A Quiet Two Hours

Apart from seeing a friend on Saturday morning and attending to the washing machine for 4 loads of washing on Sunday I spent from Thursday lunchtime until well into Sunday evening in the garden. The weather was fabulous.  By Monday morning my body knew it had had a good workout so it was just as well I was out for the whole day for coffee and then lunch over on The West Side with another friend of 47 years. My body appreciated the day relaxing in the sun. 

Today my Goddaughter, partner and young son arrive off the lunchtime ferry for a short stay. I'm hoping the sun will come out by the time they arrive.

So this morning I've done all Sunday's ironing and I've got a short while to catch up with life, the universe and everything.  However, I've just decided to write a few words instead.

Those were the words. Here's a few close-ups from the garden.

Oxalis adenophylla, Silver Shamrock

Libertia

Centuria montana, Perennial cornflower

Astrantia

Saxifraga umbrosa, Wood Saxifrage (I've always known it as London Pride) Flower is 1 cm across

Rhodiola rosea, Roseroot.

More Pot Pourri

Many of my daffodils had been in the garden for decades and were past their best and I wanted new ones in some areas too. I went to a large Lincolnshire  supplier and ordered a couple of small sacks of tulips and one of assorted daffodils and narcissi too. It hadn't occurred to me that there might me some 'fancy' ones included because I've never had anything but the 'ordinary' single trumpet daffodil. So the one on the right was a surprise. I have discovered that they have a very big disadvantage in our windy climate - they are top heavy, blow over and break. The fact that I'm not keen on their looks either isn't really important in the circumstances.

I've discovered that the polycarb can easily get into the high 30ºCs during the day and into single figures at night so I decided that to give some of my germinating seeds the best chance I'd try and keep them in a warm but not extreme environment until I've sussed things out. I've not grown much from seed for many years. So this germinator is living on my electrically underfloor heated bathroom for the time being. The rest are scattered around in experimental places. 

The results have been astounding and since I took that picture the seedlings have germinated.

My latest completion - 1000 piece jigsaw. One of the more enjoyable - not too hard and not too easy.

Whilst I was clearing the raised beds which I used to use for vegetables I found all these beauties. They had grown from an unsuccessful trial using a black sack which I had emptied onto the area last year. I obviously left some potatoes in it. They are beauties. 

Following Blogs

When JayCee commented on my last blog it made me go to my side-bar to see whether she had started blogging again. I discovered that somehow I had missed the fact. I went to my sidebar where the blogs I read are mentioned and it wasn't there. Possibly I had deleted it when I thought JayCee wasn't going to blog any more. Who knows?

Anyway the real point was that if it's not in my side bar then I don't regularly check for posts.

Now a lot of people don't have other blogs in their sidebar so it started me wondering how they decided which blogs to follow and read. I know one person who only reads another blog when someone comments on his blog so he could follow the link back. However, I like a bit more structure to things.

Many years ago I used a program which allowed me to read all blogs and posts and comment outwith the blogs but that was discontinued.

Anyway I decided recently to do something about it and started writing this post to seek suggestions. When I got as far as the preceding paragraph I suddenly had a brainwave that perhaps there was something in the Dashboard which perhaps wasn't there in the 'old days' or which I had simply overlooked. Ecce! There at the bottom of the Dashboard was 'Reading List'. So I went through it only to discover that JayCee wasn't even on that. Then I realised that I had never actually followed her blog even though i read it. Now remedied. The question then came into my mind as to how I managed to follow YP's blog because he doesn't have a followers widget. Then I discovered that I can do that in the Dashboard too. Sorted. 

Do readers ever look to see who is on the blog list on other blogs?

Another question. Does anyone know why someone who comments on Eagleton Notes appears in the comments but never in my emails?

To lighten this post I thought I'd show a photo of a Rozanne Geranium with a little visitor. The Rozanne is unusual in that it is a perennial Geranium but does not spread or reproduce via runners or seeds. 

