few times and I rather hoped that it would all die a death. She was nice enough but ... you know. I have friends. When she did qualify as a teacher, she was busy - and at the time, so was I, with work and with the offspring still at home - so the years passed, but she continued to send me Christmas cards, latterly with her mobile phone number and the suggestion that we should meet again. Eventually, I caved in and sent her mine, and we met up. She's still perfectly nice, but she told me everything that had happened in her (somewhat chequered) teaching career from beginning to end, without ever pausing, from 10.30 till 11.45. I was exhausted just nodding and saying, "Oh dear" and "How difficult" and "Well, that was good". After that we had another cup of coffee and there was a bit of a conversation. At the end of our meeting, she said, "We should do this again." Hmm. Not very soon!

There's a lot of winter Olympics on television at the moment. I'm not remotely interested, but am intrigued by the introductory music on the BBC, which is the "Dies Irae" from the Mozart Requiem. "The Day of Wrath" - why? I'm mildly irritated by sport, but not that much... .

Right. Better do something more useful. Have a nice week, Virginia, Maureen, Margaret, Jabblog and anyone else reading this.