Blog Archives

Simply Eat....and the blue table..

30/6/2013

Summer flowers. The painting is 'Dreams of Flying II'.

Some of you will know I'm about to embark (along with 4000 others apparently!) on Zoe Harcombe's 30 day blitz - a rather harsh name for what is actually a quite benign and natural way of eating and moving. See here. No counting calories, measuring portions, no sweaty noisy gyms, no junk - she is very outspoken about what constitutes junk food!

For me, sugar is not good. The trouble is sugar is in everything, even savoury things and the food industry is adding more and more all the time. It's very hard to avoid, but when I do avoid it I have more energy, no cravings, and feel clearer in my head as well as in mybody - functioning at optimum, effortlessly.

Sounds sane, don't you think?

I've decided that's worth making a little effort for.

Here's wishing you all a truly healthy summer!

PS Penny, have you finished up all the chocolate and biscuits in the house?

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Simply Grow.. and more cutting back....

29/6/2013

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I do keep the flowers on pulmonarias as long as I can as they are much visited by bees and orange tip butterflies - can you spot one here?

But they are very prone to mildew and can look awful after flowering with the whole plant sometimes dying back.

I find that cutting back all the flowering stems (which get the mildew) encourages the plant to throw up new beautiful leaves.

And quickly! This was taken on 24th June,

and this on the 29th.

A lot of growth in five days, and it will continue growing new leaves and looking good all summer.

If you don't have the time or the inclination to cut every individual stem you can just take the shears to the whole plant - it will recover, especially if you give it a good soak afterwards.

Lovely plants!

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Simply..a cruel wind....

28/6/2013

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To stake or not to stake - that is always the question!

Campanula lactiflora, a shrub scaled herbaceous perennial, was just forming buds when strong winds last weekend blew it apart...

Propping it up after the event never really works.

Drastic measures were called for.

With a large can of liquid feed when the deed was done.

Next year....

I will give it the Chelsea Chop (cut it down by a third to a half the last week in May) and it will be sturdy enough to hold itself up in the wind.

It does delay flowering though, and we will be opening the garden for charity again at the end of June....staking beforehand might be the better option?

This is the same lovely plant in 2010.

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Simply gardening....but not as we know it..

27/6/2013

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This is the famous Edinburgh floral clock under construction yesterday - you can make out the Roman numerals in the inner circle.

As children we thought it was one of the wonders of the world!

I'm glad they still do it each year, in spite of the number of plants and the number of man hours involved. (Still cheaper than the trams of course.....sorry Edinburgh folks, just joking. A cheap dig, I admit!)

I should perhaps explain that there is in Scotland a friendly rivalry between east and west and between Edinburgh and Glasgow, and being a Glasgow girl, I sometimes join in the badinage/schadenfreude....

Edinburgh was the first city to have a floral clock (though Glasgow had trams - I wonder why we got rid of them?) and the reason I am indoors writing about it mid-afternoon is that we in the west have midgies which make gardening all but impossible on moist still days - the east suffers less in this regard.

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Simply....over to you..

25/6/2013

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Dinner on the porch tonight, with wild company! (Yet another photograph of me with my feet up - 'Does she ever do any work?' I can hear you thinking....)

I seem to have several themes going over the last few posts -how to get a good night's sleep, and what the word 'romance' means to different people.

I'd love to know your thoughts on both or either topic!

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Simply romance....

24/6/2013

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Romance.

It can mean a language, a literary form, a movement in art or music, an attitude, a love affair, diamonds and foreign travel....
or some paper bags with holes in and a candle in a jam jar inside, with a few pots of daisies!

I'm easily pleased....

Looking at 'romantic' as something with no purpose other than to delight the senses, here are a few romantic things I am enjoying this June....

Our mini-meadow - simply lawn left to grow.

..in the magical slanting light just before dusk.

A beautiful (bought) loaf of sourdough bread which took 3 days to make and tastes wonderful.

Don't you think that romantic? That someone still goes to all that trouble to make such bread?

Fairy like aquilegia....

And a yellow gate with buttercups and white foxgloves....

What does the word romance mean to you?

(PS The blind worked again and I got 8 hours sleep last night. Bliss!)

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Simply sleep....perchance to dream..

23/6/2013

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It worked! It worked!

Even after getting up at 4 am to put antihistamine on insect bites, I got back to sleep easily.

Why did we wait so long to install the black-out blind?

We are off soon to buy another blind for the guest room so that we can put it up while we still remember the intricacies of the job (the blind was just 2 cm too wide - what a fiddle and faff).

It's been said that sleep is a barometer of your emotional health..would you agree? Or is it all about circadian rhythms and having evolved to sleep when it is dark?

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Simply..from the magic to the mundane....

22/6/2013

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About two and a half years ago we bought a black-out blind for the bedroom.