Blogger's Block

I'm conscious of the fact that it's a while, even for me, since I posted. I've had Blogger's Block. It's not quite the same as writer's block because I write a lot of letters and emails constantly. The difference is that on my blog I have various 'don'ts': I don't do controversial topics (and almost every current topic is controversial); I don't go long walks in interesting places most days (so I don't have a variety of photos to post every day); I lead a busy life in my garden (not the greatest blogging topic in a garden like mine) and socially (definitely not of interest to anyone else) and whilst croquet gave me a great many interesting blogs in New Zealand and when I won the Scottish Golf Croquet Open but bowls is probably as boring a topic for blogging as I can think of (not that I've been bowling this summer with lockdown); and I don't generally blog about my family (my grandson is of great interest to me but many people have their own grandchildren). 

Do you ever do aides memoir for blog topics or anything else that happens to take your interest? I do all the time. Today, however, I found one that I'd put in my phone shopping list when I was out on Friday because I didn't have a paper and pencil handy. It reads "A stake through the heart is not a good way to die." The problem today is that, although the words are crystal clear, I have absolutely no idea what they are supposed to remind me of. That and many other things can join the 190 draft and partly finished and occasionally incomprehensible blogs that I have started and languish in the dashboard.

Despite the atrocious weather we've been having and despite the fact that I don't think poppies are generally associated with this time of year my poppies are still flowering daily:

Some Garden Thoughts

It's been a bit of a battle in the garden the last few weeks. The weather has been distinctly unfriendly and today although the sun has now come out the wind is very strong so the plants are suffering a bit if they are in full bloom. Midsummer weather it ain't, even in the Outer Hebrides.

The yellow pansies have been putting up a good show for many weeks from my kitchen window even though some of the plants were actually blown out of the ground in one gale and the heavy rain has given them a real battering. They are hardier than I could have imagined.

I have said before that one of the thing that has helped me to enjoy isolation has been the garden. It's not only working in it that is a pleasure though. Just looking out of my kitchen window as I type this I often just sit and gaze at the view and admire the plants, the birds and the sea and mountains of the Mainland in the distance - hidden by haze in the pictures on this post taken today during a sunny few hours in between the rain.

One of the joys of a garden, though, is getting to know the individual plants.

My little wild strawberries would take over the garden given a chance, creeping around under all the taller plants and popping up wherever there is a chink of light. 

It's always a good idea to look at both the whole plant and then marvel at the the flower heads. This Persicaria campanulata or Lesser Knotweed is not much to look at in the garden because it's straggly. However if you look at the individual flowers they are pure works of art.

I am hopeless at remembering names off the top of my head even if I know the names somewhere in my memory banks. So I have started keeping photographs of those in my garden with names on them in the hope that they will eventually be recalled more easily. Two tiny flowers of great great beauty are:

When we look closely there are all sorts of creatures living off and on the flowers. In this case these were all on the Leucanthemum: 

The first is, I think, a Myrid bug of some sort, perhaps a Common Green Capsid.

And these two are a fly (and don't ask me what sort) and a bug (a Myrid Bug again perhaps):

 

Hopefully Adrian or CJ or someone else who knows about bugs and flies can identify them although I know from my brother (CJ) that flies can be extraordinarily hard to identify without a very powerful microscope to look at parts no self respecting reader of this blog would look at.

Compressed Reconstituted Meat

Well there was no way I was going to use the 'S' word was there? That would really get the bot[toms]s going wild. So instead of the 'S' word I'm going to use CRM. I was going to use 'corned beef' but thought that was just a bit too silly even for me.

During the last couple of weeks I've had 98 CRMs posted to my blog. That doesn't count the odd ones that have been deleted when I've seen it on my phone first. Nor does it include the dozens and dozens which I have deleted in my emails because I have ticked the 'Notify me' box in the comments section of other blogs. I always click it because I like to know what going on. I know some people don't because you get a lot of emails and as someone once said to me 'Once I have commented on a post it's mental history. I never go back to that post'. I do and I know a lot of those who read the blogs I read do as well.

I have always had comment moderation activated for posts over 14 days old. That is mainly so that I could make sure that I don't miss comments made a lot later than the post. Nowadays I don't usually post more than once a week. I have noticed that most users of CRM and their bot[toms]s do not usually post to the current post. So to ensure that you, dear reader, don't also get inundated with CRM I have now reduced that. Not many genuine commenters will be inconvenienced but, hopefully, you and I will be spared the majority of the CRMs actually appearing (other than in the Blogger interface comments section).

On a happier note it's this time of year again. I've posted about the Damselflies before on several occasions with much better pictures, so I'll just leave this as a reminder.

