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I thought perhaps I should explain that a 'hot day' in Scotland means about 19 degrees celsius!    More often than not a nice breeze keeps us from getting too hot. Outdoor events are a bit tricky (there is usually a Plan B).
The buildings in the background are known as tenements and are ubiquitous in Glasgow. (I lived in one until I was 22.) Does your nearest city have anything similar? .. and peaceful on a hot day in Glasgow Botanic Gardens.   
No, it's not about how few things we have on our tables! It is about making our tables a real pleasure to look at and finding the number (approximately - let's not get fixated on the numbers!) of items that feels right to each of us. I am temperamentally inclined towards minimalism, so one beautiful item on my table is enough to lift my spirits, sustain me and satisfy my need for calm. I can think of past tables covered in children's drawings, homework, musical instruments, craft projects, packed lunches, newspapers, leftovers to be nibbled at - there is clutter and there is clutter! Life is for living and tables are for using after all. I once ran a business from my kitchen table. A friend always has a little stack of the latest books by her favourite authors on her table, another, an excellent cook, has recipe books and shopping lists spread out. An artist friend has more objects per square inch than anyone I know, but each group is a potential still life painting. (In the name of research I looked up tablescapes on Pinterest. Aaaaaaaaargh. Too much stuff! I lasted about 15 seconds.) I think of Kaffe Fassett-like tables, little collections on side tables, folding tables or nests of tables that are never folded or nested, stools that act as tables, tables that act as stools. I have four tables in the garden....  Then there are bedside tables. If you need lots of things by your bed do you have a table with a drawer? Wouldn't it be lovely if the first thing you saw when you opened your eyes in the morning delighted you? A posy, a card, a photograph - done in a moment. Timetables, times tables, periodic tables, bird tables....  I breathe more easily when my space is uncluttered. This table right now has nine things on it, the side cupboard eight, the red desk seven...I can feel a clutter clear coming on. It just quietly creeps in when I am not paying attention.... Do you find this too? ..on flower arranging I picked up somewhere along the way (it may have been from Sarah Raven). Arrange your flowers in the vase then. when you have finished, lift the whole bunch up out of the vase a few inches and let it go, let it loosen a bit and fall open.   A subtle thing.
Rather nice.    No words on what would have been our wedding anniversary. The journey by public transport to the Outer Hebrides can be like a classic tour of Scotland. The bus (Citylink) clean and comfortable leaves via Glasgow's attractive West End, drives up Loch Lomond, through Glencoe, and over the bridge to Skye. You then travel the length of Skye and meet the Cal Mac ferry at Uig. About 8 or 9 hours in total.   And, indulge me, a last few photographs of my trip to North Uist..     Another world.   Immediately behind the yellow gate is the (single track) road between us and the forest. The forest is coniferous but with a deciduous edge of beech, sycamore, oak, ash and willow. A wonderful 'borrowed landscape'.   Between the fuchsia and the azalea is another glimpse into the forest. The garden is my sanctuary, but It's good to look outwards too, both literally and metaphorically.... I take this shot every year too.  Looking out of the front door onto the pots on the steps  I have put a different flower in the pots this year - Baby Blue Eyes, nemophila menzii, a wonderful colour but far too straggly in pots! That doesn't matter in the beds where they thread themselves through other plants rather charmingly (the slugs got those ones this year) so I think I will stick to the wonderful Mexican Daisy, erigeron karvinskianus as I have done is previous years...  ..like notes on a stave. Misty today.  Lotta's comment on the latin plant name yesterday reminded me of this post from way back. (Lucille you have been with me for a long long time! x) Another chair in danger of being taken over. Golden hop this time - I swear it grows several inches every day!   The rose is called 'Lucky' and the perfume is beautiful this hot day.   Campanula lactiflora 'Anna Lodden' and geranium 'Patricia'.  Campanula 'Pritchard's Variety' with geranium 'Rozanne'  Geranium psilostemnon is very like 'Patricia' - maybe a tiny bit more intense in colour, a little taller and not so long-lasting.  I know I say this every year but papaver ruprifragum attracts more insects than any other plant in the garden. Each flower has 6 to 8 hoverflies in it early in the morning.  It looks a bit horrible actually! Infested!
I hope you are getting some sunshine.. It is hard to be simple in a complex world. I try to live simply and simply live, and I also try not to be simplistic, so the title I Think You'll Find It's A Bit More Complicated Than That made me smile and pick up Ben Goldacre's book...so far so very interesting. Meanwhile the garden is at it's most abundant and the chair needs rescuing from the alchemilla mollis....  I'm a bit of a hit and miss photographer (digital cameras allow that don't they - love that delete button!) and I got lucky with this shot when I rested the camera on the handrail of the ferry to North Uist...I love the abstract quality of it..   This was 'the one that got away'. The two stags were standing facing each other, antlers proud and high, silhouetted against the sky in the middle of this opening - magnificent! Classic! By the time I got out of the car and got my camera set up they had lost interest in posing and turned their backs on me.... I still see the shot I nearly had when I look at this. Has this happened to you? ..To Discern If Your Idea Is Worth Sticking With is a blogpost by Jennifer Loudon which I found very useful! Try the exercise for yourself and for your idea (however modest) here. I'm enjoying listening to the proms on Radio 3. Don't you just love this photograph? Peat is still used as a fuel in the Hebrides. Are you familiar with the smell of it? We liked the polite notice in a village shop which said- Would the person who mistakenly took my peat please return it.      Cotton grass thicker than I have ever seen it grows on the boggy ground. I have wanted to see the machair in flower for years, but had never been in the right place at the right time until last week on North Uist, specifically at Balranald Nature Reserve run by the RSPB and the crofters of the area. (I am having difficulty creating links, and text to go with the photos so am just posting this anyway and will work on it......)  There is an excellent campsite here with a catering van from 11 - 3 selling wonderful home made food.      It was a joy to walk through fields of wild flowers. Many are familiar, but the wild carrot, sea pansies, the little erodium (stork's bill, relative of the geranium) and many hybrid orchids were a special delight. I had planned a much longer post on this special habitat but Weebly is playing up today and deleting things as fast as I can type them!!!      So many houses to rescue! Most people in the Hebrides live in bungalows, but there are quite a number of Scandinavian style kit houses being built which are both energy efficient and to my eye, fit well into the landscape. The second photograph is a hostel. ...but the island of North Uist in the Outer Hebrides on a long-planned trip with friends. Bittersweet without Barry, we were three instead of four.  We are sunswept and windburned. Otter spotting, wildlife watching and botanising, (and Wimbledon when it was wet!)  Have you been to the Outer Isles?    |
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