Ho hum

I am beginning to feel seriously fed up with this virus thing - even though I do know that a lot of people have much worse things to put up with. On Monday I took the Edinburgh grandchildren to the trampoline centre, and with the various necessary restrictions it was all a bit of a faff. The children had a good time, though. 

Then yesterday, Mr L and I had a long walk along the River Almond. It had been very wet overnight, the river was very fast-flowing and it was quite muddy underfoot. But it was good to go somewhere different from the usual walks - it's only a couple of miles from our house as the crow flies but we haven't been for a while because the council have put in traffic restrictions - among many supposedly to encourage us to get on our bikes - which make it more difficult to get parked near there. 

I wanted to see the autumn colours, which have been very good near us, but in fact by the river they were slightly disappointing. Still, we had a lovely walk. 

Here we are crossing Cramond Brig (Bridge), which was built around 1480. It's a long way down to the river at this point. I can't imagine how they built it, but it seems to have worked. 

The sun came out, 

it was mild, and we felt refreshed. 

And today we walked down to Saughton Park, which is past its summer best

but still has a reasonable amount of colour, as in these Michaelmas daisies

and this sedum

these schizostylis (I think),

very late-flowering lupins

and delphiniums. 

It was such a beautiful day, as warm as summer (here). 

Which would have made it a good day for our landscapers to come, but once more, they didn't - or, to be more accurate, they did, arousing our hopes, but they stayed about twenty minutes and then vanished without a word. They were supposed to be laying our turf today. Turf? What turf? I realise that, having been mucked around by our unhelpful new neighbour getting the road dug up (and then filled in again) when they were supposed to be doing the work at the beginning of the month, they're now fitting us in during odd moments, but we're getting very fed up with wondering every day if they're coming. First world problems, I know, but these don't add to the joy of life. 

I handed over the African fabrics quilt to my friend last night, at her door, and she seemed delighted. Which is good. 

I'm becoming more and more aware that we don't have very many more good years ahead of us, when we're healthy and reasonably fit to visit people and places - and here's one of those years, being frittered away. And three of our grandchildren are growing up without us. Ho hum.