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. 

 

Have to keep busy...

Things are quietish around here. I've spent this afternoon happily and brainlessly sewing together strips of shirt for Mr Life's quilt - much easier than making stars. (The squares at the bottom do have four stripes, but the fourth, plain blue one, merges with the blue background.) Other than that, there's been a bit of socialising, a book group (that's mainly socialising too, though we do discuss the book...) and various walks. 

We still can't reliably get out of the street in the car.

For example, this was the entrance to our driveway this morning. 

However, fortunately there are plenty of buses. 

I'm sitting listening to Mozart's Vespers as I write this, since this is one of the pieces that one of my choirs is singing in May. It's always disappointing that doing this doesn't implant the music in one's brain as well as one would hope. It all sounds extremely familiar as one types away, but it's actually much better to follow along with the score. One of the other pieces we're doing is Britten's St Nicolas. I'm not a huge fan of Britten, especially the movement in this in which there's a famine and some boys are kidnapped and pickled (urgh!) for food. Nicolas rescues them in the nick of time, but still. As a squeamish vegetarian, I don't enjoy this movement. I've sung it before, but not for years, though I did remember about the pickled boys (trauma!). The piece does have some jolly bits with great shouty choruses from the men during storm scenes and so on. 

I wish that the kind people who comment on my blog all had blogs themselves. Looking at you, Virginia and Maureen! Then I would know more about them. Still, why do I have a blog? I'm just a bit compulsive in some respects. I do Duolingo in French, German and Scottish Gaelic (not making huge progress with the latter; I should really look up the grammar, which is not at all like that of any other language that I've studied). I somehow fall for the mustn't-lose-my-"streak" thing and can't bear to break it. No reason, really - but it's an incentive to keep going, even though the streak couldn't really matter less. Which reminds me... better do today's session. 

 

Casting off

 

We've lived in our current house for 37 years. The street we live in is very small - only 5 houses - and in all the years we've lived here, the road has never been resurfaced. Until now. 

Very exciting. 

Luckily we haven't needed to get our car out in the last few days, and tomorrow we're going up town in the bus, so that's all right. We do usually go to the supermarket on Thursdays, though. Hmm. We'll see. 

It's not really been gardening weather - cold and dank - so I've been getting on with making star patches out of Mr L's old shirts for his quilt. This is not how they'll be arranged. There are 9 because I wasn't concentrating - I only need 8, I think. Stars are a bit of a fiddle; the other patches will be less so, I hope. 

We have snowdrops and crocuses in the garden - not fully out crocuses, but they're showing colour. I'm eager to get the spring tidy done. On the other hand, it's chilly - not frosty, but not tempting. Playing with old shirts is more fun. 

I always wanted to make a quilt (a quilt - and I'm now on my 27th!) but never had time before I retired from teaching and indeed till after my mum died because she was then ill and needed looking after. My lovely mum was a chilly (not in personality, Margaret! - just in temperature) person and I now wish that I'd been able to make her a quilt to sit under in her pink chair. She'd have been impressed, too - not that my quilts are impressive, but she was my mum. She died 13 and a half years ago and I miss her a lot. 

Wonky

We drove up to Son's house near Dundee on Saturday and went to a bouncy place. Here is Medium Granddaughter swinging on a trapeze, 

and Small Grandson making his dad disappear. It was lovely to see them. 

Supermarkets at this time of year sell bunches of daffodils for £1, which seems terribly little - how much do the growers get?? On the other hand, since the daffodils are there, and cut already, it seems right just to buy some and get a burst of spring in the house. So cheering.

On Sunday we walked in the Botanics, where alpines bloomed in the open glasshouses

and snowdrops flowered outside. Lovely!

I had another bash at making a star with striped fabric - not checked, this time; maybe another day, when I feel stronger - and actually put some thought into getting the stripes going in the same direction. Not quite matching - I don't have that much time to footer about - but considerably better than my previous attempt, which I hadn't really thought about in advance, and which I'm not going to bother changing. The quilt will just be for Mr Life to sit under while watching tv, and he doesn't mind. You know that thing about the Amish putting a deliberate mistake into a quilt to show... what? ... the imperfections of humanity or something. Well, the other star from shirt material was that. Or so we'll say.

And golly gosh, isn't humanity showing its imperfections at the moment, particularly the world leaders? Compared to that, I'm not worrying about a wonky star. 

