Highland River

Actually not a river but a burn, and my title is nicked from the book Highland River by Neil Gunn who was from Dunbeath in Caithness where my mum's family are from. I know I've read it (I read Highland River, Morning Tide and The Silver Darlings in sixth year English at school) but I can't remember it at all beyond that the main character is called Kenn, so I quite fancy reading it again now.

But to get back to the point, if there is one, these are a few pictures from a walk I took with my brother last Sunday. Our uncle had sadly died very suddenly and we headed up north at the weekend for the funeral, staying with Mum and Dad on Sunday night. After being rather hot and cramped in the train we both needed a good walk and as it was a really beautiful evening we headed up out of the village and along a track that crosses a burn or two and heads into the hills. I think (after consulting various online maps) that in that picture I'm looking up Allt na Feithe Buidhe but it might be Allt Laraidh, and no, sorry, I have no idea what either of them mean! Of course I had to stick my feet in the water but I'll spare you the picture. I like it, but if you're not used to very peaty water it might look a bit weird.

There are stone remains of something (bridge?) further up the track - I think this is the other burn, but the more maps I look at, the more confused I get!  I think I need to get an Ordnance Survey map of the area (any excuse - I love maps).

There were loads of tiny flowers everywhere, most of which I photographed with varying degrees of success, and many of which I can't name so I need to look them up at some point. That's a bluebell (harebell) though.

The light was constantly changing and the view towards Glen Banchor just got better and better. My brother stops to take photos just as frequently as I do (he got some excellent ones) which was great because very often if I'm out for a walk I have the kids with me and they're not very patient when it comes to photography! It was a lovely walk, though with the persistent feeling of guilt that the only reason we were there that night was a very sad one.

We walked down past an old stone wall with this impressive lichen on it. I've often seen similar yellow lichen but this was very definitely orange, really distinctive and curiously attractive considering I don't normally like orange.  See the little heart shape on the middle stone? I didn't notice that until I came to look at the pictures later.

Oddly enough, stone walls are what inspired the colours of my current (and currently stalled) knitting project, my stripey fingerless mitts. I'm very nearly finished that first mitt so I should just get on with it really.  Maybe tomorrow!

But now the cats are hinting, not very subtly, that it's food time, and as it's their birthday (happy birthday kitties!) they're getting their favourite tuna cat food, so I'm off to appease indulge them. Good night!

summer term frenzy

Every year it takes me by surprise - the Easter holiday drifts by and then we're into the summer term frenzy and so much happens that I'd like to blog about, but there never seems to be any time. The days get longer, yet somehow shorter, and my to-do list gets ever more unmanageable, and the weeks fly by far too quickly.

At the end of May there was a long weekend and we headed to the Highlands to see Mum and Dad. While we were there we saw an oystercatcher nesting in an overflow carpark at the Highland Wildlife Park. She was very defensive of her nest and the staff had put out traffic cones to protect her well-camouflaged eggs.

And back at Mum and Dad's, the duck who has adopted them and flies in most days for a snack.

As we edged into June we had the school's fun day, for which I did what felt like an epic amount of baking (somehow when you do what feels like an epic amount of baking it only ever amounts to enough to fill a few plastic tubs) and manned the coconut shy. There was a bit of lemon drizzle traybake left. I'd never made it before but it's a very forgiving recipe and turned out perfectly. I'm not really that much of a cake person, but this was quite good.

School sports day got cancelled at the last minute due to torrential rain and the teachers, PTA (including me) and teenage helpers from the high school, cobbled together an indoor alternative which left us all knackered.

And I caught a cold, which always seems so unfair in summer. Accordingly I treated myself to a copy of Pompom Quarterly  - I ordered last winter's issue, because there's a hat pattern in it I really like and I don't really do summer knitting. Out of season it may be, but it's lovely.

Then the sun came out again and I found this gorgeous bee in my garden:

I think it's a red-tailed bumblebee and is apparently quite common but I've never seen one before.

