Day to Day Life of a Very Lazy Gardener

First Dive of 2012

2012-01-02T13:26:00.002Z

New Year's Eve or Hogmanay is a pretty big deal here in Scotland but for me I was tucked up in my bed at 11:00 and asleep before the bells. I have a very good reason for doing that. I was up and out early and could not be hungover.

Drinking alcohol is very dehydrating and there are a lot of diving accidents that happen when the diver has been drinking heavily the night before.

Two members of the dive club were up for a day's diving. That meant that New Year's Eve found us dashing to DG1 (the big community swimming pool in Dumfries) where our club has the equipment room and compressor to collect tanks and weights.

Because it's winter and we live pretty far north, it was dark when I left the house just after six. The stars were still out and it wasn't frosty and there was no wind. This hardly ever happens in the winter!

Our estate car (station wagon) was plenty big enough for the three of us and our gear, so off we went to Lady Bay in Loch Ryan near Stranraer.

It was glorious when we got there. With the tides the way they are we were going to be getting into the water at slack water (the few minutes when the tide changes from an ebbing tide to a flooding tide). Lady Bay is a sheltered portion of Loch Ryan with very easy entry. It has steps down to the sand and a gentle slopping, sandy beach. The easy entry and the protected sea loch is perfect for trainees . . . . I love the place for its nudibranchs, isopods and pipefish. Last winter there were so many Sea hare nudibranchs I discovered one on me as I was de-kitting.

This is Will and Elaine. We weren't in a big huge hurry. There were just three of us so we had time to enjoy the rare winter sunbeams

Elaine went first. I can only take one trainee in at a time. We got into the water, and got our fins on . . . .but when we got in up to middles we realised that we couldn't see our feet. Not good! The water was murky - there was an algae bloom. If it hadn't been a sunny day, we wouldn't have been able to see our hands in front of our faces.

From the shore we saw the water had two tones.  It looked to be where the sand stopped and the deep water started. It could have been swirls of algae instead of the sandy bottom. We snorkeled out further to see if we could escape the soupy conditions. We failed. It isn't safe if your dive buddy can't see your signals - especially if you want to get some training done.

We had to knock the dives on the head and head home.   The reason we have such abundant sealife in the water around Scotland is that there is all this food for them. If the algae that feeds that food chain prevents us from seeing things, too bad! That's the price ya pay. We were cheerfuld though.  We said we would rather try to dive and fail than mope around in pajamas with a hangover.

Getting home turned out to be a bit more adventurous than we had hoped. Getting down to the site at Lady Bay means driving on a single track road between farms. There is a public slipway for small boats and a place to park your car so the road, though small is a public road.

There was a soupy bit that worried me on the way down. I was right to worry. We couldn't get through it on the way up. I stepped out of the car into liquid mud.

It was over my ankles and was the consistency of newly mixed concrete. It had every appearance of firm ground from a distance. I don't know how we got down!

The three of us emptied the car and tried again. We thought that if we didnt' have three divers and all the gear, it would be easier to get out . . . it wasn't. After being jerked around by the AA (recovery service in the UK) and waiting an hour to then be told they weren't coming, we asked a farmer. He had us out in five minutes. I love farmers!

We loaded the car back up and made our way back to Dumfries. On the way, the skies darkend and it started to rain. (note that the sky is already getting cloudy in the above photo) We managed to be outside and enjoyed the best part of the day.

Cleaning up after a dive was a bit more involved - Happy New Year everybody!

Family Decorations

2011-12-19T09:43:00.000Z

This is a photo of one of the earliest child-made Christmas decorations. I don't even remember what it is supposed to be. We think it is a cat. It gets put on the tree every single year and then removed and carefully stashed away afterward.

I love Christmas decorations that the children have made. I know that I had more. I remember a pop-sickle stick sled that was broken. Most of them have not lasted the years, even though I was careful with them.

I am calling on all my readers to post me a photo of their favourite child-made Christmas ornament.

Open Mike Night

2011-12-13T19:35:00.000Z

Support Scotland, Drink Tennents!

Since before I met him, The Man of the Place has played guitar. He has been loosely connected with bands and actually been in bands throughout the years. I don't play an instrument, but I can carry a tune.

He tunes up while the rest get stuck into their pints

We used to go around the folk clubs years ago, but we lost enthusiasm for it . . . . He still plays when he can but rarely in public.

The Man of The Place and our boy listening politely.

A couple of our friends in the dive club go to the Coach & Horses on the Whitesands in Dumfries on a Monday night. They have been asking Henry to come along. This week he went along and both George and I tagged along.

Iowa radio station sticker on the guitar case

We met a bunch of new people. These folk knew a lot of the same songs we know. The songs we didn't know, were really nice. There seemed to be a good reception to the songs that we knew but were new to them. Good crossover then.

Our friend Rodger.

This pair in the corner never gave their names, but they certainly were enthusiastic. The bigger one wasn't all that bad on the harmonica. He took a fancy to my beret. He must have told me how much he liked my hat 6 times. I let him try it on, but though he wanted it, he couldn't keep it. I wouldn't have anything to keep my head warm if I gave away my beret.

Kill Fest 11

2011-12-11T17:43:00.000Z

Our mild mannered house cat, Julio has started to put on weight. Because of this, I have taken over the feeding of the cat. I have always been in charge of feeding the dog because she is my dog and my responsibility and has really never had a weight problem.

Cats will overeat and cry for food even when they aren't actually hungry. So it is up to the humans to make sure they get what is best for them.

Julio has been on this new regime for just about a week. A few days after we started cutting back the rations and only feeding the cat when it is feeding time we noticed something. More dead mice were appearing in the house. I'm not counting the dead ones I have pulled out of the mousetrap under the sink. These are brought-in-through-the-cat-flap mice. I pray we keep on top of the mouse corpse situation. Finding an partially decomposed mouse is unpleasant.

Two days ago, The Man of the Place found the head of a pheasant in the hallway. That's a bit odd. He threw it out. Just now, I tripped over something in the dark . . . .it was a whole dead pheasant.

Has hunger driven our poor cat to catching whole adult game birds? Bleh

Ouch!

2011-12-10T11:11:00.000Z

It is winter now. We had a bit of snow on Monday. The snow melted a bit, making slush. Then at night the slush froze. It made for some slippy driving.

As I had an appointment in the town of Lockerbie, a mere12 miles from the house, I took my time in getting there. I drove carefully and cautiously. I have a pretty new car and I am over cautious with it. I won't even take it through the car wash because those can scratch the finish. I wash it by hand or use the jet wash.

I passed people having difficulty getting up hills because of the glaze of ice everywhere. It reminded me of the ice storms experienced in Iowa. Ice storms are stinkers. The world is glazed with a sheet of smooth and slippy, glass-like ice.

I got in to Lockerbie just fine and parked in the car park of the local health centre where I had an appointment to see the doctors (for work). I turned the ignition off and reached across to the passenger seat/office to get my sales materials and . . . whump. My car was hit!

I was surprised and probably a little stunned.

The moral of the story is, if you park your car on a hill, on a sheet of ice and the tyres of your car begin to melt the ice a little bit, the car will start to slide down the hill. The car will slide even if it is empty and the hand brake or parking brake is on.

Later on, after the police had arrived. Somebody else parked in the parking spot that had been occupied by the sliding car. The driver was informed that this was not a good place to park and the accident was pointed out to him. He didn't listen and walked away. Minutes later, his car slid into the car that had slid into mine. Well, we TOLD him. Why is it that some people don't think that the laws of physics don't apply to them?

I went away for to have a cup of coffee. I couldn't go anywhere until the cars had been moved and it was cold. I got the details of the owner of the red car and the insurance details. My lovely new car, that hasn't even had its first service yet is off to the body shop.

I was not terribly hurt in the accident. A few hours later, my back started to stiffen up so I went to the doctor about that. It isn't a terrible injury and I'll be fine . . . but be careful out there. Don't park on any icy hills.

The Best Shop in Scotland

2011-12-05T20:12:00.001Z

I love living here! I find it comforting that my youngest child doesn't remember living anywhere else. I feel we're putting down roots. One of the reasons that living in this community is so wonderful, is that it is just that, a community.

I was in the town of Langholm today. It snowed overnight, so I didn't drive on the road that would get me there the quickest, I drove the big, well travelled and plowed roads. Langholm is about twelve miles from the house.

While I was in town, I needed to stop by the most wonderful shop in Scotland, Latimers! I love this shop and I will use any feeble excuse to go in. This place has a wonderful, old fashioned way of doing business. It has been around for years and it stands by the things that they sell. They sell everything in here. Really. Everything.

I went in to buy a new grate for the fire. You can buy a grate, an ash shovel and replacement fire bricks. There is even some black stove polish if you need it.

One of the things I find comforting is a place that sells rope and string. There is a nice assortment here. From the sort of handy string for tying up packages (Does anybody tie up packages in brown paper these days?) and garden canes to a new clothes line.

Need a new brush for your broom? I love brush heads and brooms. They are nothing except practical and handy. Now that I'm thinking about it, the door mat in the kitchen is well past the point of being useful and should be replaced.

This aisle is where I could be lost for a large chunk of time. Why don't I have a mixing bowl in every size? The kitchen gadgets are on the right hand side of this aisle. If they don't have it here, you just don't need it.

I mentioned that it has snowed recently. Guess where you can buy a snow shovel? That's right! I asked if they had sold many shovels today. They had. I then showed him a photo I had taken with my phone of the amount of snow that had fallen at Whitelees this morning. "Jings!" was the response I got.

That's the grate I bought on the counter there. I also bought a small tin of rust-proof primer and a tin of yellow paint. Paint is found behind the area where the china and fine glassware are stocked, just past the tools and nails. The Man of the Place is giving our air cylinders a new coat of paint. Rust never sleeps.

The back room is where they sell beds and carpeting. The second floor is where the furniture is. Sorry, no photo available.

Now that I'm home, it turns out that the grate I bought is a bit too big. I'll take it back tomorrow and exchange it. I don't have a receipt, but the man behind the counter will remember me and just swap it across without any bother. That's how they do business.

Wal-Mart in the US has killed off all the shops like this in America. I am SO glad that we don't have Wal-Mart here. Yes the prices are lower in that big, faceless, soul destroying store but at what price to the community? Family owned stores that are not a franchise of some other chain are almost extinct. Wouldn't it be great to get them back?

Almost every farm in the area has an account there. Every raffle draw will have one prize in it, donated from Latimers. Local brides get their names on the Latimers Bridal Registry. I know I have rose-tinted specs on . . . . and I'm sure somebody will point out how messy the front counter is in the sixth photo of this entry - and how inefficient it is to tally up my purchases on the back of a scrap of paper. It is probably bad business that even though my purchases came to £31.24 I was only charged £31.00, but they have my undying loyalty. I will continue to give that shop my business for the rest of my days.

I Visit Arran Again

2011-12-03T14:43:00.000Z

It is actually been over two years since I have been on Arran for work. The cost of getting my car across on the ferry, inhibits me from a casual trip across . . . so when work is picking up the tab, all systems are go!

I thought that if the the ferries were running and if I could get somebody else to come along and if the forcasted gales stayed away long enough, I could squeeze a dive into my working day. It would have to be meticulously planned and dive after my last appointment at lunch time and before the 4:20 pm crossing.

I broadcasted my plan to my dive club on Wednesday and the first volunteer was young David, a trainee. He hasn't been diving in a while and would like to just "get his chops back". Fine! The dive I planned was a shallow dive in Lamlash Bay. Easy in and easy out on sand, staying shallow because in our short winter days, light is often very poor.

I had to get up at about 04:00 to be out of the house by 05:00. I picked David up at 06:00 just outside Castle Douglas and then drove north to Adrossan. When I got out to go buy tickets for the ferry, it was very windy. I was starting to resign myself to just a day out on the island, scrapping the dive because of the weather. We caught the 09:40 crossing from Adrossan to Brodick.

Though there was a little pitch and roll on the way over, by the time the ferry entered Brodick Bay, the sea was very calm. The wind direction mean that Brodick was sheltered. Force 5 winds but there is barely a ripple on this bay.

We managed the usual tourist stuff, buying cheese and soap. We didn't really have time to get to the brewery, distillery or chocolate shop as we had a different agenda today.

Over in Lamlash Bay where the dive was planned there was a slight chop on the water, but nothing that would stop me from going in. I must say that it doesn't take much for me to call off a dive, so the conditions were really quite okay.

David and I DID manage to get a dive! Because I was intimidated by the wind, I cut our dive from one hour to half an hour. I was afraid that the wind would change direction during the dive. That has happened before.

This is us getting ready - You can see the wind whipping my hair. I put my hair into two plaits when I dive. It is so much easier to manage and much less painful with a tight neoprene neck seal. If I don't braid my hair up, it gets pulled and that hurts.

Once you're under the water, there is no wind. There was a bit of current in the bay the further out we went, but as for bad weather, that was all on the surface. We saw some wonderful stuff! David was the first to spot some long-legged spider crabs. They are very spider-like in appearance. When I looked them up in my books afterward, I discovered that they stick bits of stuff on themselves for camoflage as they don't have much in the way of defense. Staying hidden is the best way for them to stay alive. There were very few starfish. Just a couple of little tiny ones, hidden between rocks.

My buddy also spotted a little humpbacked shrimp. I noticed a seaweed with blue iridescence on it. That was beautiful! I was unsure about where the no-take zone starts and stops in Lamlash Bay. Taking a sample of this pretty seaweed wasn't going to happen. I wouldn't do that anyway. If I'm in again with my camera, I'll get a picture. I won't take the camera in when I have a trainee with me. All my focus is on them and the dive.

On Friday afternoon, at the end of the working week, I managed to get a dive. It was a beautiful dive too!

Many thanks to David for coming along and being such good company. It was a lovely lovely day out.

Weather again? Really?

2011-11-29T23:08:00.000Z

I did not want to write about the weather . . . . rather I did not want to complain about the weather. It forced me home early today. The constant rain that we have been having is now causing flooding.
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What I really wanted to write about is that even though I am forty nine years old, I still feel like an awkward teenager from time to time. I still feel like that gangly, ungraceful and slighty bookish kid that doesn't hang out with the cool kids. Now that I have years of social interactions under my belt, I know that if I just pretend that I've got loads of confidence, I'll be just fine. The casual observer can not tell the difference between actual confidence and pretend confidence. Thankfully the old feelings of awkwardness don't come to visit very often and I am graced with actual confidence. I can even do public speaking with out any hiccups. But every once and a while, I will get a little knock back. I would really like to not have those feelings anymore thank you.
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I also saw two beautiful Whooper swans fly past my car. I don't think I will ever stop marvelling at swans in flight. As beautiful as those birds are in the water, to me they are even more spectacular in flight. There was also a huge mega formation of Barnacle geese. The weather has blown the geese from the fields near the sea, to areas further in-land.

Delicate Flower

2011-11-28T07:50:00.000Z

Now I get to add something else to the list of things I'm allergic to . . . Brazil nuts, red ant bites and now . . . eye makeup.

This is exactly what happened to my skin! Puffy red skin - not good on ones face - that goes a little flaky later.

I don't know which product is the culprit as I use a number of things . . . mascara, eyeliner, eyeshadow, Touche eclait . . . .please don't let it be the touche eclait!

It all has to go! I will reintroduce items back one at a time after the skin has returned to normal. I have to stop wearing all of it for a while until my red puffy eyelids feel better. Then get hypo-allergenic stuff to replace the makeup that I can no longer wear.

