The Wall
Merchiston, Edinburgh, 22 June 2020.
Coming Up Roses
It was a pretty miserable weekend, so here are some sunnier pictures from the garden this month, with the roses out and the raspberries ripening. I picked some of the latter for dessert last week; might see if there are enough tomorrow to make jam.
Back to Life
When everything kicked off in March, I wondered if I should set up a dead man’s switch to post an explanation of where I’d gone if I hadn’t blogged here for a month (viz: to the Eternal 404 in the Sky). It felt too paranoid an idea to implement, though, so I figured I’d just keep to a schedule of posting every weekend, until… I couldn’t.
Heating Up
It’s been hard to disentangle my thoughts about the week from the events of the country and the wider world, and even harder to get through the work I’m supposed to be doing instead of writing posts here. Trying to keep on top of a full-time job from home, with two school-age kids and a partner also working full-time and all the other constraints and tensions of lockdown, is like trying to juggle the contents of the computer cable drawer while walking calmly across the room. You’re lucky to get a few feet before stepping on a three-pronged plug.
In Bloom
Posting new pictures from the garden seems to be my way of postponing writing about the miserable state of Coronavirus Britain, or about the stuff I’ve been watching and listening to lately, but I’ll try to get onto those once the latest batch of marking is out of the way. In the meantime, the tulips have lost their petals, the trees have gained their leaves, and spring is about to give way to summer…
Hunting for Worms
The rain yesterday morning meant that the conditions were ideal to hunt for earthworms with my daughter for an outdoor learning project. We found this one as soon as we started digging. After a good look we let it loose, then watched it take ten minutes to burrow its way out of sight.
Back in the Garden
The flowers are blooming, the sun is coming out, and we’ve been spending more time in the garden.
The Streets
The kids and I went for a bike ride on Friday for our daily constitutional, along to the Meadows, across to Arthur’s Seat, and then back via the Grassmarket and the canal. In places it was quite busy with joggers and other cyclists, although everyone was well-spaced, but the roads were as unnaturally quiet in that part of town as in ours. Here are a few photos, along with one from a walk to Morningside this afternoon, where you can see people’s new habit of walking out into the empty road to maintain distance from other pedestrians.
