I Spy

I have posted before on views of the goings on on the Minch through my spotter scope. Most of the ships and boats that ply the waters are fairly mundane even though some are pretty huge like the cruise liner at the end of this posting. I did manage to get a photo of what I take to be a schooner a few days ago.

Having said that the photo which I took with the Olympus might have less detail but it has a lot of atmosphere

and can be enlarged to achieve quite a reasonable degree of detail:

This cruise liner was, however, too far away to be captured by the Olympus in any real detail:

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.

Demise of a Blue Marker

Ever since a long time ago my routine with my breakfast is to mark the Radio Times with any TV or radio programmes I might wish to watch or record. Of course I never watch nor record most of them but it's a pleasant exercise. For as long as I can remember I've been using a blue white-board marker for the task. Today it gave up the ghost and has been retired with full honours. As I didn't have another blue one I decided to bring in a new era: the Era of the Green Permanent Marker. I suppose that change is something we just all have to accept.

Kitchen Gadgets

When I cleared out the utility room I got rid of quite a few 'surplus' kitchen gadgets. By 'quite a few' I means dozens. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I started clearing out the kitchen drawers a few days ago. Here is a selection of the things I found:

And there were more! Now there are fewer.

I use a lot of pepper but....

Actually there is justification here. The mill on the left works brilliantly as does the metal one in the centre (which works on a completely different principle to most mills). The salt works too. I think CJ and Dave have used it. Norman next door finds it too slow and prefers the old fashioned salt cellar. And I thought I'd already thrown away the ones that didn't work well.

I like spatulas.

This is a neat little selection from the 'middle drawer'. I couldn't get any more to fit on the (very large) chopping board for the photo.
And the greatest of all these is.....

My New Zealand pickle picker.

If only I could convince myself to make pasties these would be really useful. I assume. Has anyone ever used one?