Saltire sky

Mmmmm, can almost smell the washing :-).

bzzzzzzzz

Flying buzzing thing on a sunflower.

deconstruction

Our garden bench was rotten so we pulled it apart.

An evening stroll

In an attempt to save my sanity after a somewhat fraught day I went for a wander.

hello Vincent

2010 is our year of greatest success (to date) with sunflowers. Yay!

Pony-tail

Miss Mouse's hair is finally long enough to just about tie back in a pony-tail - up 'til now it's only worked in two (or more) bunches.

Back to School

The summer holidays were seven weeks long yet it flew by in the blink of an eye (apart from the first week which seemed to last f-o-r-e-v-e-r). So here's the Boy already for school.

The Last Day of the Summer Holidays

And the weather, obligingly, was brilliant. We left Mr Borg to the fencing as there was little we could help with at that point, and went to the country park with my friend and her kids.

I've never actually paid much attention to this statue but I liked the seagull-on-head look. Henceforth I'll call the statue 'Cliff'.


We had lunch in the courtyard and admired the blue blue blue sky.

Knit Camp

I had a brilliant day out with my mate Angela - a day trip to the University of Stirling to Knit Camp. Knit Camp had been running all week, ending with the Marketplace. My indoor pictures were taken with my compact camera and came out fairly fuzzy (camera has since died, boohoo..) but the one below shows a momentary lull - actually the place was heaving and initially quite overwhelming. I'd never been to a knitting event like this before. I think that's Sulkycat's stall on the left, where I got something beautiful stitch markers and could have spent a fortune on project bags* - had I a fortune to spend.

And as we left in search of the bus back into Stirling we found the knitted poem.


* Just to clarify, the bags weren't expensive, in fact they were very reasonably priced, but as I was on a budget I couldn't justify bags I don't actually need, no matter how pretty!

Normal service resumes

So our Northern Adventure is over and we're hard at work in our garden. We moved the playhouse and discovered that the fence behind it was rotten so that's been pulled down and MrBorg has set about building a new one. Sooner or later we're going to have to do something about the back fence too as there's a steep drop into the neighbours-over-the-back's gardens - at the moment it seems to be held up with will-power and fuchsia roots.

Northern Adventure, Day 5: the Elusive Wildcat

Another very mixed day in terms of the weather. It started bright as we wandered around the village looking for wildcats - painted ones, that is, part of the Wildcat Experience, an excellent way to get kids to walk for miles quite happily. Hidden around the village are 70-odd painted wildcats - armed with a map we had to find them and mark them on the map. This was one of my favourites, 'Cat Among the Pigeons' I think it was called:

Genius! The kids loved it, even when the weather turned wet later. Hey, we had raincoats and wellie-boots :-). We headed out again in the evening in the pouring rain to look for a few more.

Northern Adventure Day 4: pottering

The weather was more mixed - wet in the morning, dry later. We headed off to the Speyside Heather Centre where we saw this cute little car in the car-park,

had lunch, and then mooched around outside looking at plants.

Then we headed back to Granny and Grandpa's house to potter around in the garden again.


Miss Mouse decided to play football - in a party dress naturally..

While the Boy just ran around so fast that I couldn't take proper pictures of him!

Northern Adventure, Day 3: A Grand Day Out

More glorious weather so we headed along to the Highland Folk Museum where we had lunch al fresco, then let the kids loose in the play area.

Then we took a wander around the site, first down to the croft:

The museum site stretches alongside the railway line.

The bus transports visitors from one end of the site to the other - the kids love it! But it's a pleasant walk around the site so we made'em walk up to the township end. On the way MrBorg caught a placid grasshopper for Miss Mouse to meet. Very laid-back beastie!

Up at the township the kids loved running in and out of the houses...

..and trying on costumes. Nice kilt!

Miss Mouse getting into character.

Unfortunately the completely excellent Highland Folk Museum is under threat of closure - more on the Don't Let the Highland Folk Museum Become History campaign here, the campaign's Facebook page here and the online petition here.

Northern Adventure, Day 2: Highland Madness and Cake

A beautiful day for the Newtonmore Highland Games - that's Mr Borg there in the rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock t-shirt.

The various pipe bands were good. They must have been boiling though.


The girl in the groovy shorts was one of the Highland dancers (hence the startling socks) and had got rid of the presumably very hot dancing outfit - it was a warm day to be wearing wool.

Eventually Miss Mouse got tired and needed a piggyback from Grandpa - well, it was quite a long walk for her little legs, but mostly it was because she absolutely adores her Grandpa!

So we headed back to the house for coffee and Grandpa's birthday cake up by the shed.

Miss Mouse ended the day with yet more splashing around in the paddling-pool before being wrapped up in a towel appropriate to the day's events.

Northern Adventure: Day 1

After an uneventful drive north we reached my parents' place. Their garden is gorgeous and a paradise for the kids. There's even a kayak! What could be better?

Blooming

This popped up in a crack in the patio outside the back-door, presumably self-seeded from last year.