..and five hundred tiny things. That was February 2026.

There's something about coming back from a winter walk and seeing smoke coming from the chimney.

..and a quiet day on the anniversary of my husband Barry's death. I niss him so much. We were home to each other.

Quite a choppy crossing.

We went to see Hamnet. Phew!

This great little cinema is in Ashton Lame which was looking very like a certain VAn Gogh painting..

Jonna Jinton , jewellery designer and painter lives in a house very like mine but in a remote part of northern Sweden.

Kylie Flavell an independent and adventurous film maker, lives in Tuscany and is now the mother of two little children. At the same time as Jonna is shovelling through several feet of snow, Kylie is peeling potatoes outside in the sunn.

I love seeing different ways of life and have enjoyed their videos on YouTube recently. Maybe you will enjoy them too?

..especially if you are feeling a bit low.

Describe whatever you are doing right now and preface it with the words 'I get to..'

I get to talk with wonderful people  all around the world through this blog.

I get to make tea and toast and write a post in the middle of the night if I feel like it.

I get to drink clean water all day long every day.

I get to go to bed when I like.

I get to sleep between freshly laundered sheets.

I get to have beautiful flowers in my home every day of the year.

I  get to nap in a hammock in a garden on a sunny afternoon.


I'm not sure where I heard about this gratitude practice, but I did it many times yesterday and it makes me feel incredibly grateful and stops me taking so much for granted. It lifted my spirits so much and I found myself thinking How lucky am I.  How amazing is that. How lovely is this...

Is it possible that at no time in history have there been so many people telling us what to do?

We are told how many steps we should take in a day, how many grams of ptotein to eat, how many hours we should sleep, how many minutes of sunlignt we should get, how to bring up our children, how we should vote, hpw we should look, how we should think..

My concern is that we lose confidence in our own judgement, don't learn to trust our own instincts. Google it Grandma my grandson says if I ask him something he doesn't know the answer to. With the advent of AI will our own intelligence increase do you think? Will we trust our own gut feelings or wiill we  download our emotional intelligence to a robot?

The intensity of the blue of the agapanthus is thrilling.

..of one's own choosing. Some changes are imposed upon us whether we like them or not, but when that happens I like to remind myself that I can choose change too,  I can make changes for the better. 

I can change the picture on the wall, change a habit, change my clothes, make  changes in the garden, change the ring tone on my phone, change the furniture,  change my mood by going for a walk in the rain, change my mind..

A visit to the hospital changes my perspective and leaves me humbled. A little child in the eye clinic, the kindness and patience of the staff, the professionalism and skill, the volunteers who run the tearoom with cheerfulness and efficiency - the whole place is impressive and my problems seem less.

What will you change today and aren't we lucky to have so much choice?!

Loved this chance shot of the robin.

Busy in the garden and with other nice things, I hink I will just be posting every few days for a while. To be honest, as my sight worsens, it takes a lot longer than it used to to publish posts and photographs, though I sttill feel I have lots to say... Who knew I could ramble on for 15 years!!

I hope you will  bear with me, and thank you so much for reading. x

I discovered a new bit of Edinburgh - like something from Hogwarts!

and had an hour to wait for the bus home and contemplated the shore while waiting.

And enjoyed a cup of tea in brilliant sunshine on the porch.

..to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Live Simply Simply Live! (See first post here.) A huge thank you to all of you who have made it such a joy in my life.

Ia m also celebrating being home again after a wonderfully restorative time at Katrina's health rerreat.

I feel rested and refreshed and full of a good steady energy and calm. I cannot recommend it enough,  and there is a place available due to a cancellation on the April retreat which you might want to fill! See the link on the previous post..

More tomorrow.

Three of these are decades old! I don't like to finish them because they hold such precious memories.

Special nights out, Audrey Hepburn (Interdit was created for her), Penhaligon's Bluebell is spring in a bottle, and Barry loved the smell of frangipani. It reminded him of Africa where he grew up.

I don't wear perfume now (so ecpensive for one thing!) but I do love how a smell can transport you to another place or anther time. Sweet peas take me to an Aunt's cottage, dahlias to my father's allotment, orange blossom to the tree in my Cyprus garden.

I use unscented products in the house, preferring my scents to come from flowers and fruits, or branches of pine.

Writing this I realise how important scents are to me.

Are they special for you too?

I an sttruck by the extreme contrast between my last two posts! The humble tiny robin which whispers so sweetly when I feed it in the morning quiet, and the almost overwhelmimg drama and volume of Scottish Opera in full flow and with full orchestra in the gilded Theatre Royal in Glasgow. (I mistakenly posted the Welsh Opera video.)

Variety being the spice of life, I am lucky to experience both.

..there is a soul nourishing aspect to face to face communication which I really value. There is also some irony in that, if I am with you I can't actually see your face! (Macular Degeneration does that). So I miss a lot by not seeing facial expressions, but there is still body language, tone of voice being important. Nuanced is the word Lucille used.

