Summer's lease

It's a very fragrant time in my garden. Trachelospermum jasminoides climbs the trellis outside the sitting room patio doors. Son gave me this plant, years ago, and I think of him every time I see or smell it. 

Then there are lilies, 

and nicotiana. I'd never grown these till last year and I love them - why did I never grow them before? They have the tiniest seeds - dust, merely - and grow into these large plants. Isn't nature amazing? My lovely granny used to say - "All this, from one tiny seed!" and I agree. She was talking about cabbages, but the same applies to anything, really. 

And then phlox

and night-scented stocks - headily fragrant. 

 

Daughter 2, her husband and Littlest Granddaughter paid a flying visit so that the parents could go to a wedding. They brought back some flowers from the venue: a slightly odd, but lovely, mixture of alliums, delphiniums, snapdragons, roses and campanula.

Littlest and I played with tiny ducks - among other things. 

Another day, Mr L and I took the big grandchildren to the Glasgow Science Museum. They're now 12 and 14, and interact differently with the installations compared to how they did last time, several years ago. 

The London family brought their guinea pigs with them, and left them with us because the family is coming back in a week or two for all of August. 

We used to have guinea pigs when our children were small. They're cute. Very squeaky. The children were also cute. Ah, to be young again. Still, being old isn't so bad, though my arm still hurts a lot, some days. I'd be better resting it, maybe. But I don't. That would be boring. 

 

A little trip

We took ourselves off for a little outing to Dunfermline on Thursday on the bus, over the bridge to Fife.  (Buses are free to the over-60s.) We'd heard that there was an exhibition of Joseph Noel Paton's paintings in the Carnegie Library, and having only vaguely heard of JNP, wanted to find out more. 

It turned out that he was very famous in his day and was the Queen's (Victoria's) Limner in Scotland. He painted lots of pictures of fairies, because that was very fashionable, but also portraits of his family and other people. 

This one is of his wife and youngest son and is called "Lullaby". It somewhat disregards the fact that the average mother, having got the baby to sleep, would immediately put him down and go and tidy up - or possibly collapse in a heap - rather than balance him precariously on her knee and play the piano to keep him asleep. However, artistic licence and all that. 

The paintings were in a modern extension to the library, which was very nice indeed, and which also houses a museum with various exhibits showing the history of Scotland and specifically of Dunfermline - which was the capital of Scotland between the 11th and 15th centuries. 

Queen Margaret founded a priory here in 1070. As tends to happen, the building got altered a lot over the years, a bit of it was taken over for a palace (now fairly ruined) and an extra church was built on the side two hundred years ago, but there's still quite a lot to see. The extension to the library has lots of glass, with extensive views over the gardens, 

and the Abbey church and precincts. 

You can see Robert the Bruce's name built into the church tower.

By the time we'd finished looking at the exhibition (and had lunch) the Abbey was closing, as was the Palace, so we just had a quick look and will come back another day.

Then we went for a short walk in the adjacent Pittencrieff Park. This was bought by Andrew Carnegie in 1902 and given to the people of Dunfermline. The story is that as a boy, he couldn't play there because the estate was privately owned, so he vowed that one day, he'd buy it. And, once he'd become one of the richest people in the world, he did. 

 

To and fro

Unusually, we've been up north three days running. On Wednesday we drove up to 

visit Son and the Unbloggables near Dundee, which was lovely. The Unb. grandchildren are very sweet. I just wish they lived nearer. 

Then yesterday was my birthday. (Happy Independence Day, Americans. Are you doing ok? - not sure we are on this side of the pond, but we've had an election so let's see if the new lot can improve things. As for your election, hmm). 

The family are a) visiting in-laws down south or b) in their usual places of residence, so we took ourselves up on the train to look at the new museum in Perth. It was very impressive. We saw the Stone of Destiny (very important for Scottish people, though admittedly just a lump of sandstone) and various other interesting and astonishingly old things. They had an exhibition on unicorns in folklore and art, with exhibits such as this - a bestiary made in the 1100s. It's amazing how well it's survived, don't you think? What of our age will survive that long, I wonder?  

And look at this ceramic cooking pot from 1000ish. 1000! William the Conqueror could have had his soup out of that. I mean, it might have been 66 by then, but it's 1024 now. So at a mere 66 it would probably have been in working order.  

Today we again got on the train and this time went to Dunblane, childhood home of Andy Murray. The purpose was to recce a walk for the walking gang. We're not leading it till September (well, Mr L leads it really; I have very little sense of direction) but we were trying to get ahead of ourselves. This walk featured in a newspaper some time ago and it looked promising. 

T

However, it wasn't. A lot of it was up this narrow path, with grasses sometimes above my head, and a rocky, muddy, slippery surface which made it hard to keep one's feet. There were many parts at which breaking an ankle seemed all too feasible, and it would have been very tedious for the ambulance men to have to struggle along this path with a stretcher, particularly if I'd been on it. And as well as that, single file isn't really good for walking in a group, when the whole point is to chat the miles away. 

