Wanderings. And stuff.

Very clever and helpful Son-in-Law 1 has solved my photo problem by creating a Google Photo album for me, which allows me to add photos to my blog. So - sorry about that - here are lots! 

We got the bus on Friday to Haddington (above) - a small (but growing) town not far from Edinburgh - and had a nice walk through the town and then along the river to the Amisfield Walled Garden, where we'd never been before. 

My lovely granny lived in Haddington for the first five years of her life, so I always like to go there and say hello to her toddling shade. 

Here's a more-than-usually successful bit of meadow planting in the middle of some housing. 

The path along by the river was flat and quite easy to walk along, 

with views over fields of crops. 

And the garden, when we reached it, was lovely. I think it's mainly (entirely?) staffed by volunteers, who do a grand job. 

There weren't many visitors. It used to be part of the garden of a huge house which was built in the mid-1700s and demolished in 1928/9 because the family had other houses and the upkeep was too much. We will certainly return. 

On Sunday we had lunch with the Edinburgh family at Swanston and then climbed the hill to work off lunch and admire the views. Edinburgh is a fairly small city and it's not difficult to get out of it and up on the hills, down to the beach or out into the country. This photo looks down at the city. It seems very distant but in fact it's minutes away in a car. 

Hills: so soothing. I to the hills will lift mine eyes and all that. I do this a lot. 

Today we walked to Saughton Park, not far from where we live. It was a sunnier day than it looks in my photos, and rather warm. 

I do so love herbaceous perennials. 

But they're a lot of work, even in my small garden. Here... the cutting down in autumn and spring - goodness. 

Then at last this afternoon I forced myself to get back to the boxes of various family archives, to try to sort them out a bit and hopefully throw some out. I'm not doing very well so far. I keep creating categories of things: Mum, Dad, Mum and Dad, Grandparents - but then this has to be subdivided because I had four grandparents, like everyone else, and so did Mr L - not that his parents left very much paperwork, unlike mine. Then I have some things from my two childless aunts. And lots of lovely cards and things given to us by our children, and their drawings, and the grandchildren's cute drawings. And lots of letters and emails and various birth and death certificates - do I keep these with their owners' stuff, or in a separate category? Etc etc. And the other problems are that everything is a) interesting, so I have to read it again and b) rather sad, because the relevant person is dead, or even if just that part of our lives is over. 

There's a LOT to sort through. I can't see much to throw out, though. 

I'll keep this, though I wonder how interesting it will be for those who never met my grandfather Thomas, eg even our children, let alone anyone further down the line. This is his reference from the army at the end of WW1. It's accurate apart perhaps from the "tactful" bit. He was an interesting man - from a working class family, though his father was a printer, as Thomas also was, so they were literate chaps and I suppose reasonably well paid. He was, as it says, clever - would have liked to be a doctor, though of course never got the chance. He was interested in health and got his family to be vegetarian in the 1930s, which was pretty unusual in those days, though when WW2 came, people just had to eat what was available. 

But tactful... not so much. He wasn't slow to express his opinion of people who didn't share his views. I remember his saying of someone, "He couldn't run 100 yards to save his life" (can't remember the context) in a contemptuous tone - Grandpa himself was very fit and used to be a long-distance runner in his youth. I myself couldn't now run 100 yards either, except slowly and pursued only by, say, a murderous tortoise. 

Future generations, reading this testimonial, might picture some sort of gentle saint. Which he wasn't. He was a decent man, and meant well. But he could be a bit of an old grump. Mind you, as a young man he was at the awfulness of Gallipoli, where he was shot in the hand, so who am I, who have always lived a cushy life, to criticise him for being a bit of a misanthrope?