It's all a bit mysterious but what I do know is that it's important - perhaps we can deduce a lot about another person from the energy they give off. Are they being sincere, are they genuine, trustworthy? Intuition you might call it. Can you make these subtle judgements via a screen? What do you think?

Do read Lucille's comment on this post and Clare 's on this one.

The hyacinths smell divine.

I've taken my first frosty walk of the year.  We have had several sunny seriously cold  days with freezing temperatures, but snow onnly on the hills. A barefoot walk on the sparkling grass wakes me up on such a morniing! Then indoors for a good breakfast by the fire.

Question Three from Your Best Year Yet is a good one. What did I learn, from my achievements and disappointments?

I am holding an informal workshop on this book on Saturday here at home. Really looking forward to it.

There are TWO tame robins! I think they may be a pair..

Question Two in my current book Your Best Year Yet is What were my biggest disappointments?

By the way I hope you had at least fifteen achivements in answer to yesteday's question.

'Life's necessities ' my daughter said when she came to the back door with them.

She knows what rea!lly matters! Which is what the book Your Best Year Yet is about in a way. It consists of ten questions which I thought I would share  with you..

Question One - What did I accomplish in the past year?

..Joy in January and a new word for the new year..

Do check out Amelia's lovely idea for joy every day in January. See in comments on this post. Will you sign up?

My word for 2025 is DECISIVE. Life got better for me after I decided to decide in this post last October. Have you chosen your word yet?


There is so much to see in my favourite city. Visual stimulus of every kind at every turn..

There are crowds of course - people enjoying the sights

but just the other side of the Minster are quiet streets

with beautiful doorways

and unusual buildings

with hidden lanes and courtyards

More tomorrow..

..started in Yokshire, one of my favourite places in the world. Staying with friends, good conversation and good food, country walks and old world pubs and a sunny day in the city of York. What could be nicer?

In Scotland we often say 'Start the year as you mean to go on' and you should have the house in perfect order, the rubbish out, the laundry done, the cupboards well stocked etc., and you must have a full glass in your hand at the stroke of midnight. If the year goes on like this I will be thrilled.

Beningborough  Hall - I was a frequent visitor with Barry, my children and my grandchildren, I worked on reception, taught drawing and watercolour classes, volunteer gardened, went to lectures and concerts, stayed in Garden House, had my first exhibition there and made life-long friends.  A very special place for me.

My perceptive friend said it's sometimes not the place you miss, but the life you lived there. Do you like to revisit places you have lived or does it make you too sad even though you may have happy memories of it?

I hope 2025 has got off to a good start for you! My head is full of memories of last year (quite a difficult one in many ways) and projects plans and hopes for next year. I like new beginnings. Do you?

..above all else peace in 2025

I will be back early in the New Year with my New Word, new plans and new opportunities.

Enjoy the celebrations!

..and shooting stars.  We are looking out for he The Leonids meteor shower this clear frosty night. No luck as yet (it's 11.30).

Thank you to my grandaughter for the lovely photograph.

The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow..

Robert Frost

What talented young singers! A super lunchtime concert at the University of Glasgow yesterday.

I often comment on how much I love and appreciate the real thing - original art, live music, real food, face to face conversations, the wind and the weather. The other day on the porch a surprisingly warm gentle breeze, just enough to move my hair from my neck was delicious. Standing under the moon, a log fire...

My URL/online life is important to me too (this blog!) and the technology which helps me with vision loss - I am now registered partially sighted - is invaluable, and inproving all the time, but there is a dehumanising element to AI which is really disturbing. Why on earth would we want a machine to write poetry, or a robot to look after our elderly people?!

Rather than finding a work/life balance maybe we should focus on our IRL/UPL balance?               


In Real Life I have holes in my socks. Lighten up Freda!   ;-)

You will have noticed how much mental evergy it takes to procrastinate. And energy is everything, isn't it.

Over and over I go considering the pros and cons of this way versus that way, now or later, the rights and the wrongs, the ifs and the buts, the shoulds and the coulds and the maybes..I'm worn out before I have taken any action at all. I  fear I have become very indecisive in even in small matters. In fact mainly in small matters. (In a crisis I am very decisive and clear thinking. Plenty practice this year!) But day to day I muddle along, spending a lot of time thinking for examle about what order to do things in.

The other morning I got so bored with myself I decided to decide.  I would make three very small decisions and carry them out. It felt good. I made three more - the energy began to flow. By the end of the morning I was sailing along enjoying being decisive.

When I want to be, I am still a decisive person!

It just takes that first decision - deciding to decide.

..but so too do the seasons. This is the fourteenth October I have blogged about!
 So I repeat photographs of the garden in autumn, the table decorations, the last flowers etc, but isn't it rather wonderful that we can be thrilled by autumn, year after  year?

I browsed through some previous Octobers in the (now very extensive) archive and 2015 seemed particularly nice... see here.

A special thank you to those of you who have stayed with me all these years, and more! I have so enjoyed your company.

Nature's gift. Prunings make a free, effortless and elegant table decoration.

Clever, and scary.