Bowling Night

2011-11-26T14:48:00.000Z

I'm off to try to win back the bowling trophy that I had to hand back last year. I am sure I would be a better bowler if I went more than once a year. I am also falling on the excuse that my back went out last year and was on high doses of codeine and paracetamol. I'm fine this year.

The trophy isn't as grand as this one, but it is fought for just the same.

I have a bowling trophy up in the attic that belonged to my grandfather. I wish I knew the story behind it.

It is still howling out there. I am going to take the train into Carlisle and wind seldom upsets train times. Let's just hope those aren't famous last words!

Violent Storm Force 11 to Hurricane Force 12

2011-11-25T22:10:00.000Z

It has been a bit breezy here the past couple of days. Last night was a real window rattler.

On Wednesday night I was late coming home. I was out having coffee with my pals and time got away from me. As I crawled into bed, the clock radio on my bedside table was still on and the Shipping Forecast was
being sent out. The man on the BBC said that in some shipping areas, the seas were violent storm force 11 to hurricane force 12! I had never heard those numbers before! The shipping areas that were supposed to get the worst weather were further up north, shipping areas SE Iceland, Faeroes, Fair Isle, Viking. So I knew we were in for some wind but the worst weather was further north.

Beaufort wind scale	Mean Wind Speed		Limits of wind speed		Wind descriptive terms	Probable wave height in metres*	Probable maximum wave height in metres*	Seastate	Sea descriptive terms
Beaufort wind scale	Knots	ms^-1	Knots	ms^-1	Wind descriptive terms	Probable wave height in metres*	Probable maximum wave height in metres*	Seastate	Sea descriptive terms
0	0	0	<1	<1	Calm	-	-	0	Calm (glassy)
1	2	1	1–3	1-2	Light air	0.1	0.1	1	Calm (rippled)
2	5	3	4–6	2-3	Light breeze	0.2	0.3	2	Smooth (wavelets)
3	9	5	7–10	4-5	Gentle breeze	0.6	1.0	3	Slight
4	13	7	11–16	6-8	Moderate breeze	1.0	1.5	3–4	Slight–Moderate
5	19	10	17–21	9-11	Fresh breeze	2.0	2.5	4	Moderate
6	24	12	22–27	11-14	Strong breeze	3.0	4.0	5	Rough
7	30	15	28–33	14-17	Near gale	4.0	5.5	5–6	Rough–Very rough
8	37	19	34–40	17-21	Gale	5.5	7.5	6–7	Very rough–High
9	44	23	41–47	21-24	Severe gale	7.0	10.0	7	High
10	52	27	48–55	25-28	Storm	9.0	12.5	8	Very High
11	60	31	56–63	29-32	Violent storm	11.5	16.0	8	Very High
12	-	-	64+	33+	Hurricane	14+	-	9	Phenomenal

It got pretty breezy here and we lost a few panes of glass on the greenhouse . . . again. I will admit that I'm getting weary of replacing that glass. I'm going to have to find a solution to this re-glazing problem.

Some of the dive club members were across in Eyemouth this morning. I don't know if the sea was calm enough for them to get in or not. I prefer smooth, calm water but that isn't always what I have. The roughest sea I'll consider entering is about 5. There is some footage around somewhere of me jumping into a sea that isn't overly calm. I'll try to put it up here.

Once you're under the water, it isn't so bad, it is just the getting in and out safely that's the tricky part. That and trying to to get sea sick.

At a quiz night a few years ago, The Man of the Place and I had to label a map showing all the shipping areas around the British Isles. We got some of the labels right. I think now we might do a bit better as we're more aware of the sea and which shipping area we are diving in - mostly Malin.

I don't hear any roaring tonight so I think it is calming down a bit.

Ice Dives and Being Thankful

2011-11-24T22:09:00.000Z

I do not like ice dives. The coldest water I have been diving in is about 4 centigrade - which is about 39 Fahrenheit. Any way it is calculated, it's pretty darned cold. It gives you brain freeze.

It is a shame because this means that I would not willingly go on any expeditions to the Antarctic and would therefore miss seeing sights such as this:

I feel bad for the stupid and slow starfish and sea urchins that froze to death. I also feel bad for the underwater photographer that had to be under the water to get that shot.

I have a massive crush on the narrator David Attenborough. He is well outside the age bracket for "men within my age range I might run away with" but he is the lone exception and I adore him. I would even do an ice dive for him.
________________
It is Thanksgiving in the US. It still continues to NOT be a holiday over here and I was at work today. That doesn't mean I am not thankful for all the many many blessings in my life.

My entire family is still alive and healthy.
I am healthy.
I have a husband of many many years that I love and still loves me.
I have lovely lovely friends.
I am employed.
Diving seems to have taken a larger part of my life as the years roll on and I am thankful for that. I will continue to enjoy diving until old age and infirmity stop me.

Life isn't perfect, but it is awfully close! Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

Books Can Save

2011-11-23T09:12:00.000Z

I always loved reading. It started very early on through the thin, newspapery Scholastic Book Club catalogues handed out to us early on. I remember ordering Charlie Brown books, bringing the money in a little envelope to school. It was really thrilling when the book order arrived and I was handed my new books.

This was the first book I read from cover to cover all by myself. Okay, so it was a comic book, but there were some hard words in there! It was the first one that wasn't a school reading book (Dick and Jane) or a book that was read to me as a bedtime story.

My first books were like that - comics and childrens stories. As I grew the books got more sophisticated.
From the time that I was old enough to walk to the library by myself, I always had a stack of library books. With the junior library card, I could only get four books out at a time. This mean that I was at the library every week. I'd check out my limit of books and go home to start reading them. I loved discovering new books. A good story was completely engrossing and I would be upset when I reach the end of the book, and the story was over.

I still wonder what happened to Mary, Colin and Dickon at Misselthwaite Manor in The Secret Garden after I finished the book. This is where a good series was invaluable. The story continues in the next book!

"Peggy, it's time for dinner!"

- no response -

"Peggy get down here! Dinner's ready!"

" . . . okay just a minute"

Then I clump down to dinner, book in hand.

"No reading at the dinner table"

"sigh"

I would much rather spend time in Narnia, Middle Earth or 19th Century England. It was a wonderful escape. I stayed out of trouble and nobody bothered me. It did improve my vocabulary - to the point where somebody in my 5th grade said that I talked like a professor. Note to my 10 year old self - dumb down the language for classmates or they will think you're weird.

It mystified me that none of my children were ever big readers. I thought all kids liked to read, but then we didn't have Nintendo back in the olden days. I tried to get the boys to like books more - but you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink!

I read to them endlessly, starting with books that I liked when I was their age. They did like bedtime stories, but that was kind of it. It was scouring for a new lure into the world of reading for my youngest that I picked up the first Harry Potter book. I had become aware of the publicity around these new books for children and got the first one to read to my little boy.. I started reading him a chapter a night .

After the second night of reading the book, I marked the spot where we had finished, tucked the book under my arm and went into the living room to read more on my own. I then had to manage two bookmarks for a couple of days. Then I went on to the second book while still reading the first book to George.

I think at this point there were only three Harry Potter books in the series. So, after ripping through the initial published works, I had to wait for Ms Rowling to finish writing the next in the series.

I read books that aren't childrens books. I have shelves and shelvesof them but for some reason it is these first books that hold a special place in my life.

November 22nd

2011-11-22T20:45:00.001Z

Today is Gordon's birthday. He's 18. We have been neighbours for almost his entire life. I certainly remember being in next door's kitchen on the day of his first birthday when he was making his first wobbly steps across the floor.

Gordon is in the blue shirt. My youngest son George is in the red shirt. Those boys have been friends their whole lives.

They really didn't have a choice about being friends. We were the nearest neighbours to Gordon's family out here in the countryside and George and Gordon are a mere eight weeks apart in age. The friendship was forced upon them.

They are very different in personality and interests, but have always managed to be friends anyway. We've got a lot of memories wrapped up in the two of them together.

Horsing around on the hills above Gordon's family farm . . . .

Weddings

and family holidays

I don't have any recent photos of the two of them together . . . I'll try to get one this Christmas.

In the meantime - Happy 18th Gordon! I love you!

Territorial Fish!

2011-11-22T07:00:00.001Z

Whenever a shark attacks a human it is sensational headline news. It would make news, sharks can kill people and sometimes do. Almost always a shark is going for somebody on the surface of the water; swimmers, snorkelers and surfers. They rarely ever go for divers. I guess we aren't acting like a food source.

There are some things under the sea that will attack divers, especially if divers are blundering near their nest.

Such was the case in August when we were in Egypt. This beautiful Titan triggerfish systematically went for each and every diver in our group. The above footage was shot by a person in that dive group. Me and my family managed to stay out of the way of the camera. My husband and son were canny enough to move further out into the blue when the attacks started and viewed the whole scene with interest. I was grateful that when he went for divers, including me, he kept his attention on fins. If he had bitten any other part, we would have needed stitches. They have hard coral biting mouths.

I have a nick out of my fin now. I kind of like that. It reminds me of a beautiful dive in warm water and of a very territorial fish we saw.

Friends

2011-11-21T22:33:00.000Z

I keep them. Once somebody has made it through the friendship door, you get to stay. We don't have to agree on everything - sometimes we don't agree on much. But what we do have is friendship and I sure do value that!

A few people have drifted out of my life that I wish were still around. Mostly I have been very good at finding people who can put up with me and my little eccentricities. I'm pretty good at keeping in touch.

In the past couple of years, I've found two friends from grade school. These are friends I had when we lived in Bismarck and it was the 60's!! I am seated in the front row on the far right (glasses). My friend Beth is in a cute dress with a Peter Pan collar, seated third from the right.

I particularly love this one! We are sitting on the back porch of our old house in Bismarck. My good friend Janice is the one with the hair as black as a crow's wing. You can see that the house behind us is constructed of logs! Lodgepole pine! I miss that house and I miss my friend. I haven't seen Beth or Janice since we were children.

Here is another good one. It is my wedding day in 1992 and I'm surrounded by my dear dear friends from college. The only person I am not in contact with is Sarah in the red dress. Nobody knows where she has gone. I pray she is happy.

Over the years I have made a few friends through work. Some have become real friends, not just work colleagues that I quite like.

Now that I have been in the dive club for a while, some of these reprobates have become more than just diving buddies, they're friends.

So, if we were friends at some point and you were unsure about contacting me because you fear I won't remember you, you're nuts! Of course I will remember you! I have probably been wondering what ever happened to you and will be delighted to be in contact again!

Easy Sunday

2011-11-20T19:39:00.000Z

This is the first Sunday in a while that I have not been out diving.

Although I love diving, it is nice to have a real rest and get things done around the house - or not.

Pets appreciate a nice fire.

Though I didn't do much, I did get the bathrooms cleaned and the floors vacuumed. I like them to sparkle and the have really sparkled in a while.

The Man of the Place worked on wallpaper and paint. I made cups of coffee and other domestic support things. The above room used to be our living room with the TV and sofa. That has moved to another room. I have plans to move the dining table in here. I don't know if we'll actually USE the room once it becomes a dining room. We shall see. He is getting closer to the finish line with it and doing a fine job. A big shout out to The Man of the Place for spending a good chunk of his week off work to do this job!

Luggage Madness

2011-11-19T08:24:00.000Z

I am going to have a little rant here. WHY do people over pack? It is maddening!! Suitcases are getting bigger and bigger. They're the size of coffins as it is! When will it all end?

This is how suitcases used to look.

Nobody used to complain about those. The worst thing that happened was that it would get confused with the others that looked just like it. You got everything you really needed in there and didn't really miss anything did you?

I have waited to check in while the over packers remove stuff from their suitcases. The airlines are going to charge them for excess baggage (which can be very expensive). The over-packers don't have the money to pay the charges and they have to get on that flight. It must be humiliating for them. Some of these oversize suitcases aren't designed well enough or are sturdy enough to carry the weight that the size suggests they can carry. If these behemoths are packed to capacity they will fall apart. The baggage-claim area is a great leveler. I've seen over packers in baggage-claim areas upset because their suitcase zips have split, the wheels have pinged off and the handles have come away in their hands

This is a photo of an offensively huge suitcase. In my own private world, you could only use this if; 1) you are going away for the entire summer 2) leaving your spouse 3) you're emigrating 4) your diving equipment is in there. You can't use a suitcase of this size if you are going away for a week. Don't even think about using this case if you're going away for the weekend!

quote from my mom -

"Oh, I HATE those things! It was a sad day when they put wheels on suitcases. When the day comes that I can't carry what I need in one small, light bag, I'm gonna either quit travelling or hire a bearer...."

You think these people were going away for months on The Grand Tour of Europe. However, they're only going for a week or less. Geeze, get a grip! You can't really need all that junk!

This is an example of a normal modern suitcases. I'm not putting in an ad for suitcases, this photo just had the best examples.
The larger suitcase in the above photo is what The Man of The Place and I share for our annual vacation. We do go to hot places where lots of warm clothing isn't needed. We like to save our luggage allowance for the diving gear. The smaller one is a perfect weekend size and is fine for carry on. Now please don't think the larger blue case is okay for carry on. Its just too big.

I pride myself in not being an over packer - It is actually very nice to travel without all that stuff along. That's me holding my luggage for two weeks (packed)! I will say that I did have diving equipment in another case - but that little green case holds my clothes and toiletries for the holiday. I had one pair of shoes - on my feet and that was it! I didn't miss anything and I wore each item I brought along. I didn't even have to run to a store to get something that I had forgotten and needed.

I'm just hoping beyond hope that at least one over packer will see this and re-think what they need to bring along next time.

reprinted and modified from an entry I wrote in 2006

Good Value

2011-11-18T14:59:00.000Z

Diving equipment can be expensive. We try to cut corners where we can. Some things like a new drysuit which can run to over £1000. We won't spend that much, but it is easily done. We will buy second hand diving equipment from eBay when we can I have been pleased with almost everything we've had from those auctions.

A number of years ago, I needed a new dive watch. The one that I had died just before we were due to go on a dive trip. Water got in the watch - and salt water and watch works just don't make good companions. It was just after a battery change - done at a jewelers that reported to test the security of the seals if they change the battery of a dive watch - that my watch had died.

We were going on a trip very soon and I needed a watch that I could take with me under the sea. Just out of curiosity, I looked in the catalogue of the local supermarket. They had a Lorus Sport Watch, rated to 100 meters for about £12 pounds. Whoo hoo! Even if it only lasts a short time, it is a better price than the near £300 that the dive shop is asking for a watch of a similar rating.

It was near Christmas, so I bought one for me and one for The Man of the Place. This is a photo of the very watches I bought . Mine is on the left - with a dead battery. When the battery died, I was given the loan of the one on the right, his watch. The loaner watch misted up with condensation a few weeks ago and in the wee hours of this morning, died.

I'll get another battery for mine but I'm afraid that the other watch is dead. I can't complain too much. We've had very good service out of those watches for not a lot of money. I am now watchless until I can find time to get a new battery for my watch. My left hand feels weird and there is a white bar across the wrist. I feel adrift without a watch. I may look at new watches - as serviceable as those watches are, they are NOT very feminine.

Dirty Car Season

2011-11-16T17:54:00.000Z

Before dinner, I was out washing our cars. They get REALLY dirty this time of year.

It's hard to keep them clean, especially when we live out here. There is always mud and more organic material on the road to our house.

Let me tell you know, once that stuff has dried onto your car it is STICKY! Presoaking is required.

I have been washing my car by hand instead of running it through the car wash. I'm doing this for two reasons: 1. I won't charge myself any money to clean the car. 2.I've got a brand new car and car wash brushes can scratch the finish on cars.

