Storms

We went to our beloved Botanics today and saw some of the results of the recent storm. This was the tallest tree in the gardens. No longer, sadly.

Poor tree. 

And this one. 

Still, my favourite tree, the Taxodium Distichum (or to put it tactlessly, the bald cypress - it's deciduous, as you can see) seems to have survived with only some twigs blown off. It's so beautiful in leaf, covered in lots of tiny lime green needles in the summer, which turn reddish in the autumn. And when it rains (what? in Scotland?) it seems to be covered in diamonds.

So there are good things too, to distract us from the unbelievable events in the US and elsewhere. Good things such as snowdrops. 

And sunshine, and lovely branches against the sky. 

 

Art and things

Dear old Blogger has been doing some odd things recently, but today it will at least allow me to add photos - though not in the right order. Still, let's not look a gift horse, etc. 

So here's a photo of some nice Edinburgh weather, when I went up town to look at an exhibition of pictures which are at the bottom of this post. 

I've started my rainbowish quilt and have now completed the red row (which is now twice this length). The cutting-out messed with my head a bit at first but I think I'm now familiar with it. Famous last...

Yesterday Mr L was a bit under the weather with a bad cold, so I went alone by train to visit Son and family. Above, you'll see the sun setting on the way back over the bridge.

Here's Medium Granddaughter on a trapeze - and this might (or might not) be Small Grandson running back to queue up for another go. I think it's not actually him but another boy of similar size - but you get the idea. 

And this is the view from the bridge on the way to visiting them - in reverse order. 

But I don't suppose it matters.

It was a lovely day. 

Here are some watercolours that I really liked at the exhibition that I went to on my own earlier in the week. Mr L didn't come because of his cold. I'd have any of these on my wall: some pleasing birds and flowers here. 

Talking of cold - brrr. I like the shadows and the tracery of the branches. 

I really like the shadows on this one too, and the interesting angle. I'd love to own this. 

And these colours would look good on a quilt, don't you think? 

I don't know who painted any of them because I didn't buy a catalogue. 

There's an exhibition of Turner watercolours on at the moment in the same gallery, with a queue of over 2 hours to get in. I like Turner well enough - some of his paintings are a bit misty for my taste - but it was great just to walk past that queue and go to this exhibition instead. 

And that was my week. In reverse. 

Big wind

Well, spring is springing here, or at least the end (ish) of winter is being a bit flowery. Most things are still pretty dormant, but you can always find something colourful at the Botanics. 

Azalias or

skimmias or

witch hazel or 

just a little robin. Traditionally, robins here are known as robin redbreasts, but their breasts are really orange. We didn't have a separate word for orange (as opposed to red) until actual oranges arrived here, and their name then got made into an adjective. So this is really a robin orangebreast. Doesn't have quite the same ring. But Christmas cards tend to have robins with red tummies, such is the power of language versus observation. 

I've started to cut out a quilt. It's to be a rainbowish one, so against all my principles I'm going to have to use some orange fabrics. I have to admit that Richard Of York Gave Battle in Vain. 

We've had a Big Wind, Storm Eowyn, which has done a lot of damage, though thankfully not to our house or garden. This happened on the path beside the golf course (apologies for the blurry photo) but, much more seriously...

this happened in the Botanics: its tallest tree, with 14 others, was damaged beyond remedy.  

This is what it used to look like - the tree right at the bottom of this path. Very sad. But worse things, much worse things, are happening in the world. 

A little trip

We took ourselves off for a little outing to Dunfermline on Thursday on the bus, over the bridge to Fife.  (Buses are free to the over-60s.) We'd heard that there was an exhibition of Joseph Noel Paton's paintings in the Carnegie Library, and having only vaguely heard of JNP, wanted to find out more. 

It turned out that he was very famous in his day and was the Queen's (Victoria's) Limner in Scotland. He painted lots of pictures of fairies, because that was very fashionable, but also portraits of his family and other people. 

This one is of his wife and youngest son and is called "Lullaby". It somewhat disregards the fact that the average mother, having got the baby to sleep, would immediately put him down and go and tidy up - or possibly collapse in a heap - rather than balance him precariously on her knee and play the piano to keep him asleep. However, artistic licence and all that. 

The paintings were in a modern extension to the library, which was very nice indeed, and which also houses a museum with various exhibits showing the history of Scotland and specifically of Dunfermline - which was the capital of Scotland between the 11th and 15th centuries. 

Queen Margaret founded a priory here in 1070. As tends to happen, the building got altered a lot over the years, a bit of it was taken over for a palace (now fairly ruined) and an extra church was built on the side two hundred years ago, but there's still quite a lot to see. The extension to the library has lots of glass, with extensive views over the gardens, 

and the Abbey church and precincts. 

You can see Robert the Bruce's name built into the church tower.

By the time we'd finished looking at the exhibition (and had lunch) the Abbey was closing, as was the Palace, so we just had a quick look and will come back another day.

Then we went for a short walk in the adjacent Pittencrieff Park. This was bought by Andrew Carnegie in 1902 and given to the people of Dunfermline. The story is that as a boy, he couldn't play there because the estate was privately owned, so he vowed that one day, he'd buy it. And, once he'd become one of the richest people in the world, he did. 

 

Grrr

Nothing much is happening here. Well, unless you'd like to know about the new(ish) car we bought recently, which is supposedly very clever and is automatic and is thus (in my opinion) much harder to drive than our previous, manual one. Anyway, we tried to go to church in it this morning and the car WOULDN'T OPEN - you remember what cars with keys were like? - yes, quite. Anyway, a chap from the AA (Automobile Association, not Alcoholics Anonymous) came after some hours, and got it open. He has a theory about the battery being drained because .... something like... it was attached to our wifi. Not by us, it wasn't. Things can be too clever, in my opinion. 

Deep breath. Yesterday we went for a walk down through another bit of the New Town,

to what is now one of the modern art galleries. We're not huge fans of (some) modern art but it has a good cafe. This building used to be an orphanage - it's a beautiful building but I imagine it was a somewhat forbidding sight for the poor little mites who got taken there from their presumably humbler homes. 

Here's the cafe. We warmed ourselves up there. 

And outside again, here, over the impressive curlicue on the wall, you can see allotments and then the other modern art gallery (also with good cafe). That gallery used to be a school. 

Here are the allotments. We haven't had snow but it's been very frosty all week. No one was working on the allotments. Wisely. 

Then we walked through the grounds of the second gallery,

down to the river and along the path towards home. 

When we got to the park, there were two swans and lots of ducks finding something good to eat on the river bed. I'm glad I'm not a duck. 

It's supposed to get much warmer this week. 
 

Cold walk

We did a recce for a town walk yesterday. We started at the Portrait Gallery

and plunged down through the New Town (can you see the sea and the hills on the other side?)

and further down - this is Scotland Street, which might be of interest to anyone who reads Alexander McCall Smith's writing about this street - 

and along cycle/walking paths

which used to be railway lines (it was a beautiful day, but cold)

till we got to the sea. Then we had coffee in a pretty little pub.

And after that we walked back a different way, saying hello to a watchful cat,

 

and ended up at the Botanics, where we had lunch. 

The walk wasn't quite five miles but we were glad to sit down. We've not been walking so much over the festive period and were clearly out of condition. Must do more!