Things to do

It's beautifully mild and sunny here, which is very nice though possibly the indication of dreadful global warming. There's a lot of work to be done in the garden. It still looks quite good from a distance, however. 

The cosmos always takes ages to flower but is worth the wait. 

Last spring, when my huge pot of amaryllis had finished flowering, for some reason I can't now remember I put it temporarily in the garden rather than on a windowsill. I never normally do this because I don't want to import slugs. And of course, five months later, it's still there. I now need to split it up (it has multiple bulbs) but it's taken it upon itself to flower now instead of spring - as well as spring? And of course the slugs have been chewing the flowers. I decided that today was the day I was going to repot it in various pots, and of course I can't get it out of the pot. Mr L is out. I need him to take one end while I yank the other. Or maybe to cut the pot off. I don't think I have anything sharp enough. 

I'm finding it harder to find things to declutter without having a Good Sort Out, which I don't have time for. Too much music to learn, too much gardening to do, too much quilting to have fun with. (Why are all my hobbies so time-consuming?) But here, guilt, guilt, is last Monday's offering. Mr L's cousin is a potter, and she made this pretty little bowl and gave it to my mother. It's been sitting in the bedroom that was Mum's when she lived with us, since Mum died in 2012, and so it's fallen victim to the purge. Someone will love it, and we have various other of Cousin S's creations. I expect Cousin S has forgotten about it. I hope. Anyway, she won't see this. 

I'm sitting here listening to Brahms's Song of Destiny and Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. I think I know the music all right, but am not so good on the words - the first one in German and the second (much harder) in all sorts of things. Listening while blogging doesn't help with the words...

Right, I'm off to start cutting out a Christmas quilt for Daughter 2. It's quite a simple one. I think. (I'm such an optimist.) Again, it's just from a photo rather than from a pattern. There's a bit of arithmetic to do. 

Walking walking walking

We've been away with our walking friends again, to Richmond in Yorkshire, to the same house as the previous two years. We had a lovely time. 

Mr L and I visited Richmond Castle in a spare moment. It was probably built from about 1070, though as you can see, there's a lot of it missing now. Presumably people pinched the stone to build the surrounding houses. 

We walked along the river to Easby Abbey

and the nearby St Agatha's Church. 

Inside are wall paintings, including this one, which dates from about 1250. The church was built some time before that, obviously.

The Abbey itself was founded in 1152 but has suffered somewhat, becoming ruined after Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries. It was huge, though, so there's a lot of it left, though it's all walls and no roof. 

The third day was the hardest. The walk wasn't much longer - 6 or 7 miles - but it was very up and down. Once we got high up, the wind fairly whistled and it was a bit wet, but really the weather was much better than had been forecast, so that was good. On the way down, mainly through fields with cows (I don't really trust cows) and sheep, there were a lot of stiles built by 6'5 men with long legs - quite tricky for 5'2 ladies with shorter ones. But we made it. Our ages are 71, 76, 78, 79, 80 and 95 (yes, 95! and she's the fittest of us all!) so we didn't do too badly. 

I didn't take any photos of the hard bits - too busy trying not to fall over. But this is near the end. We still had to go over that ridge and down the other side. 

We had a really great time with lots of laughter. Truly the best medicine for tired muscles. 

 

Jumping

Ah, Blogger is putting the photos back to front again. 

The latest offerings to the gods of minimalism: an elderly Postman Pat jigsaw

and a couple of round tablecloths. A friend has just this moment emailed me, having seen these sacrificial articles on my Facebook page, to ask if she can have the jigsaw for her little grandson, so I've now removed it from the bin. Fortunately it hadn't suffered from its sojourn there! 

The tablecloths date from the time when, here at any rate, it was fashionable to cover a round table with a coloured cloth and then put a white lacy one on top of that. It was a pretty fashion, I thought, but has now passed, so why did I keep the white cloths? Well, no longer. They're off to a charity shop. 

We went up yesterday to visit Son and family. We didn't actually go to their house, but to the Scottish Deer Centre, which does have deer but also various other fun things such as these bouncy pillows. Son can jump quite high on them. He's now, surprisingly, 42; strange, since I myself am only 35. Could I have jumped that high at 42?? Hmm. 

The garden flourishes on,

though we've had some rain after a very dry summer,

so the weeds are taking full advantage. 

There's a lot which will need to be cut down in the next little while. 

But meanwhile, the autumn flowers give us pleasure. 

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. 
 

Back to normal things

Minimalising Monday - some outgrown dressing-up outfits - charity shops won't take them but lots of people on Facebook Marketplace were keen. 

And a fairly rubbish bingo game bought some time ago at a child's request - I just put it in the bin. It's fiddly and probably some of the bits are now missing. Lots more toys to rationalise, though...

On Saturday we went with the walking chums over the Forth Bridge on a train (hence the somewhat blurry photo) to do the walk that Mr L and I did a recce of the other week. It was perfect weather - warmish and sunny, with no wind. We walked from Kirkcaldy to Dysart Harbour and back. 

A lovely day out with friends. 

It's getting a wee bit autumnal, though... Sigh. 

August

Long time no blog, though this may be a good thing. 

We've had a busy August, with Daughter 2, Littlest Granddaughter and her guinea pigs staying with us for most of it and my brother and sister-and-law staying for a week. Here is Littlest making a concoction. 

And here are various of us in the garden. I have no idea what was happening there. 

Guinea pigs again. 

My brother, sister-in-law and I went to see Son-in-Law 2's show in the Fringe Festival. 

Drawing. I think she was drawing...

this, which is a cat, a dog, a mouse, a tree, a branch, an owl, a bird, a butterfly... and some other things, all wearing funny hats and watching one another. She signed it with the first letter of her name and then a squiggly grown-up signature. 

We had a trip to the museum.

And now they're gone, and I feel, as ever, forlorn. But the house is tidier. On the way home to London on the train, she knitted a tummy-warmer for her elephant. 

 

Years

The solar eclipse happened, and Littlest Granddaughter, who with Daughter 2 is staying with us for most of August, saw it through the pinhole camera that her mother made out of a cereal carton. Well, we all saw it. The sun looked tiny inside the cereal box, but it definitely had a bite out of it. Littlest Granddaughter was not particularly impressed, even when we told her that it wouldn't happen again till she's 78 or something. 

She decided to make "an old, one-eyed teddy with a patch". So we did. She designed it, which is why the teddy has unusually pointy ears, but you don't argue with Littlest Granddaughter, at least not about something unimportant. The artist's vision, and all that. 

She found, and tried on, the dress that I wore on 18th December 1967, when Mr Life was my partner at my sixth year (ie final year) school dance. I was 17, he was 19, and this is when our romance began. The dress was, obviously, too big for her but not as much too big as I would have expected. She's very tall for nearly 9. However, I washed it not long ago and I think it shrank. 

Today we went to the funeral of the husband of one of my friends from my school-teaching days. I've known her since 1973 and the group of us English teachers who made friends then are still friends and meet up fairly regularly. Brian was 80, so it wasn't a tragedy exactly, but still, it's sad. The funeral food afterwards was by the river in Haddington; quite scenic. My lovely granny was born in a house just beside this bridge, in 1895.

Carpe diem, that's the thing.