One thing always leads to another
I’m a journalist. I’ve always been curious about people and places.
I started writing about other people’s gardens a long time ago and somehow I’ve ended up having a wild garden that’s open to the public.
This site is a collection of my writing on gardens, culture, wildlife, the environment and even a little politics.
The garden is open through Scotland’s Garden Scheme supporting Children’s Hospices Across Scotland.
We are open now for spring walks. Please don’t hesitate to let us know when you’d like to come. Just fill in the Contact form. Give us a call. Find out more about Pond Cottage Garden
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Welcome to The Pond
This is a new adventure for us but we are looking forward to welcoming visitors to our first autumn ‘season’.
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Swan watch: a parents’ guide to survival
After almost 20 years of sharing the pond with generations of swans we are gradually learning to expect the unexpected. But this year brought a humbling discovery for human parents.
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Why are we waiting?
During the 2020 July/August heatwave those of us in Room 11, Ward 106 of Edinburgh Royal Infirmary discovered just how hot a ward could be.
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Fine weather for flamingoes?
Nature is the boss. At best we manage to infiltrate here and there with splashes of colour and dashes of ideas. Some of them even work out well. Check the flamingoes…
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Origins, borders and vexed questions of identity
Political turmoil throws up uncomfortable questions of identity and belonging
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Winter into Spring
It’s a turning point. For so long it seems a teasing fantasy, a few brave buds on some hopeful trees and shrubs, a cheery blackbird outside the bedroom window greeting an earlier sunrise. Then suddenly there’s no doubt. Whatever the weather, Spring is here and this year it brings an unexpected new season to Pond…
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Deliverance is local: Covid benchmarks
Our disinfected doorbell rings. Outside a smiling young man delivers a box of essentials: fresh fruit, toilet rolls, paracetamol…and just a little booze.
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The sound of loosening ice
“I’ll be mighty pissed off if I die in my last year at work,” he texted last March as Covid put paid to his plans for earlyish retirement. Perhaps my GP brother’s hands-on approach to work influenced my personal response to Gael Turnbull’s poetry.
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All will be well: songs and poems for covid-safe new year
It all went quiet and a vision appearedWith a rose in her hair and a ring in her earAnd she says “Buenos Dias boys, this looks like the place” Doors open. Lights sparkle, glasses clink, friends laugh, music plays, singers sing, dancers dance. Fear not, this Covid-safe celebration is all in the mind. Well,…
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What’s Covid-safe behaviour? Ask your hairdresser
Think positive. By coincidence, the inspirational ‘wellbeing’ word etched into my mirror is Positive which these days has negative connotations so I ask if the salon has recorded any infections since reopening in July.
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Hyperlocal signs of life: welcome to a braver new world?
Are we so caught in the headlights of pandemic panic that we dare not pause for breath to look more closely at what is happening around us
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Who can heal our crippling inequality?
After successful surgery I returned home to a genteel part of Edinburgh where people like me can expect to live 21 years longer (twenty one years longer, let that sink in) than people in the neighbourhoods my husband and passed on our short journey to and from the hospital.