The drawback is that I will miss bits. I like to leave the car to dry after washing it - then go back an hour or so later, find the muddy spots I missed early and wipe them clean. I missed some bits on Saturday and didn't go back to check - it was too dark to check. I didn't find out I had missed bits until I was somewhere where I couldn't do anything about it. - bleh

Brace Yourselves

2011-11-15T18:45:00.000Z

Christmas is coming whether you want it to or not.

When I was at the supermarket the evening of Halloween the worker bees were busy elbowing the pumpkins and packs of fake spiderwebs to one side to make room for . . . .

Christmas stuff

Today as I was driving home I saw this!

The trees are already being cut. I can't imagine these trees being very fresh in two months time . . . but there you have it.

I was in a garden centre last week - being drawn in by the dazzling light display. Artificial trees are very expensive. There was one that was over £300. Jeeze. I live in Scotland. Small evergreen trees grow wild around here. . . . Why on earth would I pay so much for a non-needle dropping and non-fragrant artificial tree? It's a rhetorical question . . . you don't have to answer that.

Christmas is making me anxious this year. A holiday shouldn't produce anxiety. I wish we could go away again as we did in 2007 but we can't do that either.

This particular blog entry is designed to manage the expectations of my family and friends. I have very few resources. There is precious little time or money to devote to Christmas this year. It doesn't mean that I don't like Christmas, I do! I love giving gifts and making things lovely for the top winter holiday.    In the past when I was cash poor, I had the luxury of making things ahead of time. I used creativity instead of cash . . . . but now I can't even do that.   Full time job with extra requests for productivity until the end of December.

I'll see what I can do. I'm sure I'll come up with something.

Time for New Jeans

2011-11-14T19:21:00.000Z

The last time I was really happy with jeans that I bought was about 8 years ago when I was in Arizona. I went a shopping mall in Scottsdale and bought some clothes. I bought two pairs of good jeans from Eddie Bauer. They were made of nice heavy denim and have taken some hard wear. The first of those pair died after four years. Now the second pair is dying. The holes are too big and will need to be patched OR the garment thrown away.

I hate to throw them away because there is nothing in the wardrobe that can really take their place. I have jeans, but the material is thin and I know they will not last a year let alone eight!

I do not want stone washed, acid washed or distressed jeans. I don't want to buy jeans that look second hand, I want new ones. I want the jeans of my youth, the cardboard stiff kind that shrink to fit and turn your legs blue. I want the kind that have to be washed separately for months or it will turn your laundry blue.

When those are new, they can be worn with anything and look just about perfect with a white shirt. Years later when they have worn to a soft, sky blue they have earned a place in your heart. You have done some living in those jeans, created memories while wearing them.

They were what you wore on first dates and when you went camping. You were wearing them when you caught the biggest fish of the day, changed a tyre for the first time and all those times you walked the dog. They are also the jeans you wore to work, to the fairground and moving to a new place. They can take what life deals out!

Years later when the holes in the knee were too big, they became cut-offs. Cut offs for me only ever lasted one summer - by the time the next summer rolled around, I had out grown them.

I used to give myself enough in-seam to roll the legs of the cut-offs up. I did this because as the summer wore on and the raw edge of the denim frayed, the fringe tickled. I also didn't like the front pockets sticking out past the legs of the shorts.

I know from experience that these shrink-to-fit jeans will fit you better than any other jeans you will ever own and even if you don't have much of a backside, your butt will look better in those jeans than anything else you will ever own. Why oh why are those so hard to find? Is there no longer a market for jeans that will last for years and fit great?

Portencross Castle

2011-11-13T22:45:00.000Z

I was out of the house by 6 this morning. This was the third Sunday in a row that I've dragged my carcass into the car to go diving. The weather on these Sundays hasn't been that bad actually. No wind to speak of and mild temperatures. Today had actual periods of sunshine!

06:45 saw me at the Whitesands car park in Dumfries just as the sun was coming up. There is the use a club member's small van and a rather large king cab truck. We crammed all our bodies, lunches and gear into these two vehicles and made our merry way up the coast to Ayrshire.

We were hoping to dive near the wreck of the SS Kintyre just at Wemyss Bay. That didn't work out.

It was decided that the sandstone rock into the sea held too large a risk for some of our members. The rocks were pretty greasy. I don't know how we would have made it out of the water after the dive. There were loads of eider ducks bobbing in the water near this site and it looks beautiful. I'd like to go back to this site in a boat. So we followed the plan to the next alternative site.

South of Largs and near Seamill is Portencross Castle. It is a delightful dive site!

We were really really lucky with weather today. The water was like a mill pond most of the day. There is an easy easy easy entry into the sea and loads of interesting sea life in the rocks once you get your head below the water. Thousands of starfish, sea urchins and enough crabs (four varieties identified) to start a small revolution. The only drawback to this site is that it is pretty shallow - we struggled to get to 10 meters during high tide. To get any further depth a diver will find themselves out in the channel where the current starts to really pump. I had a trainee with me so we stayed shallow, looked at all the sea life and had two delightful dives. I saw at least one nudibranch - a Sea Hare - and I spotted a crop of blue-rayed limpets on some kelp.

The dive plan on the second dive was to allow the current to carry us south past the castle. In theory it would carry us to the rocks right where the van and truck were parked in the car park near the castle. I was overly cautious and didn't let the current carry us far enough. When we came up, the trainee and I had a bit of a swim to the exit point. Wasn't too terrible though. I can imagine it would be dangerous/ impossible if there was any sort of surge or waves. I will tell you that it is rough hauling out of the water onto barnacle covered rock and schlepping dive gear over to the grass.

It was a great day out - full of laughter and camaraderie.

I love diving and I love the dive club.

Early Morning Starts

2011-11-12T20:08:00.000Z

Quite often on a Sunday morning I am getting in the car to meet up with the men and women of the Dumfries Sub Aqua Club.

Come November, the early morning starts seem to be a lot earlier. It is dark when I am loading up the car the night before and still dark when I get in the car. It is dark again by the time I roll home at the end of the day. It makes me appreciate those glorious long summer days all the more.

I distinctly remember hefting an air cylinder into the car at five in the morning, looking up to the dark sky and seeing snowflakes start to come down. When it gets as cold as that, I will now pack a hot water bottle wrapped in a big towel. This keeps my change of clothes warm for most of the day AND if anybody in the group has a hypothermia situation, I've got a hot water bottle already primed. Some of us feel the cold more than others.

I'm not at the pack the hot water bottle stage just yet . . . . but just as day follows night, December follows November and the hot water bottle will be pressed into service again.

We may be diving here tomorrow:

Wemyss Bay. (pronounced "weems" bay.)

Let's hope the sea conditions stay as calm as they are right now.

Veteran's Day/Remembrance Day

2011-11-11T19:55:00.001Z

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of November, the eleventh month. We shall always remember. . . .

My favourite veteran is my son Ian.

Here his is in Iraq. He was in one of the first units across the border from Kuwait into Iraq. They went straight into the teeth of a sand storm.

All the photographs from that storm are red. That's the colour the world gets in a sand storm. Letters that Ian sent from that time were actually a bit gritty. The sand that blows is a lot finer than ordinary sand. It gets everywhere. I'm glad he's far from it now. It was a nightmare time. I didn't sleep particularly well but I knew that it was always worse for my boy. I was and still am ferociously proud of him.

I held Ian as a baby and prayed that he would never be sent to war. I said that prayer for each of my three sons. I prayed that they would never be soldiers. It is the selfish prayer of a mother who only has the welfare of her boy at heart. I don't care about what causes war, I just don't want my son in it! I had said that prayer again when walking through the a US cemetery in Normandy near the landing beaches while looking at all the acres of white crosses.

We were in France on a family vacation. As my children wandered through the grounds of the big cemetery at Omaha Beach, I thought of all the things a mother says to their child; Eat your vegetables, say "thank you", elbows off the table, brush your teeth, have you done your homework, don't put beans in your nose . . . . the thousands of things you say and do to make sure they get through childhood and into adulthood as healthy, polite, educated and productive citizens. The men in these graves all had parents who bandaged knees, taught manners, gave music lessons to, cooked endless meals, and lectured until they were blue in the face only to have a telegram to say that with the deepest regret their son has died.

We were lucky, my son came back. He is now an actual war veteran, something I had never wanted for him.

He's out of the army now and happily married to a lovely lovely woman. Worrying that he is in mortal danger is now a thing of the past.

Today is about remembering those who weren't so lucky. Your sacrifice is honoured.

Poor Poor Me

2011-11-10T18:54:00.001Z

Taking one day off work due to illness is quite common. You feel a bit shite and call in. The next day, you feel better and go back to work. It happens all the time.

What happens if on the second day, you still feel rubbish? You take a second day off work. Eyebrows go up. It is well past 4:30 on Thursday and it still hurts to swallow and cough. I've drunk nothing but infusions of herbs, flowers and other comforting things that are supposed to help. I've had loads of rest and watched all the programmes on The Monkey Channel (Animal Planet). The viewing has had an odd side effect; I now realize that I need to go to the Philippines and see their pygmy sea horses.

It is starting to look like I'll be taking tomorrow off as well. I would really rather be at work. I have a whole week full of things to do that will now have to be crammed into what's left of my week. I can see any bonuses I might have earned for the month and even the quarter (piling on the doom because I feel crap) floating away from me.

I'm not the sort of person to just call in sick because its a beautiful day, Wimbledon is being broadcast or my husband is off for the day and he wants me by his side. I'd like to be the sort of person who has spurious duvet days, but I'm not. That work ethic is there in my basic make up and won't be ignored.

This is the thing. I'm a salesperson. I call on doctors. It really puts customers off if one coughs on them. I don't want my customers to feel like they need to treat me. I must be or have the appearance of being in perfect health all the time.

I had my flu shot on Monday. The Man of the Place and I both came down with flu last year. Rather, I had the flu and my beloved had a near-death experience. I was in my bed for about a day and then "did stuff around the house" until I felt like I could face the public once more and he claimed to be on the verge of hospitalisation when he started showing symptoms. He may have had a different strain to me (Aren't I charitable?), but from where I stood, we had the same strain and he was a delicate flower who couldn't take it and I was the person from hardy stock who just got on with things.

I do not think that my illness and the flu shot are in any way connected. It's just that when I'm feeling unwell, I start to think about this stuff.

I'm Diving a Whole Lot

2011-11-09T04:47:00.001Z

The weather in Scotland is going from bad to worse. Every year the summers are getting progressively colder and wetter. I am all set to give up on trying to grow anything in the garden or even to mow the lawn! It's been too wet to cut the grass for weeks. I was talking about this to my dear neighbours and it was said that our standards have been so lowered that we think ourselves lucky if we get three dry days together.

Coast near Lady Bay, Stranraer

So, what can you do instead? Go diving! I started the year with 96 dives under my belt. I have been diving each and every month this year. I'm up to 148 dives now. I hit the century dive in the first week of February. I was just looking at the dive log and the water temperature was 6 degrees! Yuck. I also note that my current log book is almost full. I have two pages left!

It must be said that the freezing February dive was in a fresh water quarry and we were doing some training. I don't like diving in water as cold as that. When I first joined the Dumfries Sub Aqua Club, I was firm about no very cold water dives. This has relaxed and I'll dive in pretty much all temperatures. However, I do draw the line if there is actual ice on the surface of the water. It's no fun then.

In the spring the weather was lovely for a bit and the visibility in the sea was really quite good. This encouraging bit of weather soon settled back into a pattern of almost constant rain. It was particularly frustrating for members of the dive club with boats. They haven't had the boats out much.

The dive club went on a trip to Malta in April. That was fun! I'll write about that week away later on this month.

The job situation picked up for me in April when I was hired by a new company. This was all the excuse we needed to book a two week family holiday to Egypt. We love diving in the Red Sea! I managed to squeeze in 23 dives in the two weeks we had there. I was often the first in the water and last to get out. I wanted to squeeze every last drop of dive time in that clear, warm water that I could.

It is now November, days are getting very short. I have my memories of warm dives in sunny locations to sustain me through the long winter ahead.

Stuff

2011-11-08T09:19:00.000Z

Dear George says it so well . . . .

Last year I worked at home. When I was at home, I had been cleaning. In the process, I found I was getting rid of things that we don't need. Most of the items disposed of had been clothes. I had half a car load of just my old clothes.

I have a new regime with clothing. If the clothes no longer fit or if I haven't worn a garment in a year and do not plan to wear it within the next year, it is going. There are some things that I will never get rid of such as the tiny clothes that I brought the children home from the hospital in and my wedding dress. I've kept two fancy evening gowns too. The rest is just just stuff I dont' wear or doesn't fit. It no longer gets to take up valuable space in the closet.

I went through files in the office and filled three bags! I burnt the old bank statements and other documents that people who might want to steal our identity would find helpful but the rest was just junk!

Now that I've got a job where I leave the house, the stuff is piling back up. I thought that now that all the kids have left home, the house would be tidier. It was cleaner at first . . .but the house has started to slip back into untidy again. Maybe we're just plain messy and no longer have the boys to blame it on.

It used to be that the purging of items happened during a move to a new house. I haven't moved in over 17 years. So I must start evaluating items again. The next non-diving weekend will see me ripping through the house to get rid of stuff again.

Becoming a Branch Instructor

2011-11-07T08:16:00.001Z

My friend Alex and I have been working toward this next stage in our diving career for a while now. We’ve been members of Scottish Sub Aqua Club for long enough and have completed a number of the assessments. In June we spent a Sunday at SSAC headquarters in Edinburgh attending the Branch Instructor course.

Since June we have been (under supervision of our Branch Instructor and Regional Coach) training a couple of the newest members of our club.

I was already a diver when I joined the Dumfries Sub Aqua club. I was a PADI Advanced Open Water diver and started in on the crossover program with the view to becoming a Sport Diver within the SSAC system. I hope I wasn’t too terrible back then. Even though I had completed about 70 dives, most of them were on holiday in warm places. On those holiday dives the water was always warm, the visibility was often over 10 meters, somebody helped me on and off with my fins and handed out cut up oranges after a dive is over.

I had started to dive in the UK, completing a PADI dry suit course at Capernwray in February one year. I almost stopped there. The dry suit course was in the winter and on the day of the open water assessment it was snowing. The water temperature in Lancashire was at about 5 C and I struggled with the cold temperatures. I did soldier on and complete the course but had almost decided that diving in the UK was not going to be for the likes of me.

One autumn, my family and I have just returned from a late season break to Menorca when something in the kitchen breaks. We have this rotten luck in our home with major appliances breaking on the day after we return from a holiday. The charming man who came out to fix the washing machine (but it could have been the refrigerator or oven – it’s so long ago I can’t really remember which appliance it was) was Alex.

Alex had seen the diving equipment drying and asked about it. I said that we had just returned from Menorca and had really loved our family dives. George at 12 had just become a diver and we all really love diving. He said that he was a member of a Dumfries diving club. He told us when they met and I should come along for a chat. I knew one other person who belonged to the Dumfries club and I thought that I would go along one Wednesday night.

It turned out that the Scottish Sub Aqua Club will not admit children under the age of 14 as divers. Although George was qualified under PADI, he couldn't be a diver with SSAC for two more years. I waited with him. I didn't join until we could all join as a family.

That was four years ago. George is away at Napier University studying Marine and Freshwater Biology and yesterday Alex and I finished all the requirements and assessments for Branch Instructor. All the paperwork has to be stamped again and approved before we get the official qualifications, but the hard part is now over! Yipee!

