A walk in the sunshine

It was beautiful today - a frosty start, followed by a perfect cool autumn day. I had to go and get my flu jab this morning, among other things, but I had some free time this afternoon and thought I'd better take advantage of it and get outside. It's that time of year when I find myself grabbing every opportunity to enjoy a sunny day because there's not likely to be many more of them this year!

And out in the garden my sweet peas are still giving it a go! Come to think of it, it might be because they're in a hanging pot up on the fence so they're getting more sunlight than things on the ground. I'm still impressed though, I thought they were done for the year a few weeks ago and then they suddenly started flowering again.

Miss M comes home tomorrow afternoon and I'm hoping she's had fun. The school have been great, putting pictures on their Twitter feed so we at least have an idea of what activities they've been doing, though not necessarily who's doing them - twenty kids in borrowed waterproofs turn out to be difficult to tell apart especially if they're wearing hard hats and climbing gear as well!

Currently it's so quiet in here that I can hear the cats breathing. Well, snoring maybe. Ssh, don't wake them..

More frogs

So this is the picture I took yesterday morning, with the amazing zoom, from an upstairs window:

The other two I took were slightly blurry but I'm more than happy with how sharp this one is. And then this morning I went out and had a look and there's another pile of spawn, though no sign of frog or frogs. Our pond is just a plastic garden tub sunk in the ground with gravel, aquatic compost and plants added. It's not big or fancy - in fact it's probably only about 50cm across - but year after year it gets spawned in. That's quite flattering when you're trying to make your garden wildlife friendly. As far as I know none of the tadpoles matured last year, but this year I managed to clear some of the old sludge and weed out of the water before the frog returned so there's a bit more space and I hope that will help. Although I read somewhere that frogs like shallow water and will even lay their spawn in puddles, which seems staggeringly short-sighted of them!

It turns out my blog-composing issue is in Firefox (probably an outdated version, though to be honest I can never see why something that always has worked should suddenly not work) but not in Chrome so I've used Chrome for this. It's very much easier than trying to post from my tablet, so I'm glad I figured it out.

day four in the garden

 Pond buttercup

 Sea pink

Still sunny. Well, not now, it's eleven o'clock at night. But it was sunny, all day. It's all been a bit weird. There were loads of things I was going to witter on about but typically, now that I'm actually sitting down at the computer,  I can't think what they were. Ah well, enjoy the pictures!

three days of sunshine

Three consecutive days of sunshine. School sports day went ahead the other day and was a success (thank the weather gods - last year it had to be cancelled due to torrential rain). Miss M won the running and came second in the egg and spoon. The Boy, being uncompetitive, just had fun. I 'helped' on the PTA juice stall*  but owing to having been at the dentist for root treatment that morning and the numbness just wearing off, mostly what I did was entertain our Chair's baby daughter.

Today is glorious. I have been laundering and gardening, Cat 2 has been slinking and prowling, but thick-furred Cat 1 has been sleeping in a cool spot indoors almost all day. Yesterday he wouldn't go out until I hung the washing out and he could sit in the shade of damp sheets.  I don't know what he'd do in a hotter climate.

I have a mystery plant. Don't I always? It's doing very well but I don't have the foggiest what it is. For any experts/Dad, it's in the next two pictures and the 'flower' is about as big as my thumb nail:

* That's the Glaswegian use of the word juice, before you go thinking phrases like 'juice bar' and 'freshly squeezed'. 'Juice' is squash, 'fizzy juice' is a fizzy drink. The kids got squash and an ice-lolly. The parents got coffee or tea. I got a headache.

eclipse day

So, a partial solar eclipse and despite the the almost inevitable cloud (this town is notoriously cloudy), I got a photo! The cloud thinned just enough for the sun to be visible. It's not a great picture compared with many I've seen, taken with a small compact camera and through a window, but I'm very proud of it.

I took quite a few pictures outside but it's difficult to capture the murkiness of a partial eclipse because the camera compensates for it - the one above is probably the best and that was earlier.  The west of Scotland is frequently overcast so in some ways it was like a particularly gloomy and murky morning, but I think the quality of the light is a bit different because the murk is not to do with dark rain-heavy clouds. I don't know if that's scientific but that's the way it seemed to me! One of my online buddies down south where they had clearer skies said that the birds did a second dawn chorus after the eclipse, but I don't think the birds here noticed the difference!

I took several pictures of these daffs in a pot in my garden during the eclipse, just to see if there's much difference (there isn't).  Later on though, in the afternoon, I got this picture of the frog in our tiny pond.

I spotted it yesterday but couldn't get a picture so I'm incredibly chuffed with how nicely it posed for me today. So there you go, solar eclipse and small amphibian in one day, what could be nicer?

*sings* what a difference a day makes

Yesterday :

Today:

The sun came out and the snow melted, so in a brief break from writing yet another assignment (honestly, it's been a month since the last one but it feels like about a week) I went outside and got a few pictures. I hadn't realised there was so much actually flowering in the garden - I'd seen the snowdrops because you can see them from the back door but the irises were in a pot that I'd moved up against the fence when it was last windy and it isn't particularly visible from the house.  There are also crocuses in another pot but they didn't photograph so well.

