A Wee Break.

We've been away and now we're home again! For four nights of the week just gone I took the children to visit my parents who stay in the south west of Scotland. Of course, I took my camera too, here are the results...

First we went to Threave Gardens, a last visit before our NTS membership expires. It wasn't terribly exciting as it's pretty much still in its winter state. The famous bank of daffodils was not yet blooming, in contrast to our visit last year when we only just caught it as the flowers started to fade.

 Walled garden gate detail.

Rhubarb forcers.

Hot house flower.

 Fly cemetery.

Eagle sculpture.

Cowgirl atop belted galloway.

 Catkins detail.

 Catkins against stone wall of bat roost.

Now a quick trip into town. 

 A fine view along the river into the sun.

 A "shop" view, probably soon to be demolished.

We also made a brief visit to a brand new dinosaur park. The kind of place you just visit once; I wonder how well it will do once the initial rush to see it fades.

Back to my parents' and just a few photos of Mum's garden. Very little in flower so far this year...

Ummm, I've forgotten what this was called, it was a very pretty shade of blue.

Hellebores.

 Anemone blanda.

Now to my favourite outing. I picked the worst afternoon weather-wise, but at the time I just felt the need to get out the house and breath! So we went to Rockcliffe, a tiny village set in a lovely bay - sea, sand, rocks and walks. Perfect...

On our last morning we went back into town. The children enjoyed a whirl on the merry-go-round (not a traditional one, they chose the Ben10 jeep to ride in), we admired the railings of the tower, took a wander back down to the river and made a few purchases at some of the many charity shops...

... my favourite things I bought were a lovely stripey 100% wool scarf (99p), and a copy of Nigella Express (£4).

I took the big granny square blanket with me, hoping to complete sewing in the ends during the quiet evenings. However, I soon realised that was going to be an impossible task, there are just far too many of them still. At least I'm well over half way now.

I also took my new gadget - I've got myself a smart phone. It was very nice to be able to use it to read some blogs while I was away (though I'm afraid I didn't get round to making any comments - will rectify soon!) It's interesting to see how blogs look on a smart phone, for example I hadn't realised that the whole sidebar disappears. For me, the biggest downside to this is that I wasn't able to use my blog roll for accessing blogs (I've been setting up Feedly to use instead, which seems to work fine). Perhaps that's why genuine blogrolls seem to be disappearing from so many blogs. I say "genuine" as sometimes when a blog does have a blogroll it's so carefully edited to be tasteful that it only contains a dozen or so entries. I think this is a pity. Blogrolls are a great way of finding new blogs. The chances are, if you're visiting a blog you like, their blogroll will contain other blogs you'll like too. Making new connections is good, let's not lose that ability. Let's keep blogrolls alive and well!


Right, the washing machine has finished and there is much tidying to be done, must go...