Remember Remember

2011-11-05T19:14:00.001Z

The 5th of November!

It's Guy Fawkes Night tonight. We're not going anywhere. Henry's on call and I've got work to do. I'm also diving in the morning and want to get to bed early.

North Country Cheviot neighbours

Today was a deligtful day. It was dry and sunny. Tomorrow is supposed to be more of the same for us. This makes me happy!

Fly Agaric that has been nibbled

I took my camera with me when I walked the dog this afternoon. It was nice not to worry about the camera getting wet.

Blackberry blooms in November

Walking on our lane is nice and quiet on the weekends. I spotted some brambles still in bloom. The weather was so wet and cold this year, the poor plants don't know if they're coming or going.

Moss on fencepost

Moss just needs a surface. Any surface will do.

Whitelees and a typical view of my dog

I'm thankful for today's dry weather and my lovely dog, Polly.

Dad Was Here

2011-11-04T23:13:00.000Z

At the beginning of October, my dad came for a visit. He hasn't been here in a long time. The last time he visited, the extension project was in its infancy. I don't think I had seen my father since my sister Katie's wedding. That was too long between visits.

We had a lovely time together. I cooked a lot of his favourite stuff - mostly soup and cake. :-) He loves soup. I took him to a couple of places that I like to visit. Its great when he visits because we have the same interests. If I take him to look at stuff I like, I know he'll enjoy it too. As we wandered, we talked about stuff we used to do; fishing, nature walks, swimming. I loved those conversations! One of the reasons I like the things in the natural world is down to him in the first place.

There was a visit to Caerlaverock Wildfowl and Wetlands reserve too. We saw a family of four Whooper swans arrive from Iceland. If the swans are just in from Iceland their feathers will be all stained from the tannin in the water. There were some barnacle geese arriving as well. At the end of November there will be tens of thousands on our Dumfriesshire shores.

The staff were really wonderful. Dad was having mobility issues during his visit and they allowed me to take the car in and drive up to the hides. It was a Monday morning and it was howling a hurricane. There were only a handful of stalwart birdwatchers there (and an ITV news team) so my car didn't impact on any other birdwatchers.

The next day we went to the river Esk to see if we could see some salmon running. We couldn't see any salmon but it was nice to sniff the fresh pine scented air and listen to the river run across the rocks. I brought along a walking stick (Claude's) and a folding chair. I'm glad I did - both came in very handy!

I love my dad. His visit was all too short. I hope it isn't as long as that before I see him again.

Work day

2011-11-03T19:11:00.000Z

Today was a sort of get-your-head-down-and-get-to-the-other-side-of-the-day sort of day. Overcast and slightly blustery, it was only made tolerable by the addition of my trusty dog Polly and views of the Scottish coastline.

I was in Saltcoats. The Isle of Arran dominates the horizon in Saltcoats. (the mountains in the distance) All I really wanted to do was to take the next ferry across and hang out on the island and visit some friends who live there.

Now that we're in November, the days are noticably short and are only going to get shorter. Next month sees the arrival of the shortest day of the year. This far north the sun doesn't get very high in the sky in the winter. It's dark when we leave the house and dark when we come home at night.

I think that the months and years are shorter the farther north you get as well. I find that now that I've been living up here for almost 20 years that the months and years are screaming by at an alarming rate.

Ok - I'm done complaining about the climate in Scotland for today.

Here is a link with more facts if you're interested. Short days and lots of rain!

I Fear We Will Never Meet

2011-11-02T06:11:00.000Z

It was 1981 (or possibly the tail end of 1980) and I was a senior in high school. Bruce Springsteen's The River Tour was blasting across the US. There was an announcement that Ames, Iowa was to be on the list of towns that was to be graced with a visit."Gotta have a ticket!"

What do you do when you're a gal with very little money and from a small town. I'd heard of credit cards but at that point I don't think I had ever seen one. To get a ticket for this magical show, I was going to have to go to the nearest box office and buy it with cash. Guess where the nearest box office was. The nearest venue for getting a ticket in the town where the concert was to be held, Ames, Iowa. This was 117 miles away! Not an insurmountable obstacle, I might be able to get there. I was now a senior and knew lots of friends who could drive and had cars. I'd just have to give them gas money. When are the tickets going on sale? Next Thursday!? A school day? OK we've got a problem . . . . I know that if I ask my mother she'd say no. My twisted logic went like this; if I don't ask, then she hasn't said no and it will be fine. I found a likeminded school chum who was as keen to get tickets as I was and he had a car! Bonus! Plans were made for the day out to Ames. As word got around that we were making the journey to the box office for tickets, money was thrust in our hands to get tickets for them too. I think I ended up with the cash to buy ten additional tickets.

I didn't really think twice about skipping school. Actually, I had never skipped school before. Not one time ever. This was going to be my first time being truant from school and it sort of added a bit of an edge to the day. I was buying tickets to what would be my first rock concert AND I was skipping school to do it. How cool was that?

I met my classmate at the top of the street - so we could get away quickly. We were both skipping and wanted few witnesses. As I went to get in the car, the door was opened by his girlfriend so that I could squeeze in the back. *sigh* OK, I didn't know she was coming along. It wasn't really a problem. I didn't really have designs on this guy but it meant that I was squished in the back of a VW Beetle for the ride across to Ames with nobody to talk to. To make matters worse, the heater kept cutting out. This was Iowa. In the winter. It gets very cold. So while this guy drove, his girlfriend hung onto his neck and kissed him, I sat in the back and froze.

We got to Ames early on and got into the already formed long line to buy tickets. If memory serves, we were issued numbers. We stood in lines all day to get these tickets. It was winter, my feet were freezing because sometimes the line snaked onto an unshovelled sidewalk so we stood on packed snow. I was bored. I don't remember being hungry so I may have had enough sense to pack a lunch.

Toward the end of the day we got our tickets. Yipee! I was so cold and bored by the time I got them that I was more relieved to be able to go home than I was at having the tickets.

On the way home the heater in the VW Beetle that had been problematic earlier died completely. That has been - to date - the coldest car journey I have ever had. I could barely move by the time we got back to our home town.

I waltzed in the house quite casually with my tickets stowed in my wallet only to discover that I'd been rumbled. My mother found out that I had skipped school! As a punishment, I never got to go.

Diving in The Gloom

2011-11-01T04:22:00.000Z

Sunday saw us out on Loch Long with our dive club.

It was another great day out with our friends, because that's what they've become, friends.

Here are the two of us waving to our shore cover person (who had my camera). The weather wasn't great - but then we are in Scotland and it's the tail end of October.

We were diving at a place called "A Frames" because it's an easy entry dive. Its a good all round dive. Lots of sea life to see. Yesterday there were enough common starfish to start a revolution! The whelks were very busy laying eggs in big papery blobs. I made two short dives yesterday and during the first dive I saw a group of about four large common whelks all in a big egg laying frenzy.

I didn't take any underwater photos for a couple of reasons: 1. I was training. When one has a trainee in the water, you can't be taking photos. All your focus is on your trainee. 2. It was dark. The water wasn't particulary cloudy as long as folk didn't kick up silt from the bottom but it was a very dark and cloudy day.. I prefer to have better light conditions.

I did take a few shore photos: This is The Man of the Place

He is in hunter gatherer mode and collected about 4 kilos of wild mussels. We split this haul with a couple of people. Wild mussels are certainly a LOT different to farmed mussels. First of all there is a lot more cleaning involved. Barnacles have to be scraped, limpets removed and they must be rinsed more than once. As for flavour, they are delicious! Our were cooked in white wine, shallots, butter and parsley with cream thrown in at the end. We were transported!

As these mussels come from the West Coast of Scotland and their lives were lived on our turbulent coast, grit got inside them . . . the mussels did what any decent bivalve would do when faced with grit, they created pearls.

They aren't gem quality - but they are pearls. Some mussels had more than others. We had to be very careful when eating them. It was similar to eating pheasant or duck . . . you have to watch for the bird shot.

Empty Nest

2011-09-04T07:28:00.001+01:00

My life underwent a fundamental change in December, 1982. My first child was born. From that day forward I was a parent. It was so long ago. I was so young (20) when Ian was born. I barely know the young woman in that photo.

December 19, 1982

I remember being amazed that the hospital was going to let me go home with this beautiful baby! What did I know about babies and being a parent? Answer: not a whole lot.

We blundered on.

November 1983

Here I am the following year with another one on the way. Sean was the only baby to be a little early. I sure would love to turn back the clock and see my children as babies again. They were such beautiful children.

Iowa City - Dec 1985

I took a few sharp turns in the past 28 years. Some were good ideas and some weren't. But we always had fun!

Miami Zoo

A number of years later, we live in another country and a third child has come into our lives!

The due date Sept 1993

July 1994

I will continue to be a parent until the day I die. Yesterday the prefix "full-time" was removed from the title of parent. The youngest was stuffed into our overpacked car and driven up to Edinburgh to start his Marine and Freshwater Biology course. He's gone now.

3 September

Like his brothers before him, I was sad to see him go but I wouldn't want it any other way. I see the smart, confident and handsome men that my sons have become and am pleased they are out in the world. It is what I wanted for them.

Diving is fun - August 2011

This is me having completed being a full time parent. I have lots to do so I'm not worried about how I'm going to fill up the time that was previously devoted to parenthood, but I am feeling a loss.

I'll start by walking the dog and then cleaning some of the rooms in the house. The nice thing about cleaning now is that I am confident that the rooms will stay clean for more than a day.

Egypt August 2011

Thanks Ian, Sean and George for being three of the best parts of my life. I really love being your mother and I love you.

49 today

2011-07-28T11:28:00.000+01:00

I thought I would escape the aging process but it happened anyway.

Here's the first grey hair!

Diver Training

2011-07-26T18:58:00.000+01:00

The Dumfries Sub Aqua Club was at Capernwray Dive Centre on Sunday for training. It was a glorious day out! We had blue skies, warm sun and for once it wasn't overcrowded at this particular dive site! It is usually heaving with other divers . . . perhaps it is because of the struggling economic conditions that there are fewer divers.

Lovely Weronika

One of our club members, Weronika was having her first open water dive. She managed beautifully! I am slightly envious that she is just about to turn 18 and is already a diver! I didn't start diving until I was more than twice her age! I was her instructor for the day. It was only my second time as an instructor in open water. I was being carefully monitored by the Branch Diving Officer to ensure I didn't screw up her training.

Weronika getting geared up to go!

The manufacturers of Suunto dive computers had a tent set up at the dive site today. Our group was one of the first groups to arrive. Because we were in no hurry, I went down to the tent to see what they were promoting. It turns out that they were handing out their new dive computers for people to use for the day. (Yes please!) I got to use the new Suunto Vyper Air. I'm telling you that it is a very nice dive computer indeed! I especially liked the display of the dive profile afterward with the time and temperature shown as I scrolled through the dive minute by minute.

Vyper Air on my arm!

The trout in this flooded quarry seemed to be bolder than usual and certainly posed for photographs much better than they have in the past.

Alex punching a trout

Trout swam right up to my mask and didn't care if they bumped me. The perch just sort of hung out at the bottom and looked around by our fins to see if we stirred up anything tasty for them.

Perch

The roach just looked bored by the whole ordeal.

Roach

On one of the training platforms - there is a deck chair - new divers can pose for a photo.

Diving has got to be fun and when a person is going through the training, it can seem like it is just a long string of assessments and drills.

It is because we do this for fun that we go in and out airplanes, and horse around on the boats that have been sunk at this training facility.

Most of us managed to get three dives squeezed into the afternoon. Even though the diving itself isn't strenuous, hauling equipment and tanks around can be tiring. We were all ready to go home by the end of that last dive.

Battle of Duckweed

2011-07-16T12:49:00.000+01:00

The duckweed in our pond keeps trying to reintroduce itself. I have a zero tolerance policy with duck weed. I will do a visual check of the pond and remove every single little green fleck of pond weed that I see. I've been doing this since last year. I don't know where the stuff is coming from. Every week there are between 5 and 20 little bits to remove.

The duck weed may have had a benefit. I shaded the water and inhibited the growth of a new pond pest - blanket weed. Sheesh!

I was scooping out the blanket weed and discovered that the newts have been busy!

Baby newts!

I have to be very gentle and check the blanket weed carefully. These very small and delicate newt babies are living in there.

That little guy went straight back in the pond and wiggled away. No harm was done to any newtlings during the production of this blog entry.

Stuff Keeps Showing Up

2011-06-29T09:12:00.000+01:00

It has been so wet this spring I never got a chance to plant anything in that nicely dug up vegetable patch.

The tadpoles are quickly becoming frogs.

This wee man has almost completed the transformation. The tail is almost completely absorbed.

The newts are getting fat too.

I haven't seen the diving beetle larvae. They might be pupating because they were the size of a decent shrimp the last time I looked.

If we leave the light on by the back door we will have moths on the wall in the morning. Here are two beauties that visited this week.

White ermine

Buff tip - looks like a bit of birch twig!

Time Flies When You're Busy!

2011-06-25T14:05:00.001+01:00

I've been up to my neck lately.

Poppy in front of the house

I've got this new job you see. I will not say what it is that I do or who I work for. I will say that I am enjoying it, but for the first few weeks (month and a half) I've been away every week for part of the week. This is for product training etc . . . For purposes of remaining employed, that is all I will say about work.

June Lupin show!

I get to stay in lovely hotels and focus on nobody other than myself . . .but after a while, you miss things like your spouse, big soap and hot tea. Soap in hotels the world over comes in little tiny bars. The tea is made with hot water from an urn once the tea is made is never hot enough. The coffee is fine, but I'm a tea drinker.

So since then the little tadpoles in the pond have sprouted tiny little legs. The Greater Diving Beetle larvae are the size of a substantial prawn, the grass alway needs mowing and there is laundry to do . . . .

Meanwhile my dear little blog languishes.

Rinsing the dive gear after a dive

In the few days that I have had at home, I have actually managed to get some diving in. Where there's a will there's a way. I didn't take the camera underwater with me as I was busy being the dive leader. Not only do I get to dive, but I get to boss people about! Super awesome!

We went to what is rapidly becoming my favourite diving spot (within a few hours drive), Loch Fyne. The water was quite clear and the loch was full of sea life!

Gortien Point, Loch Fyne

Last weekend we actually had some sunny weather and I got our sheets washed and dried. This beautiful little bug few onto the sheets.

Cream-spot Ladybird

True to form, I ran in the house for the camera.

Now that the dust has settled, let's see if I can manage to squeeze out a few extra blog entries in the weeks to come.

Things That Made Me Happy Today

2011-05-02T18:42:00.002+01:00

It was yet another glorious day in my corner of the world. We have had a lovely long string of them lately. This means that I have been able to go out and goof around in the garden just whenever I darned well please. Most years I have to dash out between rain drops to do things in the garden and scurry back when the weather gets worse. I can't just go out and play in the garden when I want to, my garden time is dictated by weather but not this weekend!

Blue skies!

actual shot of the sky 2 May 2011

Perhaps today was a bit more glorious than others as it was the last day of an extra long weekend.

The day started with a handsome pheasant by the bird table.

Male pheasant 2nd May

Please note that just the day before, The Man of the Place endeared himself to me yet again by scraping and painting the bird table. He also made a new roof for the bird table as the old one was deemed to be rotten.

