Wednesday, 14 July 2021

Birthday afternoon


 Not our birthdays..a friend's.  A good reason to have an afternoon outing. 

Over to his home in the Kingdom of Fife, and a walk in the sun to the village of Culross at the bottom of the hill from his village.


That is the Ineos refinery in Grangemouth over the Firth of Forth..the colours haven't reproduced properly, but in the centre is a tall chimney with a large flame emanating from it...








Then after a good meal, a walk back up to our friend's house...past the village memorial.

Monday, 12 July 2021

Gardening.

 We have been away working on a friend's garden...but left ours like this...







I have just had harvested a large box of redcurrants...I would love to have half a dozen bushes like that!! The garlic looks nearly ready, the shallots are not far off. That will give me room to plant the cabbages and celeriac that are doing well in pots.

The tomatoes are starting to set fruit and the cucumber plants are starting to get on with it. The pepper plants are looking hopeful as well. The peas  and broad beans are beginning to fill out...so it's mostly going in the right direction!!

I could so easily use twice as much ground!!

Sunday, 11 July 2021

Beauty

 Not all beauty from the garden is cultivated.



Saturday, 10 July 2021

Inky fingers


 Oil based ink gives the best results..but is the devil to remove! 

The reason that printing apprentices were called printers' devils?!

A day for tidying loose ends and starting jobs that have been waiting...

Pirate has started cleaning the next batch of eBay sales items. I might put some clothes on there that I hardly have worn, no point them packing out the wardrobe.

We have a gardening job coming up...not a huge one, but we keep on saying that we won't work there again....it's a nice place to go, however!

Pirate is out for his daily bike ride..then on his return we will be watching track racing from St Petersburg, a world cup meeting moved from Newport in Wales.

Friends are competing in it. So it is good to watch.

tissottracktv.uci.org if you are interested.


Friday, 9 July 2021

Memories


 Putting memories in prints. AotearoaNZ Road Trip series perhaps?

Thursday, 8 July 2021

Dundee day out

 We had our weekly (weather permitting) trip to Dundee today.

As it was school holidays here it was a delay free drive for all of the 120+ miles up there.

It is a long drive, but we are trying to combine going there with doing other things.

Today was supposed to be picking up materials from a ceramic supplies company, but things hadn't got together in time.... hopefully next week.

We had three more riders today and it is good to see such a great facility being used.




We had our usual picnic late lunch before Perth on the way home, but the level of traffic and low standard of driving on the A9 gave us cause to turn away from the rat race through Bridge of Allan to Stirling. Let's have a look at the castle we thought.....

Only booked places in the car park....but the attendant said we could have a short break from driving...nice to find someone in a good mood! That called for a special treat, ice cream from the van!!

The Wallace Monument from the castle...it is a huge tower.

We did get a good view on our way out of town...


I think we would be better off having a day out by bus to Stirling and have a day there with a camera and drawing book....

Wednesday, 7 July 2021

Garden day



 No dashing anywhere today...planting out, potting on plants that will go in as soon as the garlic is harvested. Sowing seeds too.. carrots, beetroot, spring onions...I forgot the radishes!!

Then harvesting fruit..thinning gooseberries and picking a rather thin crop of blackcurrants, which are now in a crumble pie!!