Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Keeping busy

I've at last finished Big Granddaughter's dragon quilt. I started making it ages ago but then got diverted into making a cot quilt for Daughter 2's friend's baby. This type of thing is VERY easy - all you do is choose a big patterned fabric for the middle and then add lots of borders until it's big enough - so, no planning involved, really, and none of that pesky fiddle of getting rows of squares to have corners at the same place as the rows above and below. In this case, Big Granddaughter - who's eleven - chose most of the fabrics from my stash. The exceptions are the purple and violet ones, which I had to buy because I don't really do purple (but this is her current favourite colour) and the dragon fabrics, which I got from the same source as for Medium Granddaughter, who originally requested a dragon quilt.  Big Granddaughter, on seeing that, asked for one too. 

When she was five, she asked for a quilt with "bunnies and hedgehogs" but I made the fatal mistake of including maybe six squares of Peter Rabbit fabric, which she considered, by the time she was ten, were too babyish. How long, I ask myself, will she consider dragons suitable? 

By the time I was quilting her new one she was interested in the quilting itself and, having inspected my various templates, chose which designs she wanted in the different borders and in most cases also the colours of quilting thread. I have only a few darker colours and hadn't used them much, but I'm now a convert - they show up so much better. 

Anyway, what fun, but it's not really my creation. I just did the sewing. I really prefer having more of a free choice, but on the other hand it was really nice that she took an interest in the design. 

On Saturday, Mr L and I did the recce for a walk we're leading (well, he's leading, being the one with the sense of direction; I just follow along) in May. We got the bus to Linlithgow and walked down this path to the river. 

It was a pretty walk, 

though a bit muddy and rooty, which made it quite hard work. 

Then, after a detour into Muiravonside Country Park, we walked back to Linlithgow along the paved canal path, which was much easier. 

According to Mr L's device it was over 6 miles, which was further than I'd walked in a oner since my new hip - and it was fine, which was very good. Also there were various flights of steps, and Mr L's angioplastied heart was also fine, which was even better. Mind you, we were happy to sit down on the bus on the way home... .

And on Sunday we walked in the Botanics with Daughter 1 and family - lots of rhododendrons

of various colours

and some jolly good magnolias also. 

Not to say ten thousand or so daffodils, tossing their heads in spritely dance. 

 

Thursday, March 21, 2024

Back again

I've been down in London visiting Daughter 2 and family. Littlest Granddaughter taught me a very complicated game. 

Daughter 2 managed to get the grass cut. It's been very wet down there, and their garden is terrible London clay, so is very soggy in those circumstances. But the grass'll dry better now it's shorter. We also did some weeding and Daughter 2 planted some stuff. So, all good. 

We did a bit of playparking. 


We also sat in her kitchen, chatting and admiring the cut lawn. The second of Littlest G's front teeth wobbled out. She doesn't believe in the Tooth Fairy but was happy to find the pound coin underneath her pillow. 


Then I came back. This is Kings Cross station. That crowd on the left is a long caterpillar of people queuing up to have their photos taken (at, I imagine, some expense) in front of a wall which is blank apart from a sign saying "Platform 9 and three-quarters" (the three-quarters is written as a fraction but I can't get my computer to do this in Blogger).  There's always a queue like this. Strange! I never got into Harry Potter - read the first book and thought it was a bit unoriginal, but am informed that things improved in subsequent books. I haven't seen the films either. 


It was nice to get home, but I miss Daughter 2 and her little one.  

And while I was away, this happened. 
 

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

The young and the old





Talking of dementia - the day after my last post about my choir friend who's been diagnosed, I sat down in the dentist's chair, swung my feet up and noticed that I was wearing odd shoes - both black and flat, but from two different pairs. Then I went home again and Mr Life pointed out that I'd buttoned my shirt up wrongly - one too many buttons at the top, one too few at the bottom. Hmm!



I remember this stage so well with our own children: when they know things and can do things that we didn't and couldn't. And it's so interesting and heart-warming. These are cereal packets that Big Grandson designed in some class (Craft, Design and Technology?) at school. I couldn't do this on the computer if my life depended on it. The flavours, by the way, are: Classic Oat & Wheat, Chocolate Chunks, Lemon and Lime, Canadian Maple Syrup and Blueberry. I like his wording as well as his pictures (though I am his granny). 

Of course, the next stage is that they become so competent that they grow up and move away... .

Biggest Granddaughter is now 11. She's at that grown-up-in-some-ways stage. For her birthday cake, she requested that Daughter 1 make a sophisticated unicorn. Sophisticated, she decided, meant in this case black. She and her friend went ice-skating at the rink near us "and then we're coming here for pizza and ice cream, Granny". What, my house? Oh, ok. So they did and it was lovely! 

Littlest Granddaughter took pictures of her gap and her very wobbly tooth with her mum's phone. 