 

Colours and scents

 Ah, Blogger has uploaded my photos backwards again. Still, never mind. 

 

Today we took the Edinburgh Two to Lauriston Castle, a big house (with a medieval tower house incorporated) in lovely gardens, given to the city by its last inhabitants. Look at the length of Big Grandson's hair! It's very nice hair, but I'm not too keen on its length. However, it will eventually get cut. I hope. 

It was a beautiful day and they're such good company. A croquet club meets in the grounds. 

You can see over the water to Fife. 

I've finished my rainbow quilt top. I didn't design it, but copied it from a photo that I saw somewhere or other on the internet. Well done to the designer. My brain could never have thought that up. It was fun to do, but I still don't like orange. I've still to put a border on it, piece together the back (much less elaborately than the front) and quilt it, so there's a long way to go. 

It's been warm, and the doors and windows have been open a lot, and the garden smells divine, especially at night. I've planted night scented stocks and nicotiana - what a lovely scent. 

This astilbe hasn't got any scent but I love the colour - however, the thalictrum has, after many years, suddenly taken off and entangled itself among several other plants. My day lilies have also gone rogue. I shall have to Take Steps. 

This clematis is doing well. 

And, back to scent, this trachelospermum jasminoides, just outside the patio doors, fills the house with perfume. Son gave me it, years ago. 

And here again are the night scented stock, nicotiana and (unscented) cornflowers, all annuals. The others have somewhat overwhelmed the cornflowers, but hey ho. 

In a few months, I'll have to cut it all down. I'm getting a bit old for this... 75 last birthday, which was July 4. Hope you celebrated it in style, Americans. 

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. 

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. 

Azaleas 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. 

Quiltquiltquilt

I feel a rainbow-ish quilt in the offing. Thanks to my lovely friend Thimbleanna, I have enough orange and some purple, but I think I need to buy a little more purple. Even with all this on the bed, the stash cupboard is still full. But there's no purple. I did claim I would never buy any more fabric but... what can a person do? 

Keeping busy

I've at last finished Big Granddaughter's dragon quilt. I started making it ages ago but then got diverted into making a cot quilt for Daughter 2's friend's baby. This type of thing is VERY easy - all you do is choose a big patterned fabric for the middle and then add lots of borders until it's big enough - so, no planning involved, really, and none of that pesky fiddle of getting rows of squares to have corners at the same place as the rows above and below. In this case, Big Granddaughter - who's eleven - chose most of the fabrics from my stash. The exceptions are the purple and violet ones, which I had to buy because I don't really do purple (but this is her current favourite colour) and the dragon fabrics, which I got from the same source as for Medium Granddaughter, who originally requested a dragon quilt.  Big Granddaughter, on seeing that, asked for one too. 

When she was five, she asked for a quilt with "bunnies and hedgehogs" but I made the fatal mistake of including maybe six squares of Peter Rabbit fabric, which she considered, by the time she was ten, were too babyish. How long, I ask myself, will she consider dragons suitable? 

By the time I was quilting her new one she was interested in the quilting itself and, having inspected my various templates, chose which designs she wanted in the different borders and in most cases also the colours of quilting thread. I have only a few darker colours and hadn't used them much, but I'm now a convert - they show up so much better. 

Anyway, what fun, but it's not really my creation. I just did the sewing. I really prefer having more of a free choice, but on the other hand it was really nice that she took an interest in the design. 

On Saturday, Mr L and I did the recce for a walk we're leading (well, he's leading, being the one with the sense of direction; I just follow along) in May. We got the bus to Linlithgow and walked down this path to the river. 

It was a pretty walk, 

though a bit muddy and rooty, which made it quite hard work. 

Then, after a detour into Muiravonside Country Park, we walked back to Linlithgow along the paved canal path, which was much easier. 

According to Mr L's device it was over 6 miles, which was further than I'd walked in a oner since my new hip - and it was fine, which was very good. Also there were various flights of steps, and Mr L's angioplastied heart was also fine, which was even better. Mind you, we were happy to sit down on the bus on the way home... .

And on Sunday we walked in the Botanics with Daughter 1 and family - lots of rhododendrons

of various colours

and some jolly good magnolias also. 

Not to say ten thousand or so daffodils, tossing their heads in spritely dance.