Back to normal things

Minimalising Monday - some outgrown dressing-up outfits - charity shops won't take them but lots of people on Facebook Marketplace were keen. 

And a fairly rubbish bingo game bought some time ago at a child's request - I just put it in the bin. It's fiddly and probably some of the bits are now missing. Lots more toys to rationalise, though...

On Saturday we went with the walking chums over the Forth Bridge on a train (hence the somewhat blurry photo) to do the walk that Mr L and I did a recce of the other week. It was perfect weather - warmish and sunny, with no wind. We walked from Kirkcaldy to Dysart Harbour and back. 

A lovely day out with friends. 

It's getting a wee bit autumnal, though... Sigh. 

Years

The solar eclipse happened, and Littlest Granddaughter, who with Daughter 2 is staying with us for most of August, saw it through the pinhole camera that her mother made out of a cereal carton. Well, we all saw it. The sun looked tiny inside the cereal box, but it definitely had a bite out of it. Littlest Granddaughter was not particularly impressed, even when we told her that it wouldn't happen again till she's 78 or something. 

She decided to make "an old, one-eyed teddy with a patch". So we did. She designed it, which is why the teddy has unusually pointy ears, but you don't argue with Littlest Granddaughter, at least not about something unimportant. The artist's vision, and all that. 

She found, and tried on, the dress that I wore on 18th December 1967, when Mr Life was my partner at my sixth year (ie final year) school dance. I was 17, he was 19, and this is when our romance began. The dress was, obviously, too big for her but not as much too big as I would have expected. She's very tall for nearly 9. However, I washed it not long ago and I think it shrank. 

Today we went to the funeral of the husband of one of my friends from my school-teaching days. I've known her since 1973 and the group of us English teachers who made friends then are still friends and meet up fairly regularly. Brian was 80, so it wasn't a tragedy exactly, but still, it's sad. The funeral food afterwards was by the river in Haddington; quite scenic. My lovely granny was born in a house just beside this bridge, in 1895.

Carpe diem, that's the thing. 

 

Richmond again

We've been away for a long weekend with our walking friends to Richmond, in Yorkshire. We were there last year and had a good time so decided to return to the same house. 

We walked both on the Saturday and on the Sunday. Richmond is quite hilly, as is the surrounding countryside. 

It's also wooded. This was a lovely walk - five or six miles, not too strenuous. 

On the second day we walked down through the town to the river.

We admired Richmond Castle as we did so. The building of it was started in about 1070, and we thought we might visit it on the way back. 

This walk was harder: there were about fifteen stiles of various levels of difficulty and wobbliness, a slanting, tree-rooty, muddy path above a steep fall down to the river, lots of steps, miles of muddy and stony paths which were quite hard to walk on. It took us much longer than we expected. 

And by the time we stopped for lunch, we really needed to sit down! 

Still, it was fun, especially in retrospect.

We didn't visit the castle, though. We went back to the house and lay on the bed. One of us (not me) had quite a big nap. 

 

Being a lady

I seem to be rather busy - though I have to confess that some of this busyness consists of coffees and lunches with friends. But then there are the two choirs and the church magazine and the family and the garden and walking and general faffing about. How do other people, eg Lynley of Lynley Quilts, manage to make a quilt a week, when I'm still plodding on with the rainbow quilt I started in April or so?

Anyway, there isn't much reportable, other than the garden, which is still colourful, such as with the lilies (above) that I bought at the Chelsea Flower Show. 

And these cosmos and sedum,

and Japanese anemones - pestilential but pretty - 

and these autumn crocuses - though I'm denying that it's autumn - 

and nicotiana

and fuchsia

and various things in pots

and verbena bonariensis, which I love, though it sets seeds willy-nilly

and more cosmos. 

I was up town the other day and things were beginning to look a bit autumnal.

I was up town again today. Not a bad view as I waited for the bus home. 

But this was exciting: Anna of Thimbleanna was in Edinburgh with her aunt last week, and she kindly invited me to go to a Scottish baking afternoon at a cookery school. I thought it might be quite tiring, but it wasn't at all. We sat at a kitchen island and were brought everything we needed, already weighed out. All we had to do was a little ladylike mixing and then put the results in baking trays or cake tins, which had been pre-lined by someone else. And whenever bowls or spoons were used, they were whisked away and replaced by clean ones. We weren't allowed to put things in the ovens ourselves (health and safety) so someone else did that, and then took them out in due course, and it was all carefully timed so that everything was cool at the same time. Then we were given a plate and told to take whatever we wanted from our own goodies - cranachan cake (raspberry with oatmeal), meringues with cream and strawberries, cheese scones and shortbread - and go through to a dining room, where we were plied with tea, coffee and prosecco and sat eating and having a nice chat. 

I could easily get used to something like that!

And it was lovely to chat to Anna and to meet her aunt, who is 89 and looks about 65. She has 7 children, 27 grandchildren, 35 great-grandchildren (with more expected) and a great-great-grandchild. Wow!

Doings

So in brief: we went to the Tirzah Garwood exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery - interesting, since we'd seen the Eric Ravilious (her husband) exhibition there some years ago and I've read her memoir.

Her art was very varied. 

and in various media.

I had a lovely visit to a school friend's house, and met her partner. M and I were never particularly close at school but we were friendly, and I always liked her. It's been so nice to reconnect. 

And then we came home and Littlest Granddaughter also came (to her) home and reconnected with her guinea pigs, which we had managed to keep fed and watered. 

Apart from that, it's been a flowery time. These mecanopsis were at Branklyn Gardens in Perth, which we always like to visit. 

And we met up with a very old friend, also M, and went to Little Sparta, about an hour's drive away, which is the garden of poet and artist Ian Hamilton Finlay. We've been meaning to go for ages, and when M - who lives in London - said that she would like to visit it, that was the spur for us to take her. M's mother and mine were friends in London during the war, specifically during the Blitz, and her mother was my mother's bridesmaid. 

It's a very pleasant garden

with various art installations and inscriptions, some rather mysterious. 

And then, at home, all is very floriferous.

A neighbour (whose front garden is mainly paved, with some neatly trimmed small bushes) said to me yesterday that she liked the wild effect of my garden. 

I know what she meant, but it takes a lot of work to achieve such a wild effect. 

And that's me just about caught up with our doings, though frankly I don't really know why I do this...
 

Tulips and other signs of spring

Amazingly, some of my Mother's Day flowers are still hanging on. (Mother's Day here was March 15!)

I have been far too busy, arranging and rearranging social events for groups of friends (which will be nice, of course) and doing lots of admin for the choir of which I'm chair. Much too much time has been spent on the computer. However, on Saturday we redid the walk for which we did the recce a few weeks ago; this time it was the real thing, with the other walking chums. 

On the recce we were walking into a strong wind, which made it quite tiring. 

But on Saturday the weather was perfect for walking: mild and very still, and what with that and the chatting, the 6 and a half miles felt easy. 

Back in Edinburgh, the cherry blossom is going over, with drifts of pink on the pavements. 

The trees are so pretty, though. 

This is part of a regular walk near where we live. 

This bit of the Water of Leith feels quite rural, though it isn't. 

And back home, the garden flourishes, 

as does this pot of tulips outside the front door. I love the colour. 

So as long as one doesn't listen to the news, life is peaceful.