Reasons To Be Cheerful

Blimey, that was a longish blog break wasn't it? I'd got quite good about blogging reasonably regularly too! But we had a long weekend up north visiting my parents, and since the kids went back to school after that I feel as if we've barely had a chance to draw breath. Phew..

So, Reasons To Be Cheerful - well 1) naturally is having a wonderful few days with Mum and Dad. Even better, my brother visited them for a few days just before us, so we overlapped by a few hours - it was the first time we'd all been there at the same time for several years.

The weather was pretty mild for the Cairngorms in February so we got some outdoors time.

Miss Mouse with Granny and Grandpa

Even some blue skies:

At Ruthven Barracks

It was surprisingly lush in places, such as on the roof of the playhouse in the playground at Revack Estate:

And the top of this fence-post just makes me think of tepuis - those amazing lush South American plateaus (plateaux?). It's a proper miniature Lost World:


2) Reason 2 is not unconnected to photography. Actually Reason Two is My Beloved, my tech guru, who has got new stuff for my 'puter (hard disk and I dunno what else), installed Linux for me, and and and has bought me a new compact camera to replace the one that I lost/was nicked. *happy sigh* The new camera is the newer version of my old one and is very nice indeed.

3) Reason Three is Pleasant Surprises in the garden:

I was mooching around in the garden on Friday, trying to get to get the cats back inside probably, and spotted a patch of blue in a pot. I thought it was a gale-shredded bit of the cover from the trampoline poles, but no, it was a flower. It's an iris, isn't it? My garden's a bit boring at this time of year - just some tiny snowdrops (pretty but easy to miss) and a few white crocuses - so this was such a Pleasant Surprise. Can't wait for the daffodils, but this'll tide me over for now.


So that's the last official Planet Penny Reasons To Be Cheerful. However as it's a while 'til the end of winter in these parts and there are likely many dreich days to come, I think I'll continue doing the odd Reasons To Be Cheerful post, just to keep myself going. Many thanks to Penny for thinking this meme up, it's been fun!