Over in the vegetable patch there is more honour to be piled upon The Man of the Place. Earlier, using this machine:

I love this machine!

the vegetable plot has gone from this:

makes my back ache just lookin at it

To this!

dug over and ready for planting

I have since used the spade and fork to remove the clumps of grass and large weeds with long tap roots. I have also started to plant a few things. The sweetpeas have gone in. They're tough and can handle a bit of frost if it shows up.

plants and vegetables living in harmony

I can't get ahead of myself as the threat of a late frost has not passed and I really can't plant tender things out until the end of May. I sowed a lot of stuff in the greenhouse and am keeping the tender plants safe and frost free. Those leeks, onions and peas can go out though and possibly the broccoli.

greenhouse in production

Over on the left side of the greenhouse I've got a stock of plants that I intend to place in hanging baskets and containers. I've got five hanging baskets to plant up and just as many containers.

wind and glass don't mix

Remember a few months ago when winter storms caused the door of the little greenhouse to fall and shatter? Well because there was no door, the chickens (disasters in the garden - really) got in and had a dust bath in what was left of the grow-bags I had in there. The chickens flung compost all over the place.

newly glazed greenhouse door

I reglazed the greenhouse door. It almost looks like there is no glass there as the glass is still so clean. This is not my favourite gardening chore, but I got it done and then tidied up the greenhouse and hauled in the new grow-bags for this years tomatoes, cucumbers and basil plants. I have planted two little tomato plants in there, watered them and wished them well. Now that the door is back on, the place is a hen-free zone once again.

Count the tadpole competition

Now then . . . over in the pond there are thousands of wiggly tadpoles. On days like today, I can waste an awful lot of time on a particularly comfortable rock on the edge of the pond, watching the tadpoles. Watching tadpoles is a very important gardening task and it should not be overlooked.

Discovery apple tree in bloom

The apple trees are in bloom.

apple - Discovery - in bloom

Close up shot. If the frost stays away, I should have a couple of apples in the autumn.

dirty toes

After a full day of tidying greenhouses, raking and digging, a bit of planting, watching tadpoles and admiring things . . . I am quite ready for a long soak in the tub.

Old Family Photos

2011-04-26T10:18:00.000+01:00

I've been scanning in some old family photos so that I can forward them to my cousins.

Some of these pictures I acquired in 1996 when I was in Wisconsin for my dear Grandma Carew's funeral.

My Grandma Carew's engagement photo. Taken circa 1931. She was always very fashionable. I miss her terribly. She was a perfect grandmother. I am hoping that if I get to be a grandmother, I will be just as good at it as she was.

This photo was on top of her dressing table always. It was put there the day they moved in and was there until I removed it after her death. It is my grandparent's wedding photo. I remember seeing the dress. It was a dark forest green velvet with silver bugle beads around the neckline and around the back. It was stunning. My cousin Carey and I tried it on in one of the unused upstairs bedrooms when we were teens. We knew the importance of that dress and were so careful with it. Grandma was slender before those babies started showing up! I don't know where the dress is now. I hope my my Aunt Mary Ellen has it. She'll keep it safe.

My Grandma Carew's parents were Dennis and Elizabeth Halloran. This is their wedding photo from on or about 1899.

Dennis Halloran looks like someone who could fit in to a crowd of local farmers here. I've seen faces like that at agricultural shows and auctions my whole life.

Great-grandmother Halloran's own engagement photo. It amazes me that the clothes in these older photos were all made by hand, very possibly by the person wearing them. All the older family photos are all studio portraits. No holiday snaps, no pictures of Great Uncle Clifford with a big fish. Photos were a serious business and an expense to be figured into the budget.

This is Clifford Carew - aged 4, Murray Carew - aged 3 and John 8 months. They look like they would have run Great Grandma Carew ragged. It was the fashion to dress young boys this way. It surprises many when I say the middle child with the long curls is actually my grandfather. I recognise that shade of brown hair and those eyebrows I see them when I look in the mirror.

Standing are John, Murray (my grandpa) and Clifford Carew. Seated are Grace and Great Grandma Nell Carew.

My Grandpa Carew died when I was young. I just have images of him in my head. I wish they were clearer. The few memories I have of Grandpa Carew are great memories though. He was always smiling and happy and loved to indulge his granddaughters.

Um El Faroud - Malta

2011-04-18T15:30:00.000+01:00

One of the tasks that was set for me during a recent dive trip to Malta was to get some deep dives completed. The first deep dive of the dive trip was on the wreck of the Um El Faroud, a Libyan motor tanker. The ship was being worked on in dry dock in Malta, when a gas explosion on board killed nine Maltese dockworkers. For three years after the 1995 explosion she lay in the harbor of Valetta. She was then moved to the current location

Memorial Plaque to the dockworkers of the Um El Faroud

Our dive club had a couple of good reasons for diving on this wreck.

Rodger Donald dives the Um El Faroud

Our Branch Diving Officer, Rodger Donald had been diving on this wreck not long after it had been sunk and was keen to see how it had changed in 10 years. Back then there was a large crack through the ship. One could stand on the deck and straddle the crack. A violent storm (or series of storms) completed the break and the ship is now in two large chunks on the floor of the sea. It was commented that there is less life sticking to the wreck than we expected.

Um El Faroud

It was agreed that if the ship had been sunk in the Clyde estuary , it would have been covered by soft corals and encrusting algae by the time 10 years had elapsed. I don't know how much of those opinions are based on loyalty to home waters . . . however, there was plenty to see. There were more fish here than I have ever seen on any dive in the Clyde.

Rodger Donald and a ladder inside the Um El Faroud

I loved this dive! I'm not overly fond of wreck dives. I'm much more interested in staying shallow, where the light is better and there are more little things for me to see. I will admit that the number of fish living near this wreck was amazing and kept me from staying inside my own head where I start to worry about the depth, air consumption and other less pleasant thoughts.

Male Parrot fish on the Um El Faroud

In addition to thousands of damel fish, I saw at least six parrot fish, both male and female. I'd only ever seen one parrot fish in all the other Mediterranean dives I've done.

Damsel fish on the Um El Faroud

In going forward to the next stage of dive training, I have to complete 10 deep dives. This wreck dive plus one other deep dive completed during this trip means there are 8 to go.

The thought of doing the remainder of the deep dives in Crummock Water in the Lake District where there is 0 visability and 0 life doesn't inspire me. I wonder if I can convince anybody to go away with me for another cheeky little dive trip. . . . to warmer waters.

Rab and Nick dive the Um El Faroud

There was a sea squirt and some encrusting sponge starting to stick to the side of the ship so life is beginning to think of the hull of this ship a permanent thing.

unknown sea squirt

When I get find out what this is, I'll edit this entry - New Book Needed!

Diving in Malta

2011-04-12T16:49:00.000+01:00

Sunday the 3rd of April was Mothers Day here in the UK. I was given a less than traditional gift by my son George. He gave me some lovely white linen trousers. I wore them later on in the day when I drove to the airport. Ok so linen isn't the best material for travelling, but . . so what. I don't care about a few wrinkles.

Manchester Airport bar

I went with six other member of the Dumfries and Galloway Subaqua club to Malta.

I had missed proper sun the sort of sun that makes you seek out the shade. It was good to be doing things. Being active, diving, walking places. It is always interesting to see how things are done in other countries

I really liked the diving. It was so great to get back in my dear old wetsuit. Diving is just easier with a wetsuit. In this instance it was easier, but a little bit colder. The water was about 16 C the week we were there.

St Paul's Bay - Malta

The people who dive regularly on the island were still in their drysuits. The first day out we were teasing them about being soft southerners . . . until after the first days diving. Then we were wishing for our drysuits. We toughed it out. I won't speak for the others but I found that when my mind was occupied on other things, like looking at fish, going through wrecks and underwater caves, I forgot I was cold and really enjoyed the dives.

One of the things to do on my list was get some deep dives done. I managed two deep dives onto wrecks.

Um El Faroud

Up until now, I wasn't overly fond of wreck diving. Now that I see large number of fish that call these wrecks home, I am almost converted.

Spring is almost here!

2011-03-28T23:06:00.000+01:00

We had a glorious weekend here at Whitelees.

For most of the weekend we had life enhancing sunshine and for all of the weekend it was dry!

I'm going on a dive trip in a few days and decided that I would wear shorts while I'm away. I was digging out the summer clothes only to discover that they all smelled musty. The didn't really get an airing last year so they've been in the bottom drawer for a long time. I managed to get them - and all the bedding - washed and dried on the clothes line. I got clothes dried on Saturday and Sunday! I just love the smell of things dried on the line. There is no chemical or artificially produced scent that can top it. I even prefer bath towels to be dried on the line. I like the scratchiness. It makes me as though I get a little bit drier than I do with the fluffy, machine dried towels with added fabric softener.

When scraping weeds and assorted things that aren't flowering plants out of the herbaceous borders I paused as I found that a ladybird was walking across my sleeve.

Today I saw a Mayfly on the window! I looked at the calendar today so I know that it is still March. It continues to be March for a few more days.

Here in March, is a Mayfly!

Spring Can be Cruel

2011-03-13T15:46:00.000Z

We started the month with two lovely sunny days. The daffodil spikes have started to show the lumps that will eventually become buds and then flowers.

There is one hen that needs to have her wings clipped. She flies out of the chicken run every day, lays her egg in the big plastic tunnel and then flies back into the chicken run. From time to time she'll have a wander around before going back. If she is out and needs some company or is bored, she'll peck at the back door. I'll hear a faint tapping at the kitchen door. . . . when I open the door. This is what I see:

Hello nice lady!

I have a strict no-chickens-in-the-house policy so this one is wasting her time.

I was outside this morning in my pajamas and wellies dealing with the aftermath of a visit from a fox. Polly, our dog had been barking. Instead of going to see what she was barking about, and Polly is not normally a barky sort of dog I told her to be quiet. When I finally got off my backside and looked out the window, I let the dog out immediately. The biggest fox I have ever seen was bounding away from the place. There were feathers all over the inside my chicken run. I thought that run was fairly fox proof. It turns out that the run is merely fox resistant! We lost one good laying hen and another has been bitten but not badly. The bitten one has just lost some feathers and didn't want to come out of the chicken coop for a couple of hours.

This is the remainder of my hens - the bitten one is the one at the top, all muddy and upset. Six chickens is still plenty to be getting on with. I'll not replace any just yet. To cheer myself up after all this fox trauma, I filled the bird feeders and checked the pond. There is a big new clump of frog spawn in the pond. As I was hunkered down to see the state of things, I saw the BIGGEST great diving beetle I have ever seen. He really is The Daddy of all diving beetles. It sort of figures. Do you know what great diving beetle larvae like to eat best of all? Tadpoles.

There are new catkins dangling off the corkscrew hazel. I think they look lovely. Smaller and far less showy are the little red female parts of the plant, the part that will eventually be edible hazelnuts.

The plump and delicate little flowers can be seen dotted around the hazel. (In the centre of the photo) They are so small that they run the risk of being covered by the lichen.

The moles are renewing their efforts in the front and back gardens. With the fox and increased mole activity, it is time to make a call to my friend Mike the Gamekeeper.

So, that's the news around the garden. In other arenas, I have completed my 100th dive.

It was cold, murky and almost devoid of underwater life but I had a great day out.

Spring is coming!

2011-02-25T12:24:00.001Z

The snowdrops are out in full force.

The little green shoots of the daffodils always make me smile when I first see them. It means that winter is coming to an end.

Lovely Neighbours

2011-02-17T10:34:00.000Z

I was at a wonderful 21st birthday party for a young lady in our village. I have known her since she was a tot. It always startles me when I see her and others her age from the village. In my mind, they are still chubby cheeked primary school kids and the picture I carry around of them in my head doesn't match up with the elegant young adults I am often confronted with. It was a fun night. It is always nice to have a reason to dust off a party dress. There were so many of our local gal's friends from the University of Edinburgh where she attends that they needed a coach to get them here!

One of the best things about this party was not only did all the university lads wear their kilts, there were some elders from the community at the party as well. I got to have a nice long chat with Geoff, semi-retired farmer in our village and father of the fabulous Tina, a dear friend of mine. During our conversation I said that the potatoes he had given me the last time I popped by to say hello were simply delicious.

The very next day, this arrived at the house.

Dear dear Geoff brought us an entire sack of potatoes!

I love gifts that come in big brown burlap sacks! I do not know the variety of these potatoes, but the pale yellow flesh has a floury texture when cooked and are really tasty. Being embarrassed by the generosity of my neighbours, I tried to pay for them. I have been assured that the potatoes would have just gone to waste otherwise and he was happy to give them to us.

On Wednesday nights I go into Dumfries. The dive club meets at DG1, the fancy new swimming pool for training. I have started the custom of bringing in a cake when it is somebodies birthday. Alex, the club's equipment officer and all around good egg is having a birthday on Sunday. Alex is a great guy and would do anything for his pals at the dive club, but it is widely known that he is a little accident prone. So it was no surprise when making his cake, I dropped it on my newly cleaned kitchen floor!

By some freak of luck, I actually had enough ingredients and TIME to bake a second cake.

The shattered first cake was left here at the house - we're not proud - it's broken but still delicious. The second cake was iced and made it to Dumfries in perfect condition.

I also wanted to show you one of the things that is currently in bloom here at the house:

This lovely clivia - given to me by Elizabeth, the mother of another dear friend, Anna. Isn't it beautiful?

Loch Fyne

2011-02-05T11:25:00.000Z

Last Sunday I was out again with the Dumfries Sub Aqua Club (some of my favourite people) to the prettiest sea loch I have ever been too, Loch Fyne. There are a few more I have yet to visit . . . but this one is the prettiest so far.

This was taken from St Catherine (across the loch from Inverary) on the loch where we spent the day.
Loch Fyne is a couple of hours north of Glasgow and I believe it is worth the loss of an extra hour of sleep to get there.

It was young Liam's first dive in open water. We were excited for him!

There is some very good diving to be had. Aside from one bump on the head and some body's equipment box breaking, there were no serious accidents. For that we are grateful as there was a reminder in the form of a fading Christmas wreath on a tree at this site, that things can go wrong even when you follow all the safety rules.

High spirits and excitement as we get things ready for the dive.

I had a short and shallow dive in which I got to use my camera! I was a happy girl.

Squat lobster, red sea squirt and pink encrusting algae.

Sea urchin and more of that pink algae. :-)

I don't know what it is about crabs, but the non-edible variety always want to have a go at me!

All out of the water in one piece at the end of the day.

I've actually managed to get more dives in during the winter than over the summer. Don't get me wrong, I prefer diving in the summer . . . but sometimes it just works out that way. Thanks to the dive club for yet another fantastic day of diving.

A Grand Day Out

2011-01-31T10:40:00.000Z

On Saturday, young George and I planned an outing to Edinburgh. We were going to go to the zoo and see the penguins. The great thing about going to the zoo in January is that it is practically EMPTY. If you don't mind walking around in the cold (which we don't) you get to enjoy the zoo in relative peace. As we travelled along the M8 toward Edinburgh, the big sign for Deep Sea World came into view.

"George, it's decision time. Deep Sea World or the zoo. What do you want to do?"
"Deep Sea World! Good call Mom!"

Ok, so we had an instant change of direction. It takes us just as long to get to Deep Sea World in North Queensferry as it does to get to the zoo. It is an indoor attraction, so naturally it was very crowded on a Saturday afternoon.

Under the Forth Bridge

Deep Sea World is under one of the most beautiful bridges in the world, The Forth Bridge.

The Forth Road Bridge

It is an elegant bridge and anytime I am driving across the The Forth Road Bridge (which I suspect was built so that we could have a better view of the rail bridge), I always want to stop, get out and feast my eyes. Naturally, this would cause traffic chaos and I never do, but I think about it each and every time I drive over the Firth of Forth.

