Have you come across the Su Doku method of packing for a trip? I am trying it out and will report back to you next week!

..the colours I had wanted, but the tulips are  magnificent and the forget me nots did flower at the same time!

The great weather continues. I hope you are getting it too.

..about the BIG birthday is that I don't actually feel any older than I was  yesterday :-)

Thank you so much for your kind wishes. I had the most perfect birthday celebration.

My grandson took this beautiful photograph of the moon in a cloudless sky at about 4.30 this afternoon.

Have a lovvely weekend.

Some good weather! The cold wind has dropped and we have full sun, and the first cuckoo, a butterfly, a swallow, blossoming trees, a spell in the hammock and company at breakfast.

My family are coming to lunch tomorrow and the  weather looks even better than today. What more could a person ask?

I was taken out to lunch in the city - big birthday later this week.

Lobster and prawn bisque, followed by affogato. Delicious.

There has been a family crisis, horrible weather and the world news is more dire than ever and I have been feeling anxious, but yesterday, for no reason I can identify, I just woke up happy. Happy to have a cup of tea in the greenhouse,

Happy to hear the first cuckoo and see the white horse in the field,

happy to find the wild anemones by the Schoohouse Burn,

happy that the Purissima tulips are flowering again this year.

I felt lighthearted and full of a good steady energy as I got on with a number of things I had been putting off. Happy to be alive.

Here's wishing you such happy days!

..just wake up happy?

The whole garden was a rescue job really! We spent a morning pulling what seemed like miles of brambles out of a twelve foot high magnificent Rosa moyesii Geranium, and hours trying to keep the ground elder out of a beautiful patch of Himalayan blue poppies. We had the large hole in the floor of the tiny greenhouse fillrd, and some rotting planks replaced on the bridges over the burn in the wooldand walk. There were many dead plants and afew dead trees..

The woodland walk had a splendid collection of acers, azaleas, rhodedendrons, hostas, bluebells and more. So beautiful.

We made sure to do at least one task each day just for the pleasure of it! Often that was sowing seeds and taking cuttings and sometimes it would be weeding around a favourite plant which was just coming into bloom to show it off to perfection. We were given a completely free hand, and grew to love the place . At one  poimt we took our courage in both hands and hard pruned  two long beds of old roses removing ancient wooden supports and telling them that if they could not support themselves properly they would not be staying. (Yes, we talked to the plants! Thankfully they listened,,)

We worked hard, learned a lot and had a lot of fun.

To have a feeling of satisfaction and achievement in the face of the huge challenge of Strachur House garden, we made a point each day of tackling something that could be started and finished in a few hours. One of my favourite start and finish jobs was to choose one specimen shrub or tree and clear the space under and aroound it. For example there was a lovely mature Amelanchier whose lower branches were tangled up in long grass . We strimmed the grass and  discretely pruned all the branches which were touching the ground. Lifting the skirts and in the words of my Swedish professor Par Gustavsson 'honouring it with its own space'.
It had never looked so beautiful.

In the early 2000's my daughter and I gardened for Sir Charles and Lady Maclean at Strachur House. Several acres, both formal and informal clse to the house - the kind of garden which probably once had a team of gardeners.

It was  a challenging task! Lady Veronica (her book Past Forgetting is a very interesting read. I see it is available from Amazon from £3.47 to £64.94! ) and her husband Sir Fitzroy Maclean had created the garden ocer about 40 years. It had many wonderful plants and trees.

We were part time, so we had to be strategic about the work, deciding where our efforts produced the best results and this was when we devised the four categories of tasks for each day. The ongoing task was edging - theere was a lot of it but keeping it really neat lifted the whole garden and made it look cared for.
I picked up this tip from an old National Trust gardener who said that if you kkep the toes shiny people won't notice the heels!

..after gardening days. I think what you see from a reclining position on the sofa is really important!

And requires a frequent refresh.

Do you love the view from your sofa?

The garden is my focus for April. I think there are more posts under Simply Grow than under any other category on this blog.  We have had sunshine all day today and I think I have overdone things. The ongoing task was tidying - I put all the pots in one area - how did I come to have so many, and what is in them? The rescue was  a pre-emptive strike on the slugs to protect the new shoots of the hostas. The start and finish job was to edge the paths - makes such a difference to the look of the whole garden. And two jobs I wanted to do were to deadhead the daffodils and sow some verbena bonarienssis.

Some more subtle coloured tulips are appearing in the black pots and the forget me nots are fighting their way through. Lovely day.

..has always beem an inspiration for my work and in 1999 I first painted fritillarea meleagris, an astonishingly beautiful flower.I have a few growing in a pot on the doorstep and photographed this one this morning early.

In 1999 I was preparing for an exhibitiom and when I took this to the framer Mark Azzarpadi (an artist heimself) he propmptly bought it! Which was very encouraging, but then I had to paint more, but as I was just learning to use Chinese brushes and my all-time favourite brush  - the Isabey Traceur - I was very happy to do more and to keep learning.

Literally back down to earth. I have  been away a lot and it has rained a lot, but today, sunny though cold I raked off a lot of winter debris, edged all the beds and had all the grass cut both back and front - what a difference! Tomorrow the paths and the furniture will be power hosed.

When it seems a bit overwhelming I use  an approach which breaks it down into manageable tasks. One ongoing, one sttart and finish job, one thing I want to do and one rescue job. Today that was grass cutting, weeding and feeding and tidying a pieris in a large pot, sowing some seeds and topping up the tray of miniature daffodils
 which were in barely any soil.

Now for a hot soak.

I gave a lot of thought to the exact conbunation of delicate pastel colours I wanted in my tulip pots this year and grew forget me nots from seed to go with the palest pinks and pretties lemon and peach shades....

So frustrating, and as I got the bulbs from two different sources I don't even know who to blame!

They are very cheerful if a bit 'municipal roundaboutl'  looking.

In some of the clothes and shoe  shops in Nairn. A lightweight edge to edge loose jacket, a necklace made of rubber and a great little pair of summer shoes.

Sorry the photo is so out of focus!



After the snow just two days ago, I had a lovely sunny and warm  nap in the hammock this afternoon.

..about Nairn. It's a small friendly harbour town on the Moray Firth which has a reputation for being sunny - not last week! It has great  beaches, some good restaurants and lots of holiday accomodation. I can recommend Kings Cottage in Fishertown -absolutely lovely.

It also has a lot of independent shops including a gorgeous flower and gift shop run by my neice Rachel!

After a wild night withh storm Dave - power cuts (several), very noisy wind and constant heavy rain - no real damage thankfully, but an almost sleepless night,  I try to get back to Simple..

..and start again.

Happy Easter everyone.

As I write this it is snowing.  :-)

A wild journey to my sister in Nairn! Over the Rest And Be Thankful pass, through Glencoe, along Loch Ness to Inverness, and on the return journey through the gaunt Grampians, also with snow on the tops, and along Loch Lomond side. It was a marvellous tour of Scotlannd at its most dramatic.