Ten thousand saw I at a glance

They've been catching our eye every time we come back down the road this week; at last I get to visit. Photos (mine) can't do it justice.

It's been a while since I put anything here; to catch up

Sometimes it's worth getting up when you cant sleep at four in the morning. This is one of our sprout plants with dew.

Solstice sunrise

solstice sun on the north wall of the shed.

The Rosslyn Piper

Lime flower, 23rd June

32 years ago today was my wedding day. Seems like only yesterday.

Music and temper

sorry, not a lot of time at present to doodle here; even the Lime diary is a week late. We've been very engaged in the Rosslyn project, which is to be recorded tomorrow (Tuesday).
I've also been learning about temper and why playing in tune is not as easy as it sounds. more aftr tomorrow ...

Playing on Time's Bones

I've just found this wonderful image on virtualfinland.



When the Finnish creator heroes are escaping form the northland in their copper boat carrying away the cosmic mill, they ruun aground on a monstrous pike. Vainamoinen makes of its bones the first kantele, with which he can enchant all of nature. (Orpheus is a mediterranean equivalent, and Noah , who made the Timpan, is a biblical one).
Here an old man plays the traditional five-string version (photo taken 1916).

Lime in the haa

Looking at the recent pictures of the Lime Tree, you'd think we were the only place in the UK that had missed the hot weather recently. In fact, fine days often start out with the landscape cloaked in 'haa', or sea-mist, though we're 20 mins drive inland from the sea. I can assure you that we've had fine days, all except last friday; when the mist never really lifted. i sat in waterstone's coffee shop in edinburgh looking at the Castle across Princes street, and it disappeared. it came back again a few minutes later, but it was not convincingly there.
Cows in the haa, (from under the Lime tree)


and a chaffinch up in the Lime tree

The other side of Rosslyn

I've spent all day trying to arrange rehearsals for this rosslyn thing. i thought i should post some pictures of the glen of Rosslyn, which is a pretty stunning place, especially the castle. people still live in the top floor. to get to their house they have to drive across a car-wide bridge with vertiginous drops on either side.

the glen itself is very steep in places and quite overgrown at this time of year

i had to doctor this picture to get anything visible. Wish I could show you the mauve and white lilac trees there, but the picture was a failure.
Oh. I fell in the mud too. i had to travel back to Edinburgh on the bus trying to cover the mess I was in. At least I went and bought the new trousers I've been saying I needed for weeks.

There's a blackbird outside which has been singing ecstatically the same phrases over and over for the past hour. It's now 3 minutes to ten in the evening.