Enjoy a Cuppa Today!

This morning I've enjoyed my favorite tea Yorkshire Gold. This afternoon I'll probably have Earl Grey decaf. What's your favorite kind of tea, and when do you have it?

Islands in the sky

The fog over Lake Superior yesterday was mesmerizing. One of the best places along the whole Minnesota North Shore is from the Mt. Josephine wayside in Grand Portage, where this photo was taken. We had a series of intense thunderstorms roll through the area yesterday and in between each storm the fog was incredible. Sometimes it would roll in and completely hide the Susie Islands from view, other times it was just thin wisps of fog in between the islands. My favorite views were when the fog was thick in between the islands but not completely covering them. It looked as though the islands were up in the sky, floating in the clouds.

Cycling Project - farmhouse stop

On the long, flat run down from Tongue to Lairg the group stopped at a farmhouse and was invited in for a very welcome hot chocolate. It also happened to be feeding time for an orphaned lamb, and turns were taken at feeding it and holding it. It must have been rather well fed by the time it had been round the group.

Wander No More

Our Phaeton wanders no more!

Fear not; I don’t mean that we won’t be wandering around North America as planned.  We still intend to do that, but as we drive the highways and byways, we will be doing so with improved steering play and wander.  The SuperSteer SS100 Bell Crank will see to that.

I could enumerate all the reasons and explanations Mui gave me when he said he wanted to have this bell crank installed.  In all honesty, my eyes glazed over as he talked and I tuned him out.  So, I’ll refer you to the SuperSteer website instead.  All I know is that Mui was happy with the results of the install as he drove the backroads today to return the Phaeton to storage, and expects to see even better performance when we next roll down the highway.

New life

Discovered on a walk by the River Spey yesterday. A patch of precocious green, and not just a few shoots, but burgeoning flower heads.

Their habitat was an east-facing mossy bank, scattered with fallen leaves, and in dappled sun. Sheltered from the prevailing westerly and northerly winds, and above all but the very highest reach of the river in spate.

And flowering - delicate, deeply divided individual flowers emerging from fresh green bracts, some of them frost-burned.

I turned to the family copy of the Collins Pocket Guide to Wild Flowers. First printed 1955, ours is the seventh edition, 1969. No first edition, sadly, as for our Reader's Digest 'The Gardening Year'.

When my mother and I used to use it to identify flowers we found on our walks, we would invariably discover that we had whittled the possibilities down to something extremely rare and confined to the south of England. The explanation of the star system used by the Collins guide has a schoolmasterly tone, "We have devised a star system to show how common or rare a plant is, to add to the pleasure of finding something uncommon, and to discourage rash identification of unlikely rarities". Continuing in that fine tradition of pleasure rapidly followed by discouragement, my first stab this time turned out to have three stars for rarity, and to be "confined to woods and copses in one small area in E Sussex. Flowers June-July". A second attempt gave me the satisfyingly Lord of the Rings sounding White Butterbur, two stars for rarity and "local in plantations and by roadsides, chiefly in the N". A quick cross-check with photos on the internet (the Collins guide is illustrated by line drawings), and I'm sure that it is indeed White Butterbur. The two star rarity is for scarce plants "which usually grow only in limited areas, but may be thinly scattered over a wide area". White Butterbur is apparently an early flowering plant, so its January appearance is not a cause for climate change concern.
With this stirring of new life even in the north of Scotland, I'd like to wish all my readers and commenters a Happy New Year. Who knows where blogging will lead us in ... Writing this post, I found myself wondering about taking a botany course at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh...I'd be interested to hear where blogging has led or might lead you.

My Childhood Fantasy...

...was to be locked inside a sweetie shop.





Yes, I was a greedy, sweet-toothed little girl!





This wonderful shop in Louth would have fitted the bill perfectly!

Let's step inside, out of the cold.

How wonderful is that! Over two hundred jars full of old-fashioned sweeties.

Flying saucers, fudge, Kola cubes, sherbet pips, Kali, rhubarb and custard...

bon-bons, mint imperials, sherbet dabs...





A lovely little gem of a shop which sells sweeties by weight, wrapped in lovely paper bags. The man who runs the shop must get so tired of people reminiscing about their childhood favourites - but he never, ever shows it!





To be perfectly truthful, it wasn't only the sweeties which I wanted. It was the lovely little shop scales.





I wanted to open a jar and carefully measure out the sweets, lift the shiny pan and tip the sweets gently into a small paper bag which I would then expertly twist round so that it would end up with a tiny 'ear' at each corner to keep the bag from opening. I was sure that it would be the best fun in the world!





I wanted to be able to count out black jacks, fruit salads and flying saucers, licorice sticks and gobstoppers! I wanted to take the money and ring it into the old fashioned cash till with the big drawer which would ping out to admit the money.





Although undoubtedly bad for the waistline, and your teeth, it is a wonderful place to have a trip down memory lane!





Gobstoppers is located in a lovely little lane, with lots of lovely independent shops around.

turn to the right and we are faced with

a newsagent/bookshop called Wrights of Louth. If you look at the sign above the door you will see that it is upside down.





There are a few versions of this story, but the gist of it is that the sign had to be either repaired or replaced but when the carpenter had finished and the shopkeeper came out to have a look, it was found to have been put on upside down. The shopkeeper decided that he like it that way and it has been a talking point for the many years since then.

Our next stop was at the Playhouse.





This was originally a chapel which was converted to a cinema in the 1920's. In 1935 a new frontage in the 'moderne' style was added.





Just peeping over the top is the roof of the original chapel.





It is now a three screen cinema - pretty good for a little market town like Louth! It is also home to the Louth Film Club.





So, there you have another little slice of the treasures of Louth.