The garden is doing exceptionally well at the moment because my social life was curtailed by lockdown. I rather thought that these orange lilies would bring a bit of cheer to the post too. 

The November Garden

This year has been one of the strangest in my garden. The early warm spell in April fooled everything and then the constant rain thereafter cause everything to grow more than I've ever known. The exceptionally wet late summer and autumn combined with all my commitments has meant that virtually no maintenance has been carried out. I am hoping for some clear, dry winter days without the debilitating winds to get the garden ready for next year.

In the meantime I've just had a look at what is left in the garden:

A lone and lonely stray marigold, a tiny sisyrinchium among some miniature hebes, a lone remaining Japanese anemone, and one of a hundred little wild strawberries which I have allowed to colonise the garden because they flower from spring until winter.

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

Last Week

Last week was a strange week: ordinary but strange. After weeks of my morning walk in the woods being in the rain and cold wind the wind suddenly got warmer. The rain didn't go away though. I think I had one dry walk.

However, despite the gales, the crocuss in my garden are surviving - just:

I set off for my walk on Saturday but the Braighe (the isthmus between the peninsula on which I live and the 'mainland' of Lewis and the town of Stornoway where the Castle Grounds where I walk are situated) was closed by the police just as I arrived. When there is a southerly gale and a very high tide the waves bring pebble and rocks over onto the road, The force is quite capable of inflicting considerable damage to a car.

Someone took A VIDEO of the waves showing the closure and me getting out of my car to take photographs.

Yesterday Gaz, Carol and Brodie (son, daughter-in-law and grandson) returned from Italy where Gaz works at the moment. They flew into Stornoway on a Loganair (Scotland's airline) Embraer ERJ-135 jet. I think I'm correct in saying it's the first scheduled passenger jet service to the Islands.

The Last off

They Haven't Read The Book

I always used to be a little sceptical about the 'fact' that if one bas one's feet off the ground a bull will not attack.  So the advice, if being pursued, was always climb up the nearest thing however low it is.  I was never sure that I'd trust the bull to have read the same book and conform.

Likewise primroses are flowers that bloom in the Spring tra la.  Leastways they are supposed to.  However in my last garden years ago there were always primroses poking their heads out of a grassy bank somewhere whatever the time of year.  In this garden I have had a distinct lack of success in establishing primroses although this year I am making a BIG effort.  However last year I planted a couple and over the last few days they have started to flower and it's Autumn.  They obviously haven't read the label on the pot they came in.

Solomon in all his glory

'Consider the lilies of the field how they grow: they toil not neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.'  It's amazing what one recalls from one's prep school education!

I've known Sue and John for nigh on 40 years.  We came to Lewis in the same year. They left a few years ago.  I've known their children all their lives.  Sue and Jenny (Daughter Two) stayed with me for a few days last week.  Sue brought me some lilies.

I've always thought of lilies and irises as being rather formal flowers: almost in the same league as orchids.  These lilies have stayed in the kitchen and, as I have spent more time in the kitchen (the view is spectacular and the breakfast bar convenient for working) than anywhere else in the house since I came home, I've spent a lot of time enjoying their visual and olfactory presence.  I cannot recall ever having flowers with such a scent before.  It is noticeable as soon as one enters the room.

Lady's Mantle

I have been getting rid of this plant in the garden thinking that it was a weed.  Silly me.  It's Lady's Mantle (Alchmeilla) and a very hardy perennial well suited to life in my salt-laden windy garden.

Sunflowers

When Anna was here she bought some sunflowers.  They have been in the conservatory now for over a week and look as fresh as the day they arrived.  I photographed them this afternoon in one of the fleeting moments when the sun appeared.  I can see them through the living room window and they really lend a sunny air to the view notwithstanding the miserable weather we’ve been having.  I’m not moaning about the weather.  I’m not moaning about the weather. I’m not moaning about the weather.  And if you believe that you’ll believe anything.  It’s summer and I’m suffering from SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) which is meant to be a winter thing.  On the other hand….

Dianthus

Despite the wind the Pinks or Dianthus are really thriving in the rockery and have been giving a lovely display for a few weeks already. The 'ordinary' ones were planted late last summer but the miniatures were planted only when CJ was here earlier this summer so have a long way to go but are showing great promise.