Trees and flowers

This week's decluttering was easy: Son's cricket bat from school, palmed off on him when he came for a couple of days with the children, and...

the reins that we used to put on our grandchildren when we took them for a walk. I don't think our 15, 13, 10, 9 or 7-year-olds would really fit them now, but my newish-granny friend wants them. Done!

Saturday was a perfect autumn day and we went with our chums to Dalkeith, to walk round the Palace grounds. We got the bus past the oldest house in Portobello, dating from the 17th century

and enjoyed the beach views. 

The grounds of Dalkeith Palace are extensive and are now a public park. The Palace was the seat of the Dukes of Buccleuch (pronounced Buck-loo) from 1642 till 1916. The original castle was demolished, and replaced by the current building on the same site between 1701 and 1711. 

There are many very old trees, planted by the dukes, or rather by their gardeners. 

These come from all over the world. Money no object. 

There's the palace. 

It was all very pretty. 

Here's George, our television gardener friend, beside a tree that's believed to be 1000 years old. It still looks pretty healthy. We had a lovely day. 

In London, Smallest Granddaughter makes Saxon brooches for homework. I think her architect mum may have had a hand in the designs. 

And, though we've had a few light frosts, the garden blooms on. For now. 

A number of things

We went to an exhibition at the Botanics last week about earth - I can't quite remember the relevance of the above, but I do remember that it's cut paper work - lots of (are they?) seed heads, very intricately cut out. What patience!

And this is a shade chart of various colours of soil found in Scotland. The bottom right one is just a Scottish flag, not unusual sky-blue earth 

And then we walked around in lovely autumn weather

and admired

the shapes and colours of nature. 

Another day we walked along the river to the gallery

(across the bridge and up the steps) to see an exhibition of the paintings of Gwen John. 

They were good, but she did somewhat specialise in painting gloomy women. 

We didn't particularly want to take any of them home with us. 

In London, Smallest Granddaughter had a 9th birthday party with a Hallowe'en theme. 

Here, Big Grandson helped bake biscuits (look at the size of him!)

and I met a friend for coffee in Saughton Park and enjoyed the flowers. No frost yet. 

This street tree is always at its best at this time of year. 

 

And last Saturday we had dinner with friends who have a baby grandson and who kindly accepted all these outgrown things, and thus dealt with Minimalising Monday for this week. 

My gradual decluttering has been going on since May. Surely we should notice a difference soon...? 

Son and family have been here for a couple of days, which was lovely. This is a race track. Small Grandson is just out of sight, preparing for the descent. 

 

Random musings while listening to Bach

Daughter 2, in London, bought these fabrics to make a Christmas tree skirt. 

Coincidentally, I bought one of the same fabrics for her Christmas quilt. We're basically the same person, though she has many talents that I do not have. 

This is Big Grandson doing work experience as required by the school, in his mother's office. How can he be that grown-up? He's a lanky 6-footer. About yesterday, it seems to me, he was learning to walk. 

I'm having fun with fabrics. How accurately am I going to sew these 2 and a half inch squares together? Hmm. Time will tell. I'm also quilting Mr L's shirt quilt. I like having two quilts on the go, one to cut out and the other to sew when I'm watching television. I'm not a fan of doing nothing for long periods. 

Today's charity shop victim. I've had it since Mr Life's mother died in 1992 and had forgotten all about it. I came across it while looking for something to get rid of. It looks less mouldy in real life, but I think we can survive without it. I might polish it before disposing of it. (I will.)

I'm typing this while listening to Bach's Cantata number 150. It's lovely, but not particularly easy. I think I'd better concentrate. 

 

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.