There were nice open bits to the walk as well -

but on the whole - no. The plan had been to walk to Bridge of Allan and then, with minor variations, back along the path again to Dunblane, but by the time we got to Bridge of Allan we'd had enough and just got the train home from there. So though it wasn't an unenjoyable day, we're going to have to find a different walk for the group - which is a bit tedious, but hey ho, it was exercise and fresh air and a workout for the thighs, so it's all good. 

And tomorrow we're staying in Edinburgh. 

 

Fine

We went up to Son's at the weekend and saw him and the UnBloggables, who're now 7 and 4 and delightful. This is the view from his garden. Ideally, I would live somewhere like this too, though it wouldn't be practical as an old person if one couldn't drive. In town, we can walk or get the bus. There, they drive everywhere. Anyway, with one child north and one south, we have to stay in Edinburgh, which is gettatable from both directions. But at heart, I'm not a city person. I would prefer to live in a small town in East Lothian, with views of the sea, and just visit the city from time to time. 

Hey ho. 

It's fully spring now, and we've had some very pleasant weather. This gorse by the riverside smells wonderfully coconutty. 

And of course we went to the Botanics the other day, which always lifts the spirits. 

Yesterday we visited friends in the west of Scotland. We walked along Loch Winnoch in the sunshine. it was lovely: good company, fresh air, sunshine, swans, delicious food. 

So: nothing's happened. But this is all right. 

I sat down beside another soprano in choir yesterday evening and said, "How are you?" 

"Fine," she said, in an obviously not-fine way. 

"Oh dear," I said, "what's the matter?"

"I've been told I've got dementia," she said. 

It's what everyone our age dreads, isn't it? Hard to think of words of consolation - well, there aren't really any.  

 

Bright!

In my fairly unproductive life these days, nothing very much happens - which is on the whole good, but doesn't leave a lot to blog about. I see quite a lot of friends, which is lovely: two separate groups of school friends, friends from the one school and from the two colleges that I taught at, other friends from my youth and some from more recent years. I feel very lucky to have all these people in my life and am very aware that we're all getting older and must treasure these friendships while we're all still able to get about. 

For example, I had coffee today with four women with whom I started teaching at a high school in 1973 - over 50 years ago. One by one we all left that school to have children or teach elsewhere, but we've kept seeing one another ever since. We've been married (and, apart from one who's widowed, are all still married), four of us have had children and grandchildren and we've all had ups and downs and house moves and mainly minor ailments and some of them have had major troubles and one's had a stroke but - we chatter on, and it's lovely.

I know I often blog about flowers, but here are more. I went to the Botanics the other day and some of the rhododendrons are in full flower - mainly the pink ones. Filling one's gaze with colour is very therapeutic. 

Yesterday, Mr L and I visited Shepherd House in Inveresk, which is really joined on to the eastern side of the city now, though it used to be a separate village. We've walked past this house before, but never when the gardens were open. The house was built in 1650ish but has been owned since 1957 (yes!) by very keen gardeners, who have over the years made it really beautiful. Now in their nineties, they still open the gardens sometimes for charity. 

There are various jolly touches. This is a yew sheep.

A bunch of tulips in pebbles.

I really want some of these yellow-headed snowdrops, but alas, none of the stockists I can find have any actually in stock. 

The hellebores were stunning. 

I know what he means! 

 This is Inveresk village - it's picturesque, despite the orange - which is a traditional colour for old Scottish harled (pebble-dashed) buildings. A mistake, I feel, but at least one hallowed by centuries. 

Not being quite organised for Christmas yet

We've been gradually getting ready for Christmas, partly by ordering a whole lot of things on Amazon, which one knows one shouldn't - but it's so much more convenient, isn't it, than trailing around the shops and finding nothing suitable? We did, however, go to the Christmas fair at Hopetoun House, which I always like doing. Hopetoun House is a 1750s grand edifice lived in by the Marquess of Linlithgow. Like most aristocrats these days, he has to keep the roof on by allowing people to visit, and, at Christmas, there's a very upmarket fair with lots of stalls full of lovely things, often made by the stallholders, none of which one actually needs. Still, it puts one in a Christmassy mood, as does queuing for coffee in the restaurant, which was once the stables for very lucky horses, but is now a lovely place to eat. 

You get to go round the house while visiting the stalls, and admire things like this pietra dura table top, 

and one of the Marquess's ancestors, 

who I think was sitting at this very window. 

And one can admire the extensive grounds

and the fancy ceilings and the silk-lined walls. We visited Hopetoun when I was a little girl, and I developed a fixed ambition to have two sitting rooms, one with crimson walls and the other (as in another Hopetoun room) with deep yellow. Hasn't happened yet, though I suppose it's still achievable. We probably wouldn't use silk, however, and we're a bit short of portraits of our ancestors. 

The weather here has been distinctly chilly, with quite a bit of frost. 

Last Saturday we went up north to visit a friend, and this was the view on the way. Brrr. 

We haven't had any snow here yet, and long may this last. Roll on, spring.