The sky was so blue I went round the garden taking pictures of the underside of the flowers and plants. My favourite is this poppy - the contrast with the sky is so strong.

The garden's looking quite happy actually. Quite exuberant in fact. And nicely quiet. The school year finishes a week on Wednesday and the frenzy continues until then, so I'm hoping for a few quiet (and dry) spells when I can sit in my deckchair and appreciate it all.

Calm colours

I've been watching the second season of The Bridge. And the thing that struck me the other day is how extraordinarily restful it is to watch. I mean the colours. It's all so muted and peaceful. Never mind what's actually happening in the plot, it looks calm. Apparently Danes (or possibly Swedes, I'm not sure who's from where in this season) even bleed in a muted and tasteful way.

 Yes, I took a picture of my television.

I think after the general bright twinkliness of Christmas and New Year I was in need of some muted neutrals.

The other morning it was very foggy and on the way to the mundane world of the supermarket I stopped for a completely magical walk round the loch. It was all very arty and Danish. Or possibly Swedish. Generally we're more dreich and Taggarty (disclaimer: haven't actually seen Taggart in years and years).

The sun was making efforts to burn through the fog and gradually it cleared.

I almost wish I'd zoomed in on this one to get the misty island without the contrast of the sun on the rocks. Might have to crop that one and see how it looks.

Ah. Nice colours.

Summery/summary

 I've been too hot to blog :-D. Never thought I'd get to say that!  We have had a heatwave, though not as hot as down south (and apparently Scotland doesn't officially get heatwaves, in that we don't get a heatwave warning - 'code red - drink water, stat!' - in the way that England does) but that's probably as well or I'd just melt. And it's all relative anyway - unaccustomed as we are to sunshine and heat, pushing into the mid 20s deg C is a bit of a shocker.  It started, conveniently enough, the week that My Beloved had a week off work and we did 'staycation' things, i.e. what used to be called 'going out for the day'.  Such as Largs (above and below) - it was tremendously sunny and the Boy and I were scuttling from one patch of shade to the next. My Beloved and Miss M cope better with the heat. But we had loads of drinks, went to the playpark (where Miss M scared the living daylights out of me by climbing to the very top of the very high climbing frame), watched the ferries come and go (though not talking of Michelangelo), paddled, looked for sea-glass, ate ice-creams and sorbets and then came home.

 Then a couple of days later we went to Stirling Castle..

 ..which is always fun. Miss M joined in the excellent children's tour and to her delight got to be the queen (had a plastic tiara plonked on her head).  The Boy happily drew plans of the castle and tried to work out if he could build it in Minecraft.

The day after that we went to Edinburgh, parked in a park & ride carpark on the outskirts (nobody in their right mind drives in Edinburgh when they're unfamiliar with it - not more than once anyway), got the bus into the city centre and went to the castle. Now this would have been a tremendous disappointment if we weren't Historic Scotland members and would therefore have had to queue for a while and pay a lot to get in. As it was, we are members and got fast-tracked in so it didn't matter that we didn't really enjoy it. I think the problem is it's such a martial castle, and if you're not into military history, well, it's just a rock on a hill. It's all very well presented and the staff were pleasant and helpful but it just didn't grab us. As my Beloved commented Stirling Castle is all 'come and see how much fun history is' but Edinburgh Castle is more 'come and be impressed by our history'. We had our picnic, admired the views, were there for the one o'clock gun, mooched around for a bit trying to be interested, then gave up and pottered back down the hill. I took the picture above in Ramsay Lane which takes you down from Castlehill to the Mound, purely because I liked the shape of the metal balustrade.

