A colourful Friday morning walk

It has been a cloudless blue day today. The sun has shone from dawn till dusk. I had some Marie Curie fund raising envelopes to deliver about the parish so I set forth this morning with my trusty terrier and a beloved weekend guest. We tramped up and down the drive and then on along the track, round the edge of fields and down a grassy tree-lined avenue to cover the area I have been designated. On such a beautiful day it was a bit of a treat!

Jack Frost danced through the wood last night, leaving his trademark glisten on the leaf litter and undergrowth,

but amid the collapse and decline of this year's growth I spied the promise of the new year with these hazel catkins.

One garden in a steading development we visited had a rose bush in full bloom. There is something poignant about any flower blooming outside its customary season and these beauties were no exception. We have a dainty primrose in flower in the garden at the moment! It's been there for weeks. In fact it's the same plant I photographed last Easter, covered in snow. We live in crazy times.

There is still plenty of colour in the countryside. I am enjoying it all, some of the colours are so intense. In 2011 we had snow on 25 November and it stayed for months, but I have far too much work to do in the garden before it disappears under a blanket of white, so I am keeping my fingers crossed that we do not have a repeat performance this year!

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In a vase on Monday - colour

The intense colours in my vase this week come from nasturtiums, sweetpeas and a single glorious zinnia! Their beauty and love of life speak for themselves and need no further words from me! Enjoy!

Coastal walk from Gullane to North Berwick

By the time I have walked about four miles, my toes are screaming at me - it's the arthritis, you see. One of the joys of being that little bit older than I was. However, for a long time, I have been keen to walk along the beaches, and follow the coastal path, between Gullane and North Berwick. So, having worked out the tide times, I decided today was the day, and off we went. Below is our starting point, the bay at Gullane. It's a lovely beach, very popular with dog walkers. This is looking east, the direction Tilly and I were going to take. Looking back, up the Forth, the unmistakable bulk of Arthur's Seat, and Edinburgh's skyline, just clear enough to see. For most of the walk, there is the choice between wandering along a series of beaches, or following a path along the top of each. There's no denying it, at heart I am a shell-seeker. I have loads of shells at home. We lived on one of the out islands in the Bahamas for a just over a year, ...

Possibly the last post and a sizzlingly hot vase on Monday

The border in our tiny garden is in an in-between phase at the moment and not very colourful, but elsewhere there are pops of high summer colour and I have brought them together in my vase today. The running wave uses Blogger as it's vehicle and they are changing the way a post is created but unfortunately I cannot make the new format work. I can't progress beyond the title! I cannot navigate to the main body of the post to create text. The new template has no prompts for adding photos, weblinks, to format the text, change font etc. It may be my old MacBook that's as fault but I can't do anything about that!! Are any other IAVOM bloggers who use Blogger having the same problems? I have tried, three times, to contact Blogger through their 'Help' prompt and received no feedback or contact whatsoever. This post is using the old 'Legacy' format, which no longer permits any kind of formatting of text, and so after four attempts I have finally manage...

the running wave

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