Category: Diary
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Stories of Glasgow, warmly embraced by the Wall of Death
What are the missing stories of Glasgow? We met in The Revelator to find out.
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Living and learning with swans
We are co-dependents, if you like. We don’t just want these beautiful birds to survive, we need them to. Symbols of nature’s resilience. Besides, the parents have shown imaginative skills of their own.
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Jack Frost welcomes proper winter to Pond Cottage
He’s at it again. That Jack Frost has turned another cold night into a glittery masterpiece on the bedroom window.
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Solstice sunrise, salute the turning of the year
I have my moments of despair, the doomster feeling that we’ve cooked ourselves a new dark ages. Yet, the sun is shining. After dreary days of relentless rain that alone would be worth getting out of bed for but there’s an extra pleasure in the knowledge that this marks a turning point in the year.…
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Gathering seeds of hope – on a train trip from Scotland to France
The ugly dark hulk has a daunting bulk. A grim legacy of the Nazi occupation. The old submarine base still occupies the Bacalan district of Bordeaux. So many tons of concrete – 600,000 cubic metres of them – would be difficult to remove. But walk round it and there’s a surprising softening in an imaginative…
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Pond Cottage nature notes – making a happy mess.
Too hot to do the outside work I had planned. I stay indoors with windows open to invite a cooling breeze while I tweak at words for next year’s Pond Cottage entry in Scotland’s Gardens Scheme 2026 Yellow Book. Is it right?
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Everybody loves the sunshine…with a little cooling breeze
“Just bees, and things and flowers” Like a lot of formerly news-hungry journalists these days I can hardly bear to open the many journals I subscribe to. But earlier this year I read the FT’s Life of a Song. And Roy Ayers Sunshine blew Trump thunderstorms away.
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The Resilience of Swans: Parenting Lessons from Pond Cottage
On another wet and windy day we return to Pond Cottage after a night away, pausing by the gate to check the postbox. And there’s a surprise package, a gift that brightens the gloom: a delightful sketch of our Mother Swan by the talented artist Rowena Millard.
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Mud pies and memories of freedom
Open the door and there’s a big green velvet curtain to keep the living room warm, in granny’s bedroom a pretty dressing table set decorated with pink – maybe purple? – flowers. A potty tucked discreetly under the bed. No bathroom. The toilet is outside in a whitewashed washhouse. At bedtime the grandchildren are marched…
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A gift of hope
Green shoots of hope – I’ve just had a lovely message from a generous man, a rare philanthropist, who is offering to match the money we raise this year for CHAS (Children’s Hospices Across Scotland) through our Scotland’s Gardens Scheme openings. He means it, he was so impressed by what he learned about CHAS when…
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Galanthus “Trumps” at Pond Cottage
Here we are. At the start of our visiting season I’m not in the best of moods but I stop reading the news to take a walk round the garden and I can’t help smiling when I find the snowdrop given by a dear, gardening friend last year. Perky, eye catching, Galanthus “Trumps” could do…
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A Himalayan birch for Ronnie
“I just enjoy being among the mountains, that’s good enough, I don’t need to get to the top…” Ronnie Faux, born Burnley 8 November 1935, died Carlisle 16 July 2024. Before this turbulent 2024 ends, there’s still just time to add one more tree story. We have planted a Himalayan birch in memory of our…