I'm sitting here listening to Rheinberger's Mass in D, opus 194, which we're singing at one of my choirs. I'd never heard of Rheinberger until a couple of years ago, when we did something else of his (can't now remember what...) but he's wonderful and should be better known. 

So yes, nothing's really happened, though I'm nearly at the end of Biggest Granddaughter's second quilt. I made the mistake of including a few bits of Peter Rabbit fabric in the one I made for her when she was 5 and wanted "bunnies and hedgehogs" and now it's too babyish. Ooops. She requested a dragon quilt like the one I made Middle Granddaughter, though I'm dubious that she's going to want that when she's older. Ah well, I can make a third... if I'm spared... .


 

Thursday, March 07, 2024

Fine

We went up to Son's at the weekend and saw him and the UnBloggables, who're now 7 and 4 and delightful. This is the view from his garden. Ideally, I would live somewhere like this too, though it wouldn't be practical as an old person if one couldn't drive. In town, we can walk or get the bus. There, they drive everywhere. Anyway, with one child north and one south, we have to stay in Edinburgh, which is gettatable from both directions. But at heart, I'm not a city person. I would prefer to live in a small town in East Lothian, with views of the sea, and just visit the city from time to time. 

Hey ho. 

It's fully spring now, and we've had some very pleasant weather. This gorse by the riverside smells wonderfully coconutty. 

And of course we went to the Botanics the other day, which always lifts the spirits. 

Yesterday we visited friends in the west of Scotland. We walked along Loch Winnoch in the sunshine. it was lovely: good company, fresh air, sunshine, swans, delicious food. 

So: nothing's happened. But this is all right. 

I sat down beside another soprano in choir yesterday evening and said, "How are you?" 

"Fine," she said, in an obviously not-fine way. 

"Oh dear," I said, "what's the matter?"

"I've been told I've got dementia," she said. 

It's what everyone our age dreads, isn't it? Hard to think of words of consolation - well, there aren't really any.  


 

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Bright!

In my fairly unproductive life these days, nothing very much happens - which is on the whole good, but doesn't leave a lot to blog about. I see quite a lot of friends, which is lovely: two separate groups of school friends, friends from the one school and from the two colleges that I taught at, other friends from my youth and some from more recent years. I feel very lucky to have all these people in my life and am very aware that we're all getting older and must treasure these friendships while we're all still able to get about. 

For example, I had coffee today with four women with whom I started teaching at a high school in 1973 - over 50 years ago. One by one we all left that school to have children or teach elsewhere, but we've kept seeing one another ever since. We've been married (and, apart from one who's widowed, are all still married), four of us have had children and grandchildren and we've all had ups and downs and house moves and mainly minor ailments and some of them have had major troubles and one's had a stroke but - we chatter on, and it's lovely.

I know I often blog about flowers, but here are more. I went to the Botanics the other day and some of the rhododendrons are in full flower - mainly the pink ones. Filling one's gaze with colour is very therapeutic. 





Yesterday, Mr L and I visited Shepherd House in Inveresk, which is really joined on to the eastern side of the city now, though it used to be a separate village. We've walked past this house before, but never when the gardens were open. The house was built in 1650ish but has been owned since 1957 (yes!) by very keen gardeners, who have over the years made it really beautiful. Now in their nineties, they still open the gardens sometimes for charity. 


There are various jolly touches. This is a yew sheep.

A bunch of tulips in pebbles.



I really want some of these yellow-headed snowdrops, but alas, none of the stockists I can find have any actually in stock. 

The hellebores were stunning. 







I know what he means! 

 This is Inveresk village - it's picturesque, despite the orange - which is a traditional colour for old Scottish harled (pebble-dashed) buildings. A mistake, I feel, but at least one hallowed by centuries. 

Saturday, February 24, 2024

Flowers, flowers, flowers


It's definitely spring in the garden, which is full of crocuses. 

I think I like these pale yellow ones best, 

but really,

after the winter, any colour is welcome. Well, apart from orange - though the crocus stamens are acceptable. 

Compared to my life as a teacher, which was a whirlwind all day and a frantic round of marking and preparation all evening, our current lives are - I hesitate to say dull, because it's on the whole lovely to be able to potter around, drink coffee with friends and so on - but certainly much less eventful. However, the joy is that we can do things such as, the other day, going to Dawyck Botanic Gardens in the Borders to see their snowdrops. 

They have lots of different varieties, though really it's the huge numbers that are, to me, more impressive. 


They're beautiful individually, especially if you upturn their little faces, 

but in huge swathes,

which frankly don't come out particularly well in photographs,

 


they're stunning to stand and look at.

Wise of them to bloom in early spring, when there's not much competition and we're starving for flowers and beauty and hope. 

Mr L is off to Glasgow with Big Grandson to see the model railway exhibition, so I'm going to take myself off to our Botanic Gardens for a walk in the sunshine.