A Profusion of Wild Flowers and Insects

The East Dumbartonshire Council on the East side of Glasgow have been planting small open spaces like roundabouts, bits of verge at junctions and the like with wild flowers. It's lovely to look at and great for the environment. The insects love them. I stopped with CJ and Anna in Lennoxtown  at the foot of the Campsie Fells on our way back from an enjoyable lunch in the Courtyard Café in Fintry up in the Fells.

Here are some of the photos from that brief encounter:

A small view from above

A bumble bee getting close and polleny

A bee on a cornflower

Linum grandiflorum, Red flax

Painted Daisy, Ismelia carinata

Marmalade Hoverfly above Painted Daisy, Ismelia carinata

Hoverfly (Scaeva selenitica ?) on Cornflower

Greenbottle on Cornflower

If You Can't Beat Them ......

I recently bought a bottle of wine when I was in Bishopbriggs. I thought, when I picked it up, that it was a New Zealand wine. I think you would probably make the same assumption.

I didn't look at the back of the bottle and took it on face value noting that, as is the habit in New Zealand, it was a Sav Blanc and was therefore being sold to be drunk young.

When I got it back to Anna's where I was staying I noticed that it wasn't a New Zealand or even a New World wine. It was a French one.

This is an on-line product sales description for this wine:

"Get the best of both worlds with this crisp and easy-drinking French-Kiwi wine. Made in France but with New World modern know-how, this fresh, zinging Sauvignon Blanc is great with any kind of salad: green, pasta, fruit, tabouleh, you name it! 

So here's a turn-up for the books: a French wine that looks just like a New World one. The kiwi in question refers to the fruit rather than the geographical location."

Please excuse me if I sound rather disbelieving. The French have obviously realised that there is money to be made in misleading people into believing that they are buying a Kiwi wine instead if a French one.

Don't get me wrong. This was a very acceptable Sav Blanc. And it was (almost) good enough to have been a New Zealand wine but at less than the usual price of a New Zealand wine. 

I suppose that one has to hand it to the French and this particular deception if a pretty flattering 

Summer Gales

It’s early August. It’s Friday. It’s nearly midnight. I’m just in bed. I put the Spring/Autumn duvet back on before I got into bed. The wind is howling round my very thick-walled old house as if it were the middle of winter. I can hear things being blown around outside. Things that don’t need tying down in the summer. I hate to think what sort of devastation is being wreaked on my garden. This is the Outer Hebrides. We are used to wind. But not like this in August. It makes me apprehensive for the winter. I don’t like hurricanes any more.  

Glasgow Necropolis

In March 2018 I was in the Royal Infirmary in Glasgow. I blogged about, amongst other things, the view from my room of the Glasgow Necropolis. It included a winter photo of the Necropolis.

I have, for many years, been meaning to visit this last resting place of the great and the good of Scotland in general and Glasgow in particular. 

The Necropolis is next to Glasgow Cathedral and a bridge joins the two:

The cemetery, like most early Victorian cemeteries, is laid out as an informal park rather than the formal layout of later cemeteries. The Glasgow Necropolis has been described as a "city of the dead". Glasgow native Billy Connolly has said: "Glasgow's a bit like Nashville, Tennessee: it doesn't care much for the living, but it really looks after the dead." Having said that it is a beautiful place to walk: an oasis in the hustle and bustle of a large city.

 

An avenue of Whitebeam

John Knox stands atop his monument staring down on the world below including, in the foreground, the tomb of the chemist (he discovered bleaching powder) Charles Tennant who founded an industrial dynasty.

The summit memorial to John Knox

One of the most spectacular mausoleums is the burial place of  Major Archibald Douglas Monteath who served in the East India Company before returning to Glasgow the Mausoleum has become an established part of the Glasgow skyline. Monteath made his fortune when an elephant carrying precious gems belonging to a Maharajah was captured and ‘relieved’ of its load by him. 

The following is the view of my bedroom in the Glasgow Royal Infirmary from which I took the original picture on this post (please don't ask me which one is my bedroom window!).

Happy Yorkshire Day

Much as it might pain a lesser Lancastrian I hereby wish all of those born under the White Rose a very happy Yorkshire Day. 

For those wondering what Yorkshire Day is:

Yorkshire Day is celebrated on 1 August to promote the historic English county of Yorkshire. It was celebrated in 1975, by the Yorkshire Ridings Society, initially in Beverley, as "a protest movement against the local government re-organisation of 1974". The date alludes to the Battle of Minden, and also the anniversary of the emancipation of slaves in the British Empire in 1834, for which a Yorkshire MP, William Wilberforce, had campaigned.

The day was already celebrated by the Light Infantry, successors to the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, as Minden Day. Together with five other infantry regiments of the British Army, a rose is permitted to be worn in the headdress. In the case of the Light Infantry, the rose is white.