Since that week it has stayed hot, which has been, well, weird. We've been out and about a bit but have been taking it easy. It's the longest hot spell of Miss M's life - I think it was a fairly nice summer the year she was born, but she was born in October so she missed it and I had all the joy of being pregnant in the summer. A winter pregnancy is much more bearable! It's the longest hot spell in the Boy's memory too, though I remember his first summer being pretty hot at times, such as the day he had his 3-month jabs and it was stifling in the health centre.  All the babies were stripped down to their nappies and they were all miserable even before the needles got near them.

Consequently the kids have got fed up with this heat and having been hoping for rain and cooler weather.

 It has cooled a bit now but has been very muggy so we've had some thunderstorms, luckily in the daytime so no sleep has been disturbed. Miss M was a bit nervy about them initially but has relaxed now. We just switch off the computers if they're on and retreat upstairs to read on the big bed, which is quite peaceful.

 It was lovely on Monday though and my mother-in-law took the kids and me to Culzean Castle.  Actually we didn't go to the castle itself (really more a grand house than a castle) but parked at the far end of the park, next to the play area and the Swan Pond, and then headed down through the trees to the beach, where we had a great time eating our picnic, paddling, exploring the rocks, drawing in the sand and so on.

And the really good thing about the warm weather is that our strawberries are doing well this year!

Mmm, delicious.

There's just under three weeks left of the school holidays - it's gone so fast, I suppose partly because we've packed so much into it for once. So much a for a knitting-ish blog though - it's been too warm for much knitting!

Going wild on our birthday

 No, I'm not using the Royal 'we' - as well as my 42nd birthday it was the Boy's tenth birthday, ooh double figures!  And it was a glorious day too - we were in the Highlands again visiting my parents for the long weekend, so we all went to the Highland Wildlife Park for the day. There was still snow on the mountains but it was hot (that's Scottish hot, probably just tepid to Californians and similar, but the kind of day on which peely-wally Scots get just a bit pink-and-singed-looking). The camels looked quite relaxed and sleepy. I think that's a yak in the background. A yakground. Or possibly it's a spy-sheep in a mac. Incognito.

Another camel catching some rays:

This is a rare sight, the saltire against an actually properly blue sky:

Well, it's rare in the soggy bit of Scotland which I inhabit anyway. My family mock me for my habit of taking photos of blue skies but it's good to relish them and even better to look back at the pictures when it's grey, wet and generally dreich. Look! It's so bluuuuuue!

That's the view across the snow monkey enclosure. I'm relaxing just looking at it.

Like Eliza Stickleback, I was also taking pictures of the 'wrong' things - such as lapwings and oystercatchers in the bit of the park you drive through. Well, the bison and suchlike were further away from the road. And I like birds, especially oystercatchers but my oystercatcher picture is a bit blurred.

I indulged myself with a pink drink with my picnic - rose lemonade! I'd never seen or, obviously, drunk it before but it was too pretty not to have as a birthday drink, don't you think? 'Weird but nice' is my summary. The Boy tried a bit and agreed.

A very nice day indeed. I was quite happy to be 42 (in recent years I've not been keen on the new number but 42 is different) and the Boy seemed quite pleased to be ten. Even if I kept muttering 'you can't be ten, you were just a baby a minute ago' and other similarly parental things.

things wot we 'ave been doin'

The trouble with having a little unintentional blogging break is that I find I have loads I want to talk about but I'm too overwhelmed by it to be bothered - besides which it is the school Easter break so I'm either rather busy staving off bickerfests or trying to prevent the kids from spending all day playing Minecraft or watching back-to-back episodes of Lazytown. I appreciate musclebound Icelandic men as much as the next woman but there are limits.

The first week of the holiday was great because we tootled up to the Highlands to see my mum and dad for a few days. The weather was lovely and Cairngorms National Park is pretty wonderful at any time of the year:

We were all impressed by this caterpillar.

Since we got back I've done a bit of dyeing, with daffodil heads this time, resulting
in this:

 Ah, yet another yellow! Nice one this time



And I've ripped back the green shawl I'd just started knitting because something had gone not-quite-right and it was bugging me:

So I've started again and now it's going better. She says cautiously.