So, one of the benefits of visiting Deep Sea World in North Queensferry is the close proximity to beautiful Scottish engineering.

It was, as we suspected, a lot more crowded than the zoo would have been. The first time we took George to Deep Sea World, he was about two years old. he came down with chicken pox two weeks later. It is a hazard of taking children into the wider world. They not only get to see the world around them, but they also get exposed to infection!

The two of us had a lovely day and we did not get ill afterward. We had arrived just in time to see them feeding the two resident harbor seals. A mother and daughter who had been taught a few crowd pleasing tricks.

We saw one of our favourite fish, the Picasso Triggerfish - (Pacific version)

Malawi Cichlids

We saw a number of other tropical fish that we have seen in the wild during dive trips. When I saw them, it felt like we were stopping by to see old friends.

Sand Tiger - Deep Sea World

Naturally they have the big shark tank and that is fun. The sand tiger shark with its rows of pointy fish nibbling teeth is the star of that show by virtue of its size. I have become quite immune to the charms of big sharks in the tank. True to form, I was quite happy looking at the little stuff. I think the smaller dogfish is much prettier and more interesting.

Spotted dogfish

After seeing all, watching the seals and frogs getting fed we called time and drove home.

If you live in Scotland - please visit Deep Sea World - it is well worth the effort!

Loch Long

2011-01-24T06:19:00.001Z

I was out with the most excellent Dumfries & Galloway Sub Aqua Club on Sunday.

We planned to go to Loch Long one of the west of Scotland's sea lochs in Argyle & Bute.

Old pier - Loch Long

We planned to dive in a spot called Conger Alley on the loch. This meant driving a little longer to get there so we met in the Whitesands car park in Dumfries an hour earlier than we normally do.

It is still quite dark at 07.30 but we all showed up on time. We got our tanks and we were off!

As we drove north to our destination, I noted with glee that there wasn't a breath of wind, there was no snow (or fog) and the temperatures that had been quite low for some weeks had eased and it was a mild day.

It was a bit overcast but that did not detract from the stunning beauty of one of Scotland's prettiest sea lochs.

The water temperature was at about 6 C. That's not too bad but I prefer it to be a bit warmer. The visibility was good. The overcast conditions meant that the dive was rather dark. As we got deeper, it got darker.

There were a few things to see - squat lobsters, crabs, tiny fish zipping back under rocks as we approached them. I think if we were to do that dive again, I would stay shallow and poke around in the sea weed rather than to go deeper.

Dumfries divers

I tell you something - I had a really nice day out. The scenery was beautiful, the weather was mild and these three gentlemen were the kindest, most helpful diving companions a gal could ask for.

Sadly, we didn't find Conger Alley, but it was dark and only one of us had ever been there before. It is still there and we can always go back. We still saw plenty of things that interest us. I took my camera into the sea with me, but I didn't take any photos. I will save that for another time when the light is a bit better.

Feeling Better - Let's Walk the Dog

2011-01-09T19:07:00.000Z

We are turning the corner with the flu bug. I'm working at about 78% capacity and thought the long suffering hound could really do with a nice long walk.

I bundled up and took her up the road to our favourite walk. It snowed about an inch last night and I could see we were the first and only visitors to the pond today. Well, the only domestic visitors . . .

There were some deer tracks.

By this little hill, I could see where some pheasants had been dragging their sleds around in the snow.

Then there was evidence of a fox.

I got this shot of the fox's path through the snow before Polly could go and bounce all over the tracks and spoil it.

The fox had zig zagged all up and down the snowy lane looking for something, anything to eat.

This tree looked lacey with the snow still clinging to its branches.

I don't know if you can tell from this photo how quiet it was . . . . but I could only hear my footsteps and own breath.

Here's our pond. It looks different all silent and frozen. In a few months - this bit of water will be heaving with the activity of spring but for now, it is still.

This surprised me - the moles - blast their furry hides - are still active. This mole hill at the side of the road was made fresh this morning.

Thank you Google Street View

2011-01-04T21:07:00.000Z

As the Man of the Place and I mope around the house and swallow stuff that will make us feel better until this stupid virus is finished with us, I have been comforting myself with a bit of desktop travel.

The place I have been going to lately is the dear State of North Dakota. I find I can travel through most of the state on Google Street View.

I haven't been to North Dakota since about 1979 so there was bound to be change. I was ready for it.

I went to our old house, just outside Bismarck . . .well it used to be just outside Bismarck. It is most definitely in town now.   The road in front of the house used to be a dirt road that the county would oil in the summer to keep the dust down. Can you imagine using oil in that manner now? Times have changed and that dirt road is now an express way.    The fields around the house are now lovely houses, so I guess the gopher problem has been solved.

View Larger Map

Somethings have stayed the same though.   The majesty of the Dakota plains is still there.   There is still something spiritual to me about this landscape. I may have said this before, I feel we imprint on the first landscapes we see as children and I certainly feel it when I see North Dakota on a late summer day through this new option on Google.
View Larger Map

It's a bison! Right there on the side of the road, eating grass!!!

I have been quite homesick for wide prairies, choke cherries and garter snakes. I think it's the far horizons that I miss the most. Where you stand on a hill and the sky seems like a big blue dome because there is nothing to block your view for 360 degrees.   I'm thankful that I can at least sneak a peek at these places without having to spend a small fortune to do it.

Perhaps it is my youth that I miss. The tanned shins getting scratched running through the sagebrush and under the cottonwood trees. I swear I can almost smell it.

I would love to see the state one more time, but I really don't know how feasible that will be. I weighed it up in my head . . . . move back or stay here . . . . I would miss Scotland far more if I moved back.   There is also a family that has never known any home but this one. I've been here so long that my roots have become permanent. I'd probably not die if I were to leave, but I'd never be the same again and neither would they. I wouldn't consider inflicting that pain on them. That doesn't mean that from time to time, my eyes don't yearn to see some prairie (and naturally those dear folks I know who live there).

Hello North Dakota!

This is Not What I Had Planned

2011-01-03T19:37:00.000Z

I was going to start the new year with tales of intrepid dives along the Irish Sea or possibly the North Sea depending on the direction of the wind . . .

New Year's Eve saw me calling things off because I was developing a deep cough. It is forbidden to dive with a cough or plugged up nose. It is way too dangerous for a delicate human body and definitely not worth any risk.

So, the first day of the new year saw me at home - sniffing, coughing and watching old movies and playing with my new camera and lovingly stroking the Ikelite underwater housing that showed up under the tree at the same time. So, I have figured out zoom, delete, whitebalance (important for underwater photography), moving image, macro and a bunch of other features.

A few days on and I'm a little better but The Man of the Place has been struck down with this bug as well. I'm phoning the doctor in the morning.

When there are flu like symptoms the advice is to not go to the doctor, let him come to you.

Just stay away . . . it isn't pleasant around here.

Farewell 2010

2010-12-31T20:53:00.000Z

On the last day of the year, I took my dear sweet dog Polly on a walk. It was foggy today and there might have been a pheasant shoot nearby so I put on a high viz vest and I put one on the dog. I've got a new camera and I was keen to start using it.

Polly in the fog

I haven't been on our favourite walk in a while. We've had lots of snow and very cold temperatures. Now, the dog loves to play in the snow, but it has been too cold to go out. It's the sort of cold where you feel your nose hairs freeze and snow squeaks.

Looking up our lane

A couple warmer days and some rain have made the snow go away. We are now back to normal Scottish winters with fog, rain and generally dreich weather.

The pond in the fog

There were plenty of pheasants up here today and a huge blue heron. In the fog it looked like a pterodactyl!

I am headed to my bed early as I have a hacking cough. I'll leave the rest of you to whoop it up and sing Auld Lang Syne.

We've been at our home, Whitelees for almost 17 years now. These trees were saplings when we first arrived. I remember being careful not to step on them when in that field picking daisies.

The Trees have grown!

I was talking about this with the youngest member of the family we agreed that our life here is pretty fantastic. We wouldn't live anywhere else. I'm really looking forward to the next year!

Some Photos of My Life So Far

2010-12-22T18:07:00.003Z

Courtesy of Pummelvision

Whiskey Galore? Nope, just an animal medicine bottle

2010-12-17T23:27:00.002Z

Where are we?

On Sunday some (rather stalwart) members of the Dumfries Subaqua Club went on a mission to find new dive sites. We were looking for good entry points near sites where there are known to be shipwrecks. We looked at a couple of different sites near Stranraer.

Rodger looking out to sea

The first place to check was Corsewall Point. There is a lovely lighthouse there. It has been turned into a rather nice hotel. I went in at one point to ask the hotelier some questions about access to the sea. The answer confirmed what we had already guessed. There isn't a really safe place to enter the water near the Lighthouse. There is one spot with some sand - but it isn't close enough to the wreck site for us to swim to it safely. We need a boat.

Corsewall Point

The reason we were looking at this point was that on the 26th August 1898 the ship Firth of Cromarty left Glasgow. She was bound for Australia with over 2000 tons of general cargo and a large consignment of whisky.

Firth of Cromarty

The next day, the 27th August as she was clearing Corsewall Point at the top of the Rhinns of Galloway wind smashed her against the rocks. The crew managed to escape to shore. It is reported that it took another four days before a salvage party could get to the ship. In the meantime much of her cargo, including the whisky, had been "washed ashore".

Nobody knows what became of the whisky but local legend has it that that many local farmers were quite merry during the months following the wreck.

Gilchrist poison

I did find one bottle in the sand a few hundred meters south of the wreck site. The mouth of the bottle has been broken and smoothed by the sea and the bottle filled with sand. I pulled a few small limpets off the bottle and tossed those back into the sea. The bottle is ribbed. There is a smooth spot where a label used to be and pressed onto the glass is the word Gilchrist across the bottom and poison across the top. I don't know how old the bottle is. I doubt it is from 1898 . . . but it might be! I've since been told that it is an animal medicine bottle. I'll let you know if I get more information on it.

As there wasn't a spot at Corswell Point that we wanted to dive, we went to look at the alternative site, Lady Bay near Stranraer.

Lady Bay

The entry to Lady Bay can't be easier. There are steps going from the parking area down to a gently sloping sandy beach.

Winter days are short so there wasn't any hanging about once the decision to dive this site was made. Even though we were quick about getting in, we really only had enough light for a short dive.

The visibility was much better than the dive we had last week. We could see almost two meters! This meant that we weren't losing dive buddies and we could actually see some of the marine life. There were some beautiful bright yellow Flat periwinkle shells the size of a child's fingernail and smaller still was the jewel like Blue Rayed Limpet.

Blue Rayed Limpet

I had seen a photo of these in my field guide but I had never seen one of these in the wild. They sure are pretty.

Sea hare

There were hundreds of Sea hare nudibranchs. They are not overly spectacular compared to their garish cousins but these mud coloured nudibranchs are still fun to see. There was even one on my back later when somebody was unzipping my dry suit. Naturally I put the poor beast back into the water.

Dahlia anemone

One of the divers, Alex spotted this lovely dahlia anemone.

These creepy marine isopods were everywhere. It was mentioned that they looked like those worms that were used in torture in an episode of Star Trek. . . .

Isopod on kelp

I'm sure these little isopods are fine and won't find their way into our ears to nibble on our brains.

Peg face down in the sea

Here is me - making my way toward shore. I am face down in the water for two reasons, there are huge rocks under the water in this spot and I didn't want to bash my knees against them and the most interesting stuff to me is under the water's surface and I don't want to miss anything good!

Dumfries Subaqua Club

Here we are bobbing in the sea just as the sun is dipping below the horizon.

Thanks to Rodger Donald, Alex Carruthers and The Man of the Place for the photos.

Diving in December!

2010-12-09T14:26:00.000Z

Sunday, 5th of December was a cloudless, clear cold day here in Dumfries & Galloway. There wasn't a breath of wind when five divers met in the Whitesands car park at 08.45. After collecting our tanks at DG1 we were off for Dundrennan and one of the prettiest, most secluded spots on the Dumfriesshire coast. We arrived just at 11.00 and high tide. It was frosty, cold and beautiful.

Robin Rigg Wind Farm

The views across The Solway Firth when we arrived were spectacular! Not everybody likes this wind farm, but I love it! I was happy to see it as I looked across to the snow covered foothills of The Lake District in Cumbria. It seemed as though we could see for a thousand miles.

The hills of The Lake District from across The Solway Firth

It was frosty, but next to the sea there is no snow. I believe that the the Gulf Stream takes care of that for us. It is such a friendly and obliging current.

This is me (black suit with yellow fins) and Alan getting into the water. It isn't as easy as one would think. There are large rocks just under the water's surface and if one is not graceful (like me) you will fall over in a humiliating manner.

The water was still and calm. Usually this means good visibility. Sadly this was not the case on Sunday.

This photo of Nick, one of the members of the club. You can see how poor the visibility is even though this picture was taken near the surface. Even with the low visibility some members of the dive club were able to find the a shipwreck that the guys were looking for, The Ludgate.

I was so happy to be diving. I didn't care about cold or low visibility. It was enough that I was in the water with the chance to look for little fish and seaweeds. In the beam of my LED dive torch I saw the claws of a squat lobster poking out from under a rock. In the time it took to look between the cracks of a rock and look up again, I had managed to get myself and Alan separated from the other three divers. So sorry Alan.

It was good that we had all reviewed separation procedures immediately before the dive. We looked for 1 minute turning 360 degrees, went back the way we came for a minute, looked again for another minute and surfaced. When on the surface, we looked for the other divers or their bubbles. Oddly the glare on the smooth surface of the sea made it hard to see bubbles from the other divers. We started to swim for shore when the rest of the party popped to the surface. We re-grouped and thought we'd try again.

My ears wouldn't equalize on the decent. A mid-water decent is harder on ears than walking in from the shore. I had to go up a few meters to get them to clear. When my ears had cleared and I could go down again, I had lost my dive party completely!! Crap! I thought I could feel the current taking me a bit while I was clearing my ears. I was disappointed that I had lost them a second time, but not surprised. When I re-surfaced, I was already about half a kilometer from shore. There is only one way to get to shore . . . swimming. I rolled over onto my back and started kicking. The sun was lovely and bright and it helped to keep my hands warm. It took AGES to get to the shore and the current was insisting that I be on a different part of the shore.

While swimming toward shore by myself . . . thoughts of shark attacks crept into my brain. It has only been a few days since the attacks in Egypt. I forced myself not to think of that. There is no point on dwelling on things outside ones control and focused instead on the stunning scenery. I mean what else would I be doing on a cold Sunday anyway? Laundry? Christmas shopping? Cleaning the bathroom? Not long after I had started my swim to shore, two more divers popped up. They had become separated and were following the same procedure I just did. By the time we made it to shore, all five of us were getting out of the water. Again, some of them were much more graceful than I was.

We packed up and made our way to the The Old Smugglers Inn in Auchencairn to write up our log books and have a warm drink. We ended up staying for lunch and a couple of games of pool.

All in all, I had a wonderful day and I am very grateful to the members of the Dumfries and Galloway Subaqua Club for making it all possible.

Photos by Rodger Donald

Last Rose of Summer

2010-11-14T16:34:00.000Z

This rose was given to me over 16 years ago by a friend that is sadly, no longer with us. It's a robust thing and though it only gives us two or three flowers per year, I keep it. The flowers are beautiful when they show up and I always think of my friend Ettie.

uncared for tomatoes

It is now mid-November and the garden is a mess! It was so tidy all spring and into the summer. Things fell apart in July when I started the "bad job". I left the house at about 07.30 each morning and wouldn't get home until after six. Sometimes I got home later still if there were things that needed to be done. In any case, life at home started to suffer. I wasn't here to do all the lovely things I had been doing up until then. The garden suffered the most.

