Wales. Railways.

We've been away to Wales, for the specific purpose of riding on heritage railways, which is Mr L's idea of a good time. He spends a lot of holidays walking round gardens with me, so it seemed only fair for him to get his fix of trains. We stayed in an immaculate bungalow in Tywyn, pronounced approximately tow-inn, which is very near the Talyllyn Railway. If you know, you know. So that was very good. There are a lot of sheep in Wales, as in Scotland, so the bungalow had lots of cute little sheepie touches, as above. 

Anyway, these photos are all in the wrong order, probably, but you get the general idea. 

This is a railway museum. 

This is Mr L on a train. 

This is Bala Lake. This part of Wales is very scenic. 

Another train. 

View from a train. 

This was the main reason for the visit at this specific time - it was the 75th anniversary yesterday of the restoration of the Talyllyn railway. Lots of bearded chaps took part in a ceremony to celebrate this. Many photos were taken. 

Yesterday also happened to be Mr L's 78th birthday. This is his haul of presents in the immaculate bungalow. A lot of it consisted of railway books. (Yes, we're supposed to be decluttering, but seemingly railway books are immune from this process. Mind you, other books will be too.)

And then today we drove home. It's quite a long way. But isn't Wales lovely? 

The old chap is also rather nice. 

This week's actual decluttering didn't happen on Monday, because we were away, but there's some stuff on the spare room bed waiting to go, and also Mr L had sent away some old cameras to a company that buys such things. They only gave him £30 for them, but on the other hand they're no longer in our house. 

The trouble with the immaculate bungalow is that I came home and immediately wanted to redecorate the whole house and buy new furniture. But the feeling has now worn off. 

Decluttering again

This week's decluttering: about 400 books, which I hope a charity is going to come and collect today. They're mainly big hardbacks - I read lots of biographies, printed diaries and letters and other non-fiction books. Don't get me wrong - we still have another 400ish, which I will reread if I live long enough. 

Also some items from the cutlery drawer. Why did we need 4 bottle openers (I've kept one)? And two nutcrackers? - I think we cracked nuts the last time when the children were small, at Hallowe'en. These are the family heirloom ones, argh, but we support a charity that collects metal to recycle, so... off they go. Also two melon ballers? Have I ever balled melon? 

This is the truncheon owned by William Menzies (pronounced, in Scotland, Ming-ess), who was married to Mr L's great-aunt Agnes. He was a village postmaster and presumably had it to discourage marauders in the tiny, beautiful, peaceful village by Loch Tay. Son and family were here for the weekend and Son has taken it away, not - I assume - to chase difficult patients from his surgery.

Yesterday we did a recce for a walk we're leading a week on Saturday. It was in the Borders, otherwise known as the Southern Uplands, and there's a reason for that. 

It was about 6 and a half miles, lots of it - most of it - going up hill and down again. 

It was beautiful and we had perfect spring weather. 

But it was quite tiring. 
 

Blossom!

Life is too busy - lots of things to do in relation to the choir of which I'm chair, in preparation for a concert and, four weeks later, a Come & Sing (with catering). Also my other choir is having a concert in between these two events. Some tricky music! But lovely. Well, one piece is Britten's St Nicolas, which is less to my taste, though it has jolly bits. But otherwise Mozart, more Mozart and Purcell. 

The weather has often been beautiful, and I have much to do in the garden and not enough time. But look at my little cercis tree! It's almost too pink!

We had a day off from tasks on Saturday and went down with Daughter 1 to Selkirk in the Borders to see an exhibition by the (a?) Borders quilting group. It was great. Some of the quilts were quite modern, so more Britten than Mozart, but all were very impressive. 

I like this leaf. 

I like the colours of this one, though it's a bit exhausting to look at. Excuse my shadow.

One day I'd like to make some little houses, though with less orange. 

This was extremely impressive!

We had a little walk to see the nursing home where Mr L was born. It's now a clinic for young people with mental health problems. 

It has a lovely garden, though I doubt if these cherry trees were in it in May 1948, when he first came down those steps to start his life. 

 

Fresh air and exercise

I've decided to stop calling our decluttering "death cleaning" - a bit depressing. It's now Minimalising Monday; though if Mondays are too busy it can actually happen on another day. This Monday we took my mother's crystal bowl to a charity shop. It's been in our house since my lovely mum died in 2012, and I've never used it. I have several crystal bowls that I do use, and this one, because it's shallow, takes up a lot of space. 

And we took Mr L's old bike to a bike place where they refurbish them for good causes - youth groups and so on. 

We've also arranged for a charity to come and collect the books we're getting rid of. They're coming on May 5, so we need to tackle the books in the other rooms before then. I love a deadline. And Mr L is decluttering his old cameras. 

On Saturday we went on a lovely walk with the gang round Gosford House in East Lothian. 

The weather was perfect. 

This was our lunch spot. 

Reflections. 

Six miles, including walking along to the golf clubhouse for coffee overlooking the sea. 

And then home on the bus.

My little cercis chinensis is looking good, with its tulip entourage. 

Yesterday I was up town and admired the view from the bus stop.

And look at these frilly tulips in the garden! So pink. Lovely spring. 

 

The Death Clean continues.

It's the school holidays, and Son-in-Law1, the Edinburgh grandchildren and I went up Calton Hill, something I haven't done for years. Though it's in the middle of the city, it used to be very quiet, but it's now a tourist destination - coaches parked at the bottom - and there were lots of people wandering around. The weather was beautiful, which no doubt encouraged lingering.  

This is Edinburgh's Disgrace. The plan was to build a replica of the Parthenon, with stones exactly the same size as in Greece, in honour of the Scottish dead in the Napoleonic Wars. The money was to be raised by public subscription, but only half of the £42,000 was produced so this is all that got built. It's still quite striking. 

It looks as if this leads straight on to Arthur's Seat in the distance, but there's actually quite a chunk of town in between. 

You get a good view of the Castle and the east end of the main part of town. 

Littlest Granddaughter and Daughter 2 have been staying, and this sort of thing has been happening. 

Littlest has more or less taught herself to knit and made this, with some other creations. 

But they've gone now. It was a beautiful day again today - looking this way. 

Looking the other way, though - the Great Book Purge has begun. So far, we've succeeded mainly in making a Great Mess, but we have hopes to continue the death cleaning in this area. There aren't that many books that I actually want to part with, but facts must be faced, one of which is that we probably won't live long enough (ie to our 150th birthdays) to reread them all (as well as using up all my fabric stash; but that's another story). 

 

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.