We have christened a little black and white cat which keeps visiting us “Lucky”. She first started coming regularly a couple of months ago, and at first she was so timid that we couldn’t get to within 50m of her. But we have partially “tamed” her, and she will now come into the hall for […]

Iris by the pond today. We are going to have to do something about the pond because it is increasingly overgrown. The trouble is that getting it properly fixed professionally would cost a fortune because the stream that used to feed it inexplicably dried up. We think tree roots cracked the pipe it was running […]

I went on a little trip to Helensburgh today. The weather was really lovely and Helensburgh was looking very fetching. The thing about British holiday towns is they look great when the weather is fine… But are surpassingly awful as soon as it isn’t (and it very often isn’t). The nastiest day I remember was […]

Cobwebs all over the garden this morning – you can only really see them when they are wet with dew. Rather like the cobwebs in the garden of my parents’ old house in Mossdale the morning of R and my wedding day.

R went to London for a few days to speak at a conference, and got the chance to go on the new Elizabeth Line. Apparently it was very shiny and impressive – perhaps I will get a chance later this year as R and I have a week’s holiday in London booked in September. It […]

Here is Saphy with Amber’s two clones, Casper and Bumble (ABC for Amber, Bumble and Casper). Saphy loves jumping on things and then rolling around chasing her tail until she inevitably falls off. She is not very well co-ordinated and I sometimes suspect she may have a mild case of “wobbly cat syndrome” – but […]

R has started to take an interest in cookery of all things! He doesn’t want to learn from me and gets all his recipes from the Internet. So far he has been pretty successful – although he won’t take a telling as far as the proper cooking of potatoes is concerned (I like my potatoes […]

Now we are into summer, the community garden is looking very nice. The river walk down the side of the Goil River is also very attractive.

Here is our big black pussy cat Amber, sitting on R’s metal filing cabinet. Amber is the softest cat I have ever known. She is scared of about everything, and particularly doesn’t like sudden movements, loud noises and my crocs which make a squeaky noise on our wooden floors. She loves being tickled, but only […]

There are some great wildflowers down around the pond. For some reason although they grow around there spontaneously, my efforts at planting them from seed in other areas never seem to take. Apparently they are easily discouraged by grasses which are more robust plants, and I must admit that I have never cleared the ground […]