Broccoli left to go to seed

former pea nets and canes

It wasn't looking too bad when my sister and her family visited in August. We harvested the peas while she was here. But now, in November when I have done nothing but ignore it, it looks BAD.

beans have gone to seed on the canes

There are still some beans flapping in the breeze. A few canes that were there for support are still standing. At some point, I will take the canes down, wipe them off and put them in the greenhouse. They'll last longer in there, out of the weather.

old cabbages - the ones that the caterpillars didn't eat

Poor old cabbages. They look like skulls. The only thing that is salvageable at this point are the leeks. They can stay in until I am ready to use them.

I'm not making any promises, but if we get a dry spell, I'll tidy this patch up and cover it with black plastic until spring.

I was a mildly non-lazy gardener up until July but rest assured, I'm back on form now. :-)

Ninja Mice

2010-10-19T15:08:00.000+01:00

Before I get on to how the vegetable plot is getting on . . . let's turn our attention to the subject of mice.

At this time of year as the local amphibians start to go into hibernation, the tiny mammals start to think about where they're going to live during the long, dark and damp winter months. Some of these rodents think that it would be a jolly good idea to live in our house. The holes in the house that allow water and sewage in and out of our house make a nice way in and out for small rodents as well.

We normally find mice under our sink. This has historically been a good spot for them. They are protected from what ever cat or cats we have living in the house as there are tight fitting cabinet doors that protect the under-the-sink area. There is a way in via the plumbing I mentioned before. To add to that the fact that the internationally recognised place for the kitchen rubbish is under the sink. This provides the food that mice will need to live and indeed breed over the long winter months. I keep mousetraps set under the sink all year long but it is in the autumn that they trap has to be emptied most frequently. I'm not squeamish about these things. The trap just gets new bait and re-set. I keep meaning to block these holes with steel wool, but I never remember to buy some when I am in a hardware store or a D.I.Y. hypermarket.

Earlier in the autumn, our mousetrap broke. It was banged against the side of the wheelie bin a bit too vigorously and it broke. I stopped by a local shop on my lunch break and got another mousetrap (they may have sold steel wool but I seem to have a thing about not remembering it). It was the same model mousetrap as the broken one and the same sort of mousetrap I have been used to using for decades.

Fairly reliable mousetrap

I baited and set the new mousetrap next to the mouse entry point under the sink and thought no more about it. Until . . . I noticed that the trap needed to be re-baited. It hadn't sprung but the bait was gone. (By the way - peanut butter is the best bait for mousetraps) Hmmm

I re-baited and re-set the mousetrap. Then again the next day the trap needed to be re-baited. I put new peanut butter on the mousetrap each day for a week while thinking that this new mousetrap was not very good.

Empty but unsprung mousetraps!!

I then went out to the greenhouse and dug out the nasty all metal mousetrap (see above photo) that I use in the greenhouse when I wish to keep my springtime seed trays from being robbed by sneaky greenhouse mice. I set both mousetraps under the sink. That'll get them!

Well, it got ONE mouse. If my years on the planet have taught me one thing, it's this. You never have just one mouse. I baited and re-set both traps and put them back under the sink.

Ninja mice have been here!

I am now re-baiting two mousetraps each day. This morning when I was taking The Man of the Place to work I stopped off at the local shop. It turns out that they sell mousetraps. I bought a third mousetrap.

Do you think that these mice have a chance? I'll let you know later on.

Autumn Love

2010-10-16T15:45:00.001+01:00

Firstly, let me say that I am very sorry to have neglected the blog for so long. I had a cruddy summer job that sucked all my time and creativity - for very little pay. I don't work there any longer so, I'm back now.

I have been enjoying evening walks with the dog. As the days grow shorter, the walks are getting darker. I'm going to have to dig out the hi-viz vest.

George includes his hand so we have a sense of scale

The mushrooms this year are bigger than I have ever seen them. These seem to be the size of . . . oversized mushrooms.

Fly agaric

This one looks as though it should have an elf sitting under it.

I've been on numerous evening walks with Polly up to the woods.

Since August, our cat Julio has decided that he needs to come with us. So now there is this strange American just outside the village who walks both her dog and her cat. Julio is one odd cat.

The mushrooms are as numerous as they are plentiful as well. They are under every single large beech tree.

Mushroom with purple gills

-unknown red capped mushroom -

We had taken delivery of a load of logs the other day and the new logs need to be stacked on the big green plastic tarp. This morning, The Man of the Place was re-arranging the firewood and discovered some beasties that have already begun their hibernation. Frogs, toads and two newts were sleeping in last year's logs and old bits of bark. We didn't want to disturb them my desire for organisation overrides. I demand that all logs be put neatly on the tarp and the tarp folded over the logs to keep the rain off.. It is so nice to have dry logs when we need to light a fire.

The frogs were still jumpy but the newts barely moved at all. We have relocated the critters to a spot the poly tunnel under some black plastic that won't get stepped on.

hibernating newt

My newt was quite plain. The other newt had a few dark spots and a very red belly!

This frog was very handsome. I hope the hibernation is successful for these small and delicate creatures. When moving the logs, we found earthworms and wood lice. When relocating the frogs to the new hibernation spot, I put a fat worm next to each frog. They might want a snack later on. :-)

I'll report on the state of the garden next time. . . . .

Corkscrew Hazel Has Nuts!

2010-08-02T09:46:00.006+01:00

I have had this corkscrew hazel corylus contorta for a number of years.Here it is in February, 2007 with the catkins dangling off it. The catkins remind me of a geisha's hair ornament. It is beautiful. Through the long winter it provides us with something lovely to look at in the front garden.It wants to send up shoots below the graft which are not twisted. Those straight shoots get nipped out as soon as they are spotted.

Though some of the ends of the shrub were killed by our hard winter, the plant seems to be quite hardy. It surprised me yesterday by revealing that it isn't just a living ornament in the garden, it has fruited! Looking closely at it I was delighted to see that there are about 8 hazelnuts on this tree. I wasn't expecting this! I had assumed that an ornamental shrub was sterile and would not fruit. I am so pleased that I was mistaken!

No Time

2010-07-22T21:05:00.003+01:00

Sorry folks - I started a new job.

Please don't send congratulations as it really is only slightly better than being unemployed. A plus side is that I am busy and my employer is grateful. Big down side is that I am so very very busy that everything else has been put on hold. I have long hours. I put in a twelve hour day yesterday.

I can just about find the time to read the blogs I like, but very little time to contruct a thought and write in mine.

Please forgive the slow output for a while. I will either get the new job managed so that I have time to do stuff OR I'll find a better job that allows for things like a life.

I am hoping to get into the water for a dive this weekend. I'll write about that if I manage to get wet.

Loch Long

2010-07-05T06:46:00.007+01:00

It was a very memorable 4th of July for me this year.Vi ew La rg er M a p

I went diving with members of the Dumfries dive club up to Loch Long along the Clyde.

The new weight harness (Christmas present from The Man of the Place) and the LED dive torch (the other Christmas present) were getting used in anger for the first time.

Independence Day found me bobbing in the Clyde, protecting my face from stinging hail while waiting for the other divers. I wasn't upset by the wait as the reason the others were delayed was that they had been helping me to get ready. I was using a new weight harness and it needed a thousand little adjustments to get it to sit right.

The weather wasn't great on the way up to Loch Long with wind and rain on the increase. One of the motorway signs warned of heavy rains and a chance of flooding - drive carefully. So what's a little bad weather? The purpose of diving is to get wet!

Weather always improves once the dive has begun. Once a diver is one meter down the fact that there is howling wind and rain mixed with hail no longer matters. The two dives we made yesterday were spectacular!

I haven't taken my camera into the water here in the north. I won't take my camera in until I am as confident diving in a dry suit as I am comfortable and confident diving in a wet suit. I'll just have to use other people's photographs and tell you about it.

Here are a few of the things we saw on our dive.Dead man's fingers - a soft coral. I always think this stuff looks out of focus.One of the walls of the loch is covered in both white and yellow plumose anemone. Many clumps of delicate little Light bulb sea squirts were stuck on rocks between the kelp.

It seemed there were all the crab varieties in the whole world ever on these dives. Loads of velvet swimming crabs with their red eyes, a large hermit crab and on the second dive we all saw the biggest daddy edible crab! So delicious and just out of reach!

We didn't see any common lobsters but the smaller cousin, the squat lobster was seen. In fact, it seemed that every rock crevasse had either a squat lobster or a beautiful blue blenny swimming in it.

This was the first dive this year and I was SO glad to be in the water again. The water temperature was at about 13 C. The visibility was near enough to 10 meters. We could see fairly well and the water wasn't freezing. The wind and rain had scared off any other divers so we had the place to ourselves! Except for a few human errors (not serious) and an outboard motor that threatened to be temperamental we had a really great day out.

Pick the Fights You Know You Can Win

2010-06-29T09:45:00.004+01:00

I have a new battle. Duckweed!I didn't feel I could win this war in the past. Duckweed had taken a firm hold on the pond, to the point that we had to skim holes in the solid blanket of green to peek into the water. It was our own fault. A little bit of duckweed had come in with some purchased pond plants and the pond was infected. I didn't scoop each and every little bit out when I had the chance, not realising how invasive this stuff is. It got a solid footing in our pond. It wasn't until The Man of the Place changed the pond liner earlier in the spring that I thought I had even a small hope of keeping this stuff out of our pond.

When reintroducing things back to the pond after the new liner was put in place, we wiped away all visible signs of duckweed. It still appeared. Tenacious stuff, duckweed! As I have plenty of time to keep an eye on developments in the pond, I am removing each and every little bit I see. This used to be a good kitchen sieve. I found it, crushed on the ground near the pond near the time of the big liner replacement. Being downgraded from kitchen utensil to pond sieve, it now lives on a rock at the edge of our pond. I use it to scoop floating duckweed out of the water. Every day and sometimes more than once a day, the pond is scanned for signs of duckweed. I swoop down and remove the evil green floaters as soon as they are spotted. It rained yesterday for the first time in a while. I knew that this meant there was a strong possibility that some new duckweed would be visible. Duckweed will grow between rocks and float free once the water levels rise. I scooped out about 15 little bits while still in my pajamas. I figure that by the end of the summer, I will have removed all threat of duckweed. Constant vigilance!!!In the future, any items coming from an outside source will have to be quarantined in a bucket for a number of days ensuring my duckweed free pond is not reinfected.

---------------A rosebush on the front of our house comes from my husband's childhood home. A cutting was taken from that house when they moved to a new place back in the early 70's. Decades later when The Man of the Place and I moved to Whitelees, my mother-in-law layered a portion of the same rosebush for us. We now have this vigorous climber by the door with a beautiful show of delicate pink roses at the end of June. It always is in bloom on his sister's birthday so in our family this rose is named Victoria's Rose. This year is no exception.

Summer Days

2010-06-28T12:56:00.005+01:00

I have claimed there is a Roman road in the field next to our place. Sometimes you can see it, sometimes you can't.
The buttercups help to show where the road used to run. Romans were oh so fond of having their roads go in a straight line. This ones links the Roman camp on a nearby hill straight to Carlisle across the border in England. Carlisle used to be Luguvalium. The town name morphed through the years to it's modern day name. Very few places still retain their Roman names. London is the only place I can think of off the top of my head where the Roman name (Londinium) is still pretty close to the modern name.With the lovely long summer days, we like to have the windows open as much as possible. The windows have been closed enough over the years because of almost constant rain. With the open windows and our rural location, we get visitors. Moths and other flying insects. I have become a big fan of big summer moths. A number of them are really beautiful! Here's a beauty (female Ghost Moth) I found in the sink this morning. Without my glasses on, it could have easily been mistaken for a bit of pasta!
Sometimes we leave the outside back light on too see what will be sticking to the wall in the morning. This White Ermine was by the back door.

Where to Stop?

2010-06-27T16:23:00.005+01:00

We haven't had any rain in ages! I refuse to complain. It seems as though we have had four years of nothing but rain. So to start complaining now might make me come across as a hard to please person. Having said that, no rain means that some things are drying out. I am having to water the vegetable patch in the evening. That's not a big problem. However, the grass in the back of the house is taking a particularly hard hit. It is also dying in very distinct areas. You can see the lines!I was clearing some dried grass near the water butt (rain barrel) on the end of the greenhouse and was delighted to discover that all the dry grass, and conjoined weeds are peeling away in neat little sheets. Between the felt of dried roots and crumbling concrete are fat, wiggly larvae. I am throwing the turfs, bugs and all into the chicken run. The hens are going nuts pecking out the grubs from the grass and weeds. I started peeling back more of the grass and weeds. It turns out that our lawn in the back is a big lie! It isn't a lawn at all, it is grass that has grown over old and crumbled concrete. The grass comes up like an old dried carpet. It will be very tidy once I finish, but here is the big question; Where do I stop? Peeling the dried faux lawn is very satisfying and sort of fun.If I go by the lines of dead and dry areas of the back yard, I could be peeling for a while. Do I stop now and leave the rest? I'll have less to mow in the future. Is the crumbling concrete better looking than dried grass?Polly wants me to leave that bit alone as it is very comfortable.

Graduate

2010-06-24T21:30:00.009+01:00

My middle son Sean was graduated from Heriot Watt University this morning. He is now the proud owner of a degree (Hons) in Computer Science.
I have been full of maternal pride for most of the week and I was positively bursting today!

Well done Sean! We love you and are very proud of you! I love that you still have a wonderful sense of fun.

XX

Mum

Not a Weed In Sight

2010-06-22T19:26:00.005+01:00

I've had time this year to keep on top of garden tasks. There isn't a weed to be seen this year.
Today I found myself weeding with my thumb and index finger, pinching the little tiny weeds that only have their first set of true leaves. In the past weeding involved grabbing fists full of stubborn and well rooted weeds. I'm not giving weeds a chance this year.Here are my neat little rows.I was given spring cabbage plants by my neighbour, Charlie. I liked the little sign he made so much that I transferred it to my garden once the plants were put out. Cabage - much nicer than cabbage!The strawberry patch has been relocated to a sunnier spot. No not Cornwall, just out of the shade of the oil tank. I replaced some of the more tired strawberry plants and I've pinched off all the strawberry flowers after the move. The plants should just focus on being plants and build up their plant energy. I'm delaying my strawberry gratification until next year when I expect a full and bumper crop!
In the greenhouse we've got enough basil (on the right) to start making pesto. The coriander (cilantro) on the left is almost ready for a first cut as well!
See the little cucumber (yellow flower on the end of it)? It should be pornstar sized in no time if we keep having these lovely sunny days!

Julio - Apex Predator (in his weight class)

2010-06-21T12:08:00.007+01:00

It doesn't look like it from this photo, but there has been a lot going on in Julio's life in the past week.The pace in Julio's life picked up last Monday when he presented us with the lifeless body of a mole.I have been documenting my war on moles in the front garden for a couple of years. I do like moles, but I don't understand why they need to make up to 85 mole hills in my front lawn when there is a perfectly good (unmolested and mole free) field just on the other side of the hedge. I had Gamekeeper Mike in last year and he got four moles in one go.Julio was rewarded with Sheba - gourmet cat food. Expensive and gravy laden we wanted to ensure that Julio understood that killing moles was something we approved of. Julio has always had a fondness for gravy and this little treat was a break from the Iams dry stuff that I give him. He likes Iams cat food and I wanted to keep him on dry cat food to keep his teeth nice and white. It's always a shame when a cat gets to the geriatric stage and his or her teeth are falling out due to a diet of tinned cat food.

