A number of things

We went up on Tuesday to visit Son and Little Grandson - DIL was at work and Medium Granddaughter was at school for much of the time, which was the snag. But we had a lovely time. Mr L pushed the little chap on his swing in their garden and we went for a walk. My boys! 

Little Grandson didn't fall into the burn, though I thought he might. 

We collected Medium Granddaughter from school and she had a play in the playpark. So that was all nice, or as nice as distance allows. 

Mr L and I visited the Audubon exhibition at the museum. I didn't know much about him except that he'd painted the birds of America and that his work is now extremely valuable, but it was very interesting. It turns out that he didn't get enough recognition in America and then came to Britain for a while, including Edinburgh (good choice) and we all thought he was great. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (as was my father, for different reasons) and generally did very well. 

I was somewhat disconcerted to find that he painted the birds by first studying them in the wild and then shooting one and wiring it into position. However, different times, I suppose. 

Also some of his "new species" - though by no means all - turned out to be the female or juvenile version of species already known. And then there's this one, the Bird of Washington - which has never been seen by anyone else. Did he make it up? Or was he just mistaken? 

We then walked down to Princes Street, admiring the city in the sunshine. 

In Princes Street Gardens, it turns out that Edinburgh Parks and Gardens don't share my view of orange flowers. 

Meanwhile in London, Daughter 2 and her husband packed up all their stuff...

and moved to their new house- yesterday.

It's not quite organised yet but they like it very much (thank goodness). 

The buying process has been so long that the grass needs a serious cut. But the garden has definite potential. It's much bigger than it looks here, somehow - the shed down at the bottom is quite large, though looks small. 

And in our garden, Mr L has kindly put up some trellises so that I can grow everlasting sweet peas up them. This involved drilling into a stone wall and lots of kneeling on the ground. He's now having a rest. Poor chap. How he loves my ideas... .