This morning we put it up.

I think I may now be conditioned by my Lumie lamp (see here) to wake at dawn and since I tend not to go to bed till pretty late and dawn is about 5 am, it is telling on me. I'm simply not getting enough sleep.

After this morning's 3 hour effort with the blind (don't ask) I'm hoping to get a full 8 hours tonight and so..

'....to bed; 'tis almost fairy time. I fear we shall out-sleep the coming morn.'

but that's OK as it's Sunday.

Do you sleep well?

And if not, have you come up with strategies to help?

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Simply....midsummer magic...

21/6/2013

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It's been a warm sunny evening and we had our meal outside, but just as I began to light candles and place them all around the garden, it began to rain..

'Let's put them in the greenhouse' said my husband, old romantic that he is!

So we did....

The midgies liked it too, but the citronella candles soon got rid of them, and I thought 'Hm, nice photo opportunity' only to find the camera battery was flat!

While waiting for the camera to charge...

I opened a bottle of wine, sliced some sourdough bread, made some good coffee, and with a piece of Brie de Meaux and a bit of Isle of Mull...

Our 6 x 8 greenhouse became a magic place.

It's what you make of what you've got really, isn't it.

Happy Midsummer!

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Simply inspirational....

20/6/2013

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Flowers for Mary - get well soon!

Lucille's comment on yesterday's post reminded me to recommend to you Andrea Jones' book The Garden Source.

With hundreds of inspirational photographs from all around the world, it is a fascinating browse (or saunter!).

It is organised into sections headed Connect, Divide, Space and Style and has eg several pages of gates, or sheds, or sitting areas....including ours we're delighted to say.

It's bound to spark off a few ideas for your garden..and makes a great gift for a friend.

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Simply saunter....

19/6/2013

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Did you know today was World Saunter Day? (Thank you Cornflower!) Not the kind of walking to make me fitter I know, but I do quite a lot of it, so I thought I'd show some recent photographs of Things Seen While Sauntering -

Sauntering in Benmore botanic Gardens

we came across these candelabra primula

and an embothrium in full flower.

Sauntering in Glasgow Botanic Gardens..

we got wet!

Then I sauntered round my own garden

enjoying the poppies. And after all this sauntering...

I rested. Ah, this is the life....Have you sauntered lately? I can recommend it!

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Simply Eat and Simply Move....

18/6/2013

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I've been using Zoe Harcombe's books for a couple of years now - she advocates real food and plenty of it. I was amazed and delighted to discover myself losing those extra few pounds while eating more than I used to eat!

She has brought out a 30 day programme for July and I've signed up as I want to feel fitter, less sluggish, and to be rid of these annoying sugar cravings which still plague me.

Check it out here and see if you feel like joining me....

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Simply happy....

17/6/2013

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Royal icing, tartan and lace.

The get-away vehicle,

and a personalised bus for guests!

A very Scottish affair (yes, it was on the menu too)..

and an excuse to dress up. Happy days.

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Simply serendipity..

14/6/2013

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I am off to a lovely family wedding, and leave you with a gorgeous plant combination that came about quite by chance.

I love the way the pollen of the poppy is the same colour as the leaves of the acer, and the markings inside the petals is a darker shade of the same.

The poppy was grown from a seed mix called Pizzicato (Thomson and Morgan).

Here are some blogs I am currently enjoying -
www.marciescudderphotography.com www.lucentimagery.com and there is some good advice on Leo Babatua's post today at www.zenhabits.net
Have a happy weekend

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Simply..the wrong colour....

13/6/2013

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Can there be such a thing as the 'wrong' colour?

Rosemary mentioned in the comments on this post using colours she had loved in Norway on her English house but finding they did not look right, and I recently read about someone living in Georgia trying to use soft 'English 'greens in her garden but finding that with the red clay soil and a lot of red dust in the air this didn't work either. (It reminds me of bringing souvenirs you love home from foreign holidays and realising you don't love them here!)

We gardened in Cyprus for a few years and found that the gentle, subtle Northern colours I favoured were so insignificant looking in the strong light as to be almost invisible. I think that municipal planting in some Scottish towns often mistake 'bright' for 'light' and can look garish in the extreme (colours which would have worked in Cyprus..). I also think that blue on buildings very rarely works in Britain, except perhaps soft blues in Suffolk or by the sea in the south of England, or muted blues by Farrow and Ball, but the kind of blues you see which thrill you in Greece look horribly wrong here to my eyes.

So I do think there is such a thing as the wrong colour.

It's a fascinating subject, don't you think?

Colour, in painting and in the garden is my favourite subject, so more soon....

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Simply Live..

12/6/2013

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See new Coronation Wood post..top right....

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Simply Home..and the Swedish connection....