The next night, Julio was howling in pain. We first thought perhaps the treat he had was upsetting his guts, but as the hours ticked by, it was clear this cat was in real distress. Accompanied by Pam (house guest featured in the previous entry) I had a nighttime dash to the vet. It turned out that our poor puss had a blocked urethra. His bladder was hard and distended. Unable to pee, Julio was in agony.

It turns out this problem is common in neutered male cats - poor guy! His bladder was drained and he was given antibiotics, muscle relaxers and was kept in overnight for observation. The next morning, he was peeing on his own again. Whew! No need for surgery.

We had to switch his diet away from the dry cat food (which can be a factor in some cats) back to tinned cat food. He's just going to have to keep his teeth clean by catching and killing small rodents and mustelids in the area.It seems we have been forgiven for the trip to the vet and the twice daily pills (antibiotics) that we poke down his throat because today we have been presented with the body of another mole! (I will not post photos of the dead moles. It may be too upsetting as moles really are great little animals.)

I really love this cat!

A Hedgehog Has a Closer Look at Pam

2010-06-15T21:20:00.006+01:00

One fabulous thing about living in the UK are the hedgehogs. They're so fun! They also eat slugs and snails which are the bane of all gardeners. Sadly hedgehogs do not have a lot of road sense and are very often seen squished at the side of the road. We love hedgehogs here at Whitelees Cottage. Before I had a dog, we used to feed the cats outside. Hedgehogs would visit the cat food bowls in the summer on a fairly regular basis.

Our dear friends Kevin and Pam are up from Cirencester to visit us for a few days. As we try our hardest to pull out all the stops for guests it was only fitting that a hedgehog should waddle under their car tonight. I saw it go under the car and squealed the information to Pam. We both rushed out (me with a camera) to get a better look.

This turned out well. That is one fearless hedgehog!
It went into the tool shed where he or she is well hidden now. Please note the wonderful weed-free status of the gravel in our drive. I am working hard to keep it this way.

I Was Hacked!

2010-06-12T06:28:00.002+01:00

While I was away in Yorkshire on Thursday some nasty person started interfering in my life.

At about 4 pm I got a call on my mobile (cell) phone from a friend in Belgium stating she had recieved a disturbing e-mail from me. In fact, both her e-mail addresses and her husband's e-mail address had all recieved this e-mail. The text of the e-mail stated that I had been robbed at gunpoint in London, all our passports had been taken . . . etc. I believe that the e-mail asked for money. HA! Not only am I poor, none of my friends have money either.

My friend knew that the e-mail wasn't from me as there was terrible punctuation and bad grammar.

Well the end result was that by the time I got home on Thursday night, my husband and I had fielded a number of calls from many countries from frightened friends who were worried about me. A pal in London was going to come and collect me. It would have been nice to see that friend, but there was no need. The same goes for the friend who lives here in Scotland who offered to put an extra helmet on the back of a very cool motorcycle and venture down south.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everybody for their kind concern. I'm fine and you were all darlings to be worried!

Logging on to my profile on the computer, I discovered that I could not access my e-mail acount, I could not access my Facebook account and my dear blog had been taken off line!

I've managed to claw my Google account and my Blogger account back to my own control. I must say getting the language on the e-mail account switched from Korean back to English was a challenge! Did this happen in Korea? When I went into settings, I had to switch the country from Nigeria back to the UK. Did this happen in Nigeria? Though the account was returned to me, I discovered in the settings that all incoming e-mail were still being forwarded. I disabled that! I'll be sending the forwarding e-mail address along to the police.

My Facebook account is still off-line. I am hopeful that I will have it back today sometime.

It was a particularly MEAN scam. Anybody I ever sent an e-mail to during my job search and all my family and friends were told I had been robbed.

Getting the account re-set, I have lost all my old e-mails. The carefully undeleted ones. Recently a photo of my great grandmother had been sent to me and I failed to save the photo somewhere else. I had never seen her face before and now I'll have to have it re-sent.

All the passwords have been changed. This is SUCH a pain in the neck but as I know now, quite necessary. The new ones are quite strong and will be changed from time to time.

I hate having to change passwords and when I am not forced to do it, will let the password stay the same. . . . until now. Why oh why do I always have to learn the hard way?

More Life

2010-06-04T17:54:00.004+01:00

Yesterday another creature returned to our pond.

Two newts!! Common newt - not my photograph

I think newts are so interesting! I hope there is enough for them to eat in the pond. It's still pretty barren in there despite the return of the diving beetles and the pond skaters.

-------------

After a look in the pond after dinner - there seems to be a water boatman in there as well!

The Cuckoo

2010-06-03T16:07:00.004+01:00

I heard one calling last week and then again two days ago. The call I heard sounded to be a few fields away, though distinct, was faint.

This morning at about 10:00 while walking the dog one few overhead, landed on the top of a nearby pine and stared to call. It was LOUD!I was thrilled to not only have one calling so close, but I actually saw this secretive bird. One of the nests that cuckoos like to lay their eggs in is the nest of the dunnock. We've got a lot of dunnocks around here.

I hope we always have cuckoos near us. For a number of years, I didn't hear a cuckoo at all and I feared that Rachel Carson's prediction in her book Silent Spring was coming true. Bird numbers keep falling and every year we hear that another species' numbers are plumetting faster than expected.

A few years ago the number of sparrows dropped suddenly. The bird that was so common throughout my life became a rare visitor at our bird table. The year before it could be counted on that there would be a cloud of them near the local dairy farm where they would take advantage of spilled cattle feed and nice hedges to hide in. The following year there were about ten where there had previously been hundreds. It may have been a virus that had run riot through sparrows. Having witnessed the drop in sparrow numbers I worried that I had heard my last cuckoo. You will be happy to know that the local population of the common sparrow is rebounding nicely and today I heard a cuckoo and I saw one!

What? June Already?

2010-06-01T09:20:00.005+01:00

June has started with a walk in the woods with my daft dog, Polly. The air around our place is particularly wonderful at the moment. Its all fresh, warm and piney with the occasional waft of flowers. It is the sort of fresh air one wants in the house and compels me to open all the windows.
The gorse is in full bloom at the moment. It smells of coconut!The hawthorn is in bloom too. It makes hedgerows look as though they've been decorated for a June wedding. Old folklore says that hawthorn or Mayflower is unlucky and should not be brought into the house. I'm not bringing it in because there seem to be loads of tiny little flying insects crawling all over the blossoms.
There were lots of deer tracks in the soft mud. In one dried puddle I found deer, fox and pheasant tracks. When we first walked through the gate of the protected woods where the duck ponds are, we found loads of broken pheasant egg shells littering the road. It looks like crows have found a couple of unguarded pheasant nests and had an eggy feast.

Back on the road home and about 200 yards from the house I saw movement in the grass right next to the road. It was the wrong time of day for a hedgehog . . . It turns out it was a young rabbit. It froze and went very still in the grass, trying to not to be seen by us. As you can see, this rabbit didn't do a very good job of hiding. "I'm hiding! You can't see me!"
I managed to get very close. Polly (who isn't very bright sometimes) finally noticed the rabbit and went to have a sniff. When the dog got too close, the rabbit bolted. I called Polly off and the rabbit went unmolested into the woods. I hope this isn't a garden-eating rabbit and it stays well away. I must say that our garden is safe from rabbits as we have Polly the dog and Julio the cat. Both of these pets keep wild rabbits out of the garden. Our pet-free neighbours are less fortunate and have had to replant things a number of times already.

New Life

2010-05-31T16:46:00.006+01:00

As I was filling the watering can from one of the rain barrels, I saw that I was disturbing resident mosquito larvae (sorry guys). It made me wonder what would be the first aquatic residents to make it back to our pond. We (the Royal we) have changed the pond liner. The new liner is in and the pond has been full of water for a week.Today, as I was doing the pre-mowing dog poo patrol on the lawn, I went and had a look to see what was going on with the pond. Pond Skater

It turns out that pond skaters and diving beetles were the first to return!You can make out the young diving beetle in the upper right hand corner of that photo. These diving beetles get much bigger - about the size of a quarter or fifty pence piece. They're very carnivorous beetles as well. I don't know if anything else will be able to colonise that pond. Certainly I no longer fear the mosquito larvae. Hungry beetles will make short work of them. I wonder if I could catch one or two and pop them into the rain barrels to eat the larvae there. . . . it's a thought.

My Friend Pauline

2010-05-26T15:35:00.004+01:00

Rest in peace dear friend. We sure are going to miss you!!

The Pond Upgrade

2010-05-22T20:02:00.009+01:00

When we bought our place 15 years ago we discovered the southwest corner of our front garden is where the outhouses used to live. For the first year or so we didn't really do anything with it. You could make out the two square, brick-lined holes and these holes would fill half way up with water when it rained. We decided that instead of ignoring the low wet corner of the garden, we'd take advantage of the situation and put a real pond there. The Man of the Place evened out the ground in and around the two former outhouses and did the best he could with these features. We lined our new pond site with old carpets that had been lifted from the house.

Not long after we moved in, we redecorated and pulled up some of the ugliest carpets ever produced. I have a theory about carpets, the uglier they are, the longer they will wear. The orange and brown swirly carpets we pulled up were actually 80% wool and must have cost a small fortune to put down at one time. The carpets and worn out underlay were used to cover over any sharp things that would puncture a pond liner.

We wanted a nice butyl pond liner but discovered that these premium rubber liners with a 12 year warranty also had a premium price and we could not afford a butyl liner. We saw that the next option on the list was a plastic liner that only had a four year warranty. It was about this time that I found myself at the local agricultural supply place getting poultry supplies and saw some silage pit liners off to one corner. Those are merely big sheets of black plastic. Even the smallest silage pit liner was cheaper than a plastic pond liner and was the same gage of black plastic. When we got the liner out to put in the pond we discovered just how huge a silage pit liner actually is. The old pond liner

The liner was folded in half and then in half again. It was then covered with stones and soil and thus protected from the destructive rays of the sun. This worked for over 12 years - the same as a butyl line would have worked. We love our pond.All sort of lovely things came to live in the pond. Frogs, newts, Great diving beetles (and their evil looking larvae), pond skaters and even some leeches!As the years rolled on the pond matured. Did you know that water lilies are fussy about the depth at which they will grow? We know now. The third water lily we tried in there worked beautifully. The fish we put in there did not. I suspect that local herons just picked them out as quickly as I put fish in there.

This year when I went to inspect the amount of frog and toad spawn I noticed that the water level in the pond was very very low. There was probably a puncture somewhere in the liner and it needed to be replaced.Last weekend the work started. The first part was the worst part of replacing a pond liner, cleaning out the pond. There was over a decade of leaves and other assorted detritus in there and it didn't smell very nice. In fact, it smelled like an old pond. Thank God for soap!

We think that it was a rodent that finally put an end to the pond liner. A labyrinth of vole tunnels were unearthed when the liner was finally lifted.Today the new silage pit liner was put in and the pond was re-filled.
The upgraded pond is deeper than the old one and much more level. When it was almost filled I was reminded of the clear cold springs that are found when canoeing at Juniper Springs in Florida.The Man of the Place has put his back out with all the work that has gone into the pond over the past two weekends. When he is feeling better, the surrounding stone will be replaced and some of the flora will be re-introduced back into our pond. We're hoping to keep the duck weed out of the pond this time and we're going to be extra vigilant about keeping each little tiny speck of that stuff out! Once duck weed is established - it is nigh on impossible to eradicate.Here is an evening shot of the upgraded pond. Still loads to be done, but the back breaking (almost literally) part is over. Well done darling!

Doing What Cats Do

2010-05-15T16:38:00.007+01:00

It is a gorgeous day today! Warm, light breeze and only a few clouds in the sky.The cows are back out in the fields too. They look grateful to be back out in the fresh air after being in sheds, eating silage all winter. The cows sort of keep me company when I'm out in the garden.My friend Elaine called and asked if I wanted to go for a walk. I'll always go for a walk, especially with a friend on lovely spring days. I tucked my camera into my pocket in case I saw anything worth photographing.
Just as we were setting out we were met by our cat, Julio. He was strutting to the house with a prize, a stoat. The thing was still breathing. Poor creature! I called out to The Man of the Place and he assisted Julio in making certain that the stoat no longer suffered. Julio and stoat

Look! The animal is so large that it drags on the ground. Julio came home with a few scratches on his nose the other day. Today a few more scratches have been added to the collection. I suspect now that it was a stoat that had inflicted the earlier damage as the new scratches sort of match the old ones.Wild primroses

Settign out on the walk we saw lots of wild primrose. Bluebells are starting to pop out and they'll be at their peak in a week or two.

Back home Julio is sleeping in a sunbeam now after having a post-battle wash. He is one mighty hunter!! That is what cats do. I can't say that I like when he kills things but I wish he'd hunt moles.Photo by Dean of DDD

I've seen a couple of beautiful Orange tip butterflies. They only fly in the spring so it is always a treat to see them.

Whack-a-Mole

2010-05-11T08:36:00.004+01:00

I watched yesterday as the new lone mole hill by the bird table turned into three mole hills. The bottom mole hill was first and was there when I woke up yesterday. I actually saw it getting bigger at one point! The little nearsighted creature was pushing dirt up as I watched.

By dinner time yesterday there were three mole hills where previously there were two. Why do they like my lawn when there is a HUGE field just a few metres away.

This morning I watched the mole make the top mole hill bigger. I could see him fluffing up the soil like the front garden was just a big feather duvet. The Man of the Place suggested that if I dash out there with my spade and scoop up the loose dirt, I would be able to not only see the mole but would be able to bash it on the head. It all sounded a bit violent and I couldn't bring myself to do it.

I know it's squeamish, girly and ever so slightly citified but I couldn't go out there and crush a mole's skull. I can do other murderous things. I can set and empty mouse traps, move spiders out of the tub, butcher, pluck and clean poultry and clear my nose by holding one nostril and blowing hard off to one side but I cannot whack-a-mole. I'm going to have to leave that bit of grizzly countryside life to the professionals. Time to call the Mike the gamekeeper.

Not Just Yet

2010-05-09T14:01:00.003+01:00

The desire to plant up the garden is at its height just before the threat of frost passes. One is tempted to plant out all those tender plants that are waiting patiently in the greenhouse.
I know - from bitter experience - that if I do, they will die. We will almost certainly have a late frost OR wind that will blow hard for days and burn everything.

I'm waiting.The garden is dug over.The chickens were grateful recipients of all the perennial weeds. It solves the problem with what to do with these weeds. One cannot compost perennial weeds. Burning them isn't an option so the chicken run is a great place to throw these things. The chickens will kill them dead (and turn them into eggs)!So, while I wait I'll admire the boldness of the plum tree. This Victoria Plum doesn't care that it is not yet June and is going to bloom away despite the calender.The Forget-me-not is in bloom too. This particular flower can be found on the south side of our place at the foot of a clematis that will also be blooming soon. One year the spring winds blew for three days running and burnt the clematis blossom. See? It doesn't pay to be too early. I almost cut the whole climber down in disgust. Clematis montana Elizabeth is a rampant thug of a vine and I only tolerate it only because of the delicate pink, slightly perfumed flowers it shows in early spring.

I suppose I could put the cabbages and cauliflower out. They're pretty hardy. Maybe I'll do that today. We'll see . . . .