Category: Tales from Pond Cottage
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Midsummer Melody at Pond Cottage
Make a date – two dates – in August for food and music at Pond Cottage. You are warmly invited to help us celebrate and support CHAS (Children’s Hospices across Scotland) in their £20 million campaign to develop their vital services for families. We are delighted that talented local musician Ola Stanton will be with…
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Debs gets on her bike for charity
Debs Reid cycled through the trees and dismounted by our cottage gate in bright sunshine. She looked remarkably cool for a woman on the latest lap of a 541 kilometre cycle trip from Aberdeen to Edinburgh. Smiling happily, she removed her helmet. “That’s quite a steep run from Bridge of Earn isn’t it?”
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Sights for sore eyes – and hearts
Before breakfast, I’m standing by the window, trying not to think about the news, wondering about the day ahead. And then suddenly there’s Mr and Mrs Bullfinch feasting in the Geranium phaeum. The black flowers (dark red really) are now positively flaunting their seeds. Mrs Bullfinch has a gravity defying upside down hold on a…
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Jurassic glade is a cool but tricky spot
It’s exciting to touch leaves that first evolved so unimaginably long ago. It was a very green world – easy to imagine in our corner of Scotland, but we must plant with care.
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Let’s ring the bells of springtime
Pause for a moment. I started writing this a few weeks ago and the wider world has become even more turbulent. I know there are places where the sky threatens a more deadly deluge than rain. Yet…I go in search of springtime magic and spend most of the walk looking down. The sky is grey, gloomy…
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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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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…