And I thought I'd show you my little knitted bee.

He brightens up my spotty bag beautifully. I knitted him because Miss Mouse's class recently did a bee topic at school and we-the-parents were all invited in at the end of term to see some of the stuff they'd been doing. I'd offered the bee to Miss M to take in if she wanted but she declined - however she was delighted when I arrived with the bee on my handbag. I think it'll stay there, it makes me smile :-).

Following the crafty theme, I've also become hooked on the Great British Sewing Bee, despite (or perhaps because of?) being completely inept at sewing myself.  I do like watching competent people being competent.

And now, for Mrs Micawber, some of my egg-hunt clues. Apologies for terrible poetry!

'Finding eggs is hard, you'll agree/The next egg is with things that help Mama see' - the egg was hidden on my bedside table behind my contact lens solutions.

'The next egg is hidden from sight/ In a place that might be home to a knight' - in the Boy's old toy castle.

'Magical transport that comes when it's bidden/Is the place to find an egg hat is hidden'  - behind Miss M's Lego Knight Bus. This one had them stumped and I had to give them some fairly unsubtle hints in the end.

'The next egg is the cutest by far/ Find it where the small people are' - in Miss M's doll's house. I'd put gem stickers  and googly eyes on the foil for that egg to make it the 'cutest by far'.

And so on!

Green things happenin' in the garden

 Look! I'm growing light-bulbs!

Oh, okay, they're snowdrops. I find white flowers very difficult to photograph, especially in sunlight. These have mostly popped up in the last week. I like snowdrops but they're so small and white that they don't make much impact in the garden.  So I'm hoping that these..

and these..

 .. are something yellow. I can't remember what bulbs I planted where so it'll all be a pleasant surprise if and when they flower.

 These are the first tiny leaves of apple-mint:

Stuff is happening in my garden. At some point over the winter I always think that Nothing Will Ever Grow Again, but it mostly does.

The more of this the better!

The downside of clear blue skies of course is cold frosty nights and scraping the car in the morning, but I can live with that to get some sunshine in February. And as it's nearly the end of February (where does the time go etc) I'm starting to think about what I want to do with the garden this year. I want sunflowers again - we grew some a couple of years ago but none last year, and I do like the vertical interest they provide, as the gardening books say. In other words my garden is a small rectangle so I need tall things in it. And I like cheerful flowers! And the kids enjoyed growing ridiculously tall flowers.

I want cosmos this year as well. I grew some by accident last year (they were in a flower seed mix I think) and they were beautiful. And poppies, I like poppies. Dad gave me a whole lot of poppy seeds so that's a good start. And I want loads of nasturtiums. I might even grow some veg again this year.  Right, I'm off to look at seed company websites and request catalogues!

You can't take the sky from me

We had a frosty start to the day with fog bumbling around, patches here, patches there, but in the fairly immediate vicinity of my hoose in the middle of the day it was sunny and clear, though still cold. So I went for a walk. I tend to forget how close we are to the edge of town, but actually it's only a few minutes walk to where it suddenly stops being a housing estate (and it's almost comical how sudden it is) and starts being rural.

The light was beautiful and the sky amazing. The fog was still billowing around in the distance all the time.

 Birds taking off - I loved the way they swooped around. 

I'd only intended to go out for a quick half-hour in the fresh air but I was enjoying it so much and seeing so much that I just kept walking and was out for over an hour in the end.

Slightly wonky horizon on that one but I like it anyway (and am too tired to sort it in a picture editor).

As well as the big skies I was taken with the little things too - gloriously lush moss on a fence-post..

beautiful neutrals..

 a hedge covered in lichen ..

 and in a bit closer:

 Looking back along the road as I headed back home, still sunshine and blue skies..

..and then suddenly the fog rolled over again - still beautiful but in an eerie way!