I have a whole post about Pinterest in my head, but ooh, bit sleepy *yawn*. It'll have to wait, probably until after the essay is done. Night-night!

knitting in the dark

I have come to the conclusion that I am not naturally suited to knitting dark purple things. In the evenings. In winter. While watching telly.

The headband/earwarmer thing proceeds. I won't say 'proceeds apace' because it's been a case of two steps forward, one step back (and occasionally vice versa). It really is a very straightforward pattern but because it's so dark I'm just not spotting mistakes until, ooh, ages later. Thank goodness for those lifelines eh? It's getting there now though, and I'm not seeing any obvious mistakes in that picture.

Despite my talk of dark wintry evenings it's actually clear and sunny today. Cat2 has been sprawling on a chair near the window to make the most of it. Yes, same chair, she hopped up as soon as I moved the knitting and immediately managed to look as if she'd been lying their for several hours. It's a cat talent. The one that allows them to do the 'who me?' face when you came back to a seat you vacated approximately 30 seconds ago to find that it is Taken.

Making the most of the sunshine I went out into the garden to see what's going on on. Not much, though the borage is still flowering:

As is the nigella:

The dyer's chamomile still has a few bedraggled flowers showing:

but it hasn't done as well this year. I seem to recall reading that it's sort of perennial but after two or three years it's not nearly as enthusiastic and runs out of steam, so I'll plant seeds again in the spring. Also I'll pull up the mint I inadvertently planted in that flower bed and is making a bid for flower bed domination. Actually the sunshine in the garden was at about head height and ground level was mostly in shadow due to the houses behind us, so  these pictures make it look gloomier than it is.

The poppies did okay:

The nice thing about them is that they look interesting at pretty much any stage.

This picture however pretty much summarises the garden in November:

Isolated patches of colour, but mostly greeny-brown. I did find some brilliant mushrooms/toadstools, but they didn't photograph well. Actually they looked like pancakes (drop scones, not crepes).

I can't quite believe it's November already.  Ant and Dec, minor celebs and creepy-crawlies are once more on the television so that's my trashy telly sorted for the next few weeks.

Children In Need came and went, and the school did their talent show in aid of it as usual. Miss M was up on stage on her own this time, in front of the whole school plus a lot of parents, doing a dance/gymnastics routine she made up herself*. I was so proud of her - she's much braver (and, needless to say more talented) than me. In fact all the kids were brave and enthusiastic and great. But I'll be glad not to hear Let It Go again. Ever.

I have decided not to make a Christmas cake this year, which is just as well because I should have done it by now really.  Even using a smaller tin and scaling down last year we still had loads left over so it's not worth it. I'll make mince pies instead.  Maybe. And I have done no Christmas shopping yet. I'm in denial at the moment. I'll just finish that cable headband thing first..


* To Crazy by Ms Britney Spears. Miss M is rather a fan of early Britney. Well, who isn't?

Mists and mellow (also more creepy-crawlies)

One day last week we woke to mist and an awful lot of very visible spiders' webs. The kids were delighted! As was I actually - it all looked absolutely magical. There's something very calming about walking in fog. We've done a lot of walking recently because there's some fairly epic digging-up-of-the-roads-to-lay-cables going on in our area with four-way temporary traffic lights and other such joys, so going on foot is working out as less stressful. Fortunately my occasionally charming offspring are proving quite accepting of this.

Other mornings have been damp but mild. This year the local council* planted long thin patches of wildflower seeds (possibly an oxymoron there, but I'm sure you know what I mean) here and there and the result was long strips of flowers by the roads, looking absolutely gorgeous.

There weren't many patches that I saw, but maybe there'll be more next year (and with self-seeding perhaps this year's patches will be bigger next year) and it's a good start.

Sorry about the wonkiness of the picture but I was distracted by unexpectedly wet feet - it had rained in the night, and I was wearing trainers. I always forget that the ventilation mesh bit on top of my trainers lets water in. You'd think I'd learn, but there you go.

Meanwhile (actually on a completely different day, so not 'meanwhile' at all) my sunflowers continue to attract the bees - buff tail bumblebee also approves, so I think we can label the sunflowers a success.

They also attracted this... thing: 

I don't know what it is, and it's not exactly a vision of loveliness, but it's oddly fascinating to look at. Anyone got any idea?  Update: I put the pic on Facebook and my very knowledgeable friend Wendy found out that it's a yellow dung fly (scathophaga stercoraria).  I've probably seen them loads of times before but never up close like that.



* Presumably - I remember reading of a plan to grow some pollinator-friendly plants at the roadsides, so this would seem to be it.

creepy-crawlies (nice ones)

I'll start with a poppy which has suddenly flowered and is providing the only splash of red in our garden. They're not lasting long as the slightest puff of a breeze seems to de-petal them, but they are gorgeous.