11/6/2013

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Swedish Houses were built here about 1950. Some wooden 'kit' houses were gifted to Britain after the war by the Swedish Government and more were subsequently purchased from Sweden and used to house forestry workers around the country as there was an acute housing shortage and reforestation on a huge scale was underway. There are Swedish Houses Ardentinny, Swedish Houses Arrochar, Swedish Houses Glenbranter....many locations and usually just 12 or so houses in each existing village.

Unemployed men from Glasgow came here seeking work. They and their wives were delighted with the wonderful family houses with three bedrooms, living room, kitchen, bathroom, wash house and coal house (now my studio), a Rayburn and a garden. The field between our house and the loch was a tree nursery.

Lots of large families grew up here and at our recent reunion of children from the village school (see Coronation Wood posts) lots of stories were told of the fun and adventures that were had. One man recalled the boys daring each other to swing from the rafters of Swedish Houses as they were being built.

The garden of Robert Dash whom I mentioned in yesterday's post can be seen in some short videos here.

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Simply colourful....

10/6/2013

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This is the gate in the back garden. I first saw the use of primary colours in the garden of Robert Dash, an American artist. It was in an article by the late Rosemary Verey in Gardens Illustrated which I think was then quite a new magazine. The image of some painted wooden structures in his garden stayed in my mind for many years.

When we came to live in Swedish Houses (which are black stained wooden houses which were sent to this country from Sweden after the second world war) the idea of using red for a gate came to me as I was looking out of the back window one day.

The houses have primary colours on their doors - ours is yellow - and I had admired the use of bright colours in housing in Sweden when I was studying landscape design there, especially in the work of architect Ralph Erskine. So it seemed appropriate, and I have to say I have loved it, and so have many people who have bought the cards I've produced of it.

So a yellow gate in the front garden was only a matter of time really..

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Simply sunshine yellow....

9/6/2013

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We've spent this weekend

making a yellow gate in the front fence.

With white bark birch, betula jacquemontii, white foxgloves, golden acer, white lupins....I'm having a lovely time tweaking the planting around it. I'm planning to collect seed from a fine american buttercup elsewhere in the garden to plant a mass of it next year just in front of the gate.

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Simply electric!

8/6/2013

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It is great weather for producing our own power. We had solar panels fitted almost a year ago (see here).
We used the washing machine and the electric lawnmower at the same time in this hot sunny weather - for free.

Quite expensive to install (though much cheaper now than just a few years ago) we consider it money well spent. The same money in the bank would earn next to nothing at present. On the roof it brings us about £500 per year, and reduces both our electricity bill and our carbon footprint, and will be recyclable at the end of its useful life, about 25 years hence.

It just feels like a good thing to do.

And watching the electricity meter going in reverse is a very nice sight!

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Simply beautiful....

7/6/2013

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It is 10.25pm and still not dark. I love the summer evening light and took some photographs of the garden just before dusk. I tend to take the same views all the time, so I looked for slightly different angles....

PS Isn't it easier to eat healthily when there are strawberries and cherries warmed in the hot sunshine?

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Simply....overeating..

6/6/2013

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I asked yesterday - 'How do you react to bad news?' (Of more anon).

I eat.

And eat and eat.

Mostly cake, and ice cream. Chocolate, not so much.

I have put on more than half a stone in about eight weeks. Not a lot, some will say, but when you are five feet tall, it shows! And when you are going to a family wedding in just nine days time it is time to take control. I have a lovely pair of trousers I want to wear. I can get into them, but I can't sit down in them. (Vanity, thy name is Freda!)

So here goes.

I started yesterday with step one - eating the right things - a little protein, lots of fruit and veg, lots of water.

It made me think about being kind to myself. 'Be good to yourself' is a bit of a modern mantra and has also become a bit of a cliché - have a bubble bath, get your nails done, treat yourself to some chocolate....but being truly good to yourself is different and takes more thought..

So I am asking myself 'If I was being really and truly kind to myself what would I do here?' And I am pausing for a moment till the answer gently comes: 'Eat something truly nourishing, slowly and mindfully, and enjoy.'

Aquilegia at dusk...magical.

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It's Simply the little things...

5/6/2013

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I've loved the drama of the elegant and blowsy tulips but sometimes it's the simplest of things that moves me most -

tiny flowers

..a shaft of sunlight,

and the smell of wild mint soap.

Do take a look at the latest happy Coronation Wood post (top right) if you have been following our progress.

And I have a question for you.

How do you react to bad news?

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Simply more poppies....

4/6/2013

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Meconopsis cambrica, orange

..and yellow

Summer arrived here today with Papaver orientale - Yay!

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Simply grow..blue poppies....

3/6/2013

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If you can!

I've never had much success in keeping this delectable meconopsis, in spite of being in the right part of the country (the west of Scotland) and having the right kind of soil (acid).

Jennie's however, go from strength to strength -