Back home again

Bit of a long silence. I've been staying with my husband's cousin for a week, because she's single and lives alone and has just had a hip replacement operation. This, above, is the view from my bedroom window in her house. She lives not far from us. It's been a bit... odd. It's not easy to need help if you're normally independent, and it's not necessarily easy to do things for someone who normally lives alone and who definitely has their own systems for doing things. Anyway, I'm glad I went and I'm glad I'm home! 

Frustratingly, it was beautiful weather while I was there, mainly sitting around talking, and my garden, somewhat neglected while we had visitors in August, needs a lot of tidying up. We did a bit of gardening earlier this afternoon but then the rain came on quite hard, and though it's nice again now, everything is wet and I don't feel inclined to go out again. I'm sitting here listening to Brahms's Song of Destiny, which our musical director goes into raptures about but which isn't yet hugely gripping me. However, I need to learn it, since we're going to sing it in a concert in the spring. It's growing on me.

Minimalising Monday didn't happen this week because I wasn't here, but I was casting about yesterday for something to dispose of when I came across this photo of my paternal grandmother. Son-in-Law 1 kindly put it through some magic thing and produced the version below, which is much better, though she had white hair by the time this photo was taken. I think, but don't really know, that she had light brown hair as a young woman. 

This was her passport photo for going abroad with my missionary aunt and uncle to be looked after by the hospital in which my aunt was a doctor, because, sadly, she had dementia by then. She was getting confused by her early seventies, as far as I remember, and later my aunt had dementia too. I think I'm all right so far... I didn't know her well because she moved down south when I was four or five. I remember that she saved the combings from her hair to plump out her bun, which struck me as a cunning idea when I was a small girl. 

We took a walk in the Botanics this morning, which were lovely as usual. 

It's getting a bit autumnal. 

These rudbeckias were making a fine show. 

And my favourite tree, the bald cypress, is still in full summer leaf. 
 

Flowers and flying

It was Big Grandson's 15th birthday on Friday. 15!!! It seems no time since he was a baby. He's still a lovely boy, though, and certainly Big - nearly 6 feet tall. He doesn't really want stuff, so Mr L and he went off to Newcastle for a couple of days to ride on trains and buses and the metro. They had fun. 

On Saturday, we went with our walking chums to Haddington, to walk along the river to East Linton. 

It doesn't really look it here, but it was a hot day. 

This bit looks fairly idyllic, 

as does this, but actually, a lot of the time we were walking in single file along the river bank, on a very narrow path with small rocks and tree roots sticking up, so it was quite tricky. 

Which explains how I - no one else, just idiot I - managed to trip on one of these stones/tree roots, not once but twice, both times going flying. The first time I landed mainly on my right thigh, up at the top, and thought - argh, my new hip! But fortunately I don't seem to have damaged it. The second time I landed on my hands, knees and nose. Again, though nothing was exactly improved by this, nothing was broken, which was a great relief and I hope shows the relative strength of my bones. But I was pretty shaken up both times. Since we had a good two miles of path to go before we reached a road, I just got up again and, after some sticking-plastering, plodded on, though more slowly and carefully. It does make me wonder how, if I had broken a leg or ankle, the emergency services would have reached me. We were on a river bank, surrounded by trees - a helicopter wouldn't have worked. It would have had to have been a stretcher party, plodding along two or three miles of this narrow path. Lucky them!

Ah well, the garden blooms on,

though I must do something about the pretty, but rampant, Japanese anemones. As I say every year at about this time. 

This week's victims of my minimalising: two crystal butter dishes (we have four) and a crystal heart that I think I bought my mum when desperate for a present for her. It's pretty. But I don't need it. 

My agapanthus is doing well, It's enormous. One day we may be unable to get out of our kitchen door. 

And we went to the Botanics today with the Edinburgh Two plus their dad, and admired the wild flower meadow patches. 

All very flowery. But we need rain. 

 

Bean chihuahuas

Oh, this is such a lovely time of year. These tulips are doing well (if slightly out of focus) but I wish those pinker ones in the background weren't so near the big clump of red ones. How did I do this? 

This is a bit of a mixter-maxter of colours too, but I don't really think it matters. Nothing actually clashes. 

I have various huge clumps of daffodils which I think every year that I should split up, but never do. Not sure my back's up to it. And anyway, they seem fine. 

Daughter 2 gave me this lovely camellia, years ago. 

The other day we went, with a group Mr L belongs to, to the herbarium at the Botanic Gardens. We were shown round by a nice young chap who has devoted his life to studying peas and beans. Evidently broad beans are very strange - "the chihuahuas of the bean world" - because they're so overbred that they bear very little resemblance to their original progenitor. I'm not a huge fan of them anyway, though I do eat various other beans as I'm a vegetarian. He showed us some of these folders, with dried plants from various time periods. They have - did he say 3 million? - specimens. They dry new ones much as one did as a child, by squashing them between newspaper in a press. It was very interesting. He said that some amateur collectors in the past would just label their specimens something like "Brazil", whereas nowadays labels are much more specific, eg "Rocky area with sandy soil near the top of the Knock, Crieff".

It's very much rhododendron time at the Botanics - though actually this spans several months. 

Today we went to the local flower show in Saughton Park. Oh, the scent of these hyacinths!

The park isn't in its full glory yet, but was still pretty, even though it was raining.

Our death cleaning is progressing quite well. We went to the tip and the charity shop the other day with quite a few items, and put things on Facebook Marketplace: two bed rails for children, a micro scooter and Daughter 2's drawing board from when she was an architecture student. The drawing board hasn't gone yet but the rest of the things have - they were free. It'll be a long time till we're exactly minimal (well, never) but I feel we're making progress, and I'm quite enjoying the weekly challenge of finding something we don't need.  

 

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. 

 

Rainbows and sun

Well, at last the rainbow quilt is finished. I can claim no credit for the design, which was made up by someone much cleverer than I. But sadly I don't know who this was. The idea just came from a random photo on the internet, which I slavishly copied using fabrics that I (mainly) had. I did have to acquire some of the low volume ones, and Thimbleanna, my quilting guru, very kindly gave me some of these. 

It's really very simple compared to some of the wonderful creations one sees on the internet, but I'm not an ambitious quilter. And I only do some fairly basic hand quilting, but I enjoy this. Machine quilting can be lovely, but fiddling around with needle and thread while watching television is more my thing. 

I had to go against my principles to include orange (don't like orange) but rainbows do contain orange, so I put some in. Grudgingly. I much prefer blues and greens. It fits a single bed, and annoyingly, when it's put on a bed, the orange is quite prominent - just at the bend of the pillow. Ho hum. 

It's for Littlest Granddaughter. If she gets fed up of the rainbow colours she can always turn it over. 

It's the last day of the school holidays here and we went with the Edinburgh Two and their dad to the Botanics for a walk and lunch. It was a beautiful day but coooooold. 

This is how high the sun gets at midday here in mid-winter. Not very high! We had a lovely time with the family, though. So lucky to have them here. 
 

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. 

 

Time flies like an arrow...

Big Granddaughter is 12! How did that happen??

#

And we went to the Botanics, where...

spring...

is...

definitely...

springing...

at least...

as far as (some of) the rhododendrons are concerned.