I'll follow the poppy with something which should be red but isn't:

This appeared on my arm while I was driving back from the school this afternoon - it wandered up and down my arm and then onto my hand, but as I was driving I couldn't take more than a very quick glance and think 'ooh that's tickly' and 'funny, it looks like a ladybird'. When we got home the Boy retrieved my camera from my bag and I got this one decent picture before it flew away. Actually I got a picture of it opening its wing cases just prior to flying away but unfortunately it's blurred. Then we googled images of ladybirds, and apparently it's a larch ladybird, something I'd never heard of before. I knew there were other ladybirds than the usual seven-spot ones, but I'd no idea there were plain brown ones. Nice to learn something new!

Meanwhile the sunflowers are finally flowering and proving popular with carder bumble bees and hoverflies. When I started getting interested in bee-friendly gardening I looked at some websites that suggested that sunflowers are popular with bees and some that said the conplete opposite, so I'm glad to find out that they're popular with at least some bees.

Raindrops keep falling on my pond

At last, after what's felt like days and days of threatening, it has finally rained today. My pond was getting a little low and I was running out of saved rainwater to top it up with. When I say 'saved' that sounds a bit planned - what I mean is that we have a home-brewing bucket standing in the garden that had filled up with rainwater and which has come in very handy.  I can't remember how the home-brewing bucket came to be in the garden but there you go. 

I was getting concerned for the one or more frogs and the taddies, assuming there any left. I know the toad is okay because I heard a bizarre squealing noise from under a plant whenever the Small Cat extended a tentative paw under it. Small Cat looked appalled and disconcerted, and seemed quite relieved to come back into the house.

Wet buddleia

My Beloved is away at a (motor)bike forum barbecue this weekend, so it's just me and the kids at home. Today, naturally then, was the day that the Boy, who is never ill in term time and has three Perfect Attendance medals to show for it, got a sickness bug. As he's so rarely unwell he's completely clueless about illness and looked as appalled as the Small Cat and twice as helpless.  In fact he didn't actually get round to being sick. He clutched an empty washing up bowl for an hour and a half, whimpering occasionally, and eventually took himself off to bed and fell asleep for three-quarters of an hour. Then woke up almost back to normal. Kids are weird.  I'm quite relieved. What has surprised me about being a parent is that I can deal with vomit with remarkably little queasiness or distress of my own. However the Large Cat threw up while sitting on the windowsill the other night - and there is a radiator underneath the windowsill, and I'm sure you can fill in the blanks. Large Cat certainly did. So the less vomit the better this week really.

This evening I am entertaining myself. I have been knitting and watching a West Wing DVD. It's all very retro.

A flower

Dyer's chamomile

Longest Day

It's been a warm and sunny week.  Little Cat has also been lounging around in the garden, and for the odd moment or two, so have I. It's nice to have the deckchair out. We checked out various weather forecasts and to our amusement rain is due from Wednesday lunchtime onwards. And when does the school term end? Wednesday lunchtime of course! Well, we'll wait and see.

I love the marigolds in the garden - most of this year's are yellow but there's also this orange one too, looking as fresh and luscious as an orange ice-lolly (of which we have several in the freezer).

I inflated the paddling pool the other day but the slight slow puncture from last summer had become two punctures and it deflated fairly rapidly. So when I was doing the grocery shopping I got a new paddling pool too. That's warm weather shopping for you - bread, milk, ice-lollies, paddling-pool.. The Boy, though a good swimmer, is not fussed about messing around in water  - too old at 11? (I'm not, at 43..)  Or too much like a cat, like his father? But Miss M adores splashing around in water and was delighted with the new paddling-pool. To be honest I'd have got it anyway!

Today was a slightly cooler day and although there was plenty of outdoor time, we spent some time playing Munchkin Zombies. Oh, and eating leftover pizza from yesterday.  My Beloved had bought the game on a whim last week, but we weren't sure if the kids would enjoy it. Miss M, at seven, proved herself capable of playing it and fine with the adding up involved, but there were tears at the end when her brother won (not because he'd won so much as because she had plans for her next turn and didn't get to play it out), so although there is quite a lot to take in and remember when you first play it, I'd say the 'suitable for age 10 and up' is really more to do with emotional maturity than anything else. The Boy suddenly got the hang of it halfway through and turned into a mini version of his gamer daddy, and trashed us at the end. I'm not very good at games like this and was fairly muddled, though amused by it.

We're gradually finding games we all enjoy - Forbidden Island, Forbidden Desert, Get Bit.. Mostly we've found about these by watching Tabletop. I'm not into board games in the traditional sense, but some of these untraditional ones are great, especially Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert which are co-operative. The Tabletop episode for Forbidden Island had me laughing because John Scalzi's rationalisation for why it was a good thing they lost was the same as mine the first time we lost at it.

I think I'll go to bed now. This morning I was woken at 4am by two men walking down the road having a fight, absolutely screaming at each other. It was a bit unnerving. That was technically just before sunrise, though in fact it was pretty light by then, so it really has been the longest day.