John came round for an excursion and the beauty of the sunlight led to us first standing in the courtyard puzzling at the things we could see, so then we had to take a walk around the field as well. When he first visited, I wasn’t sure how frail he was so i hadn’t pushed the tour on him; when I told him this today he bristled and said he’d throw me into the burn. He was surprised and delighted by the size of the field, it really is a tucked away gem.
I showed him my fave place to hang out at the burn and we discussed bedrock for a bit. Then we went to the bridge and it was so sweet, he paused and said how beautiful it was. I showed him the polytunnel and my pride and joy, the ever-expanding compost and I think he started to understand I have put in a lot of work into the garden and maybe even he can find a way to forgive me for the scandalous amount of weeds in the courtyard.
We walked through the orchard munching on plums and blackberries (how), then along beside the burn which is always lush. The field was not wet underfoot and we inspected trees. We had a look at the various burns and argued about names 🙂 I took him on the woodland track I stole from the deer and we discovered another fallen tree!! He was perplexed at the way the terrain lies and thought the boundary marked an old burn which is probably correct.
After a well-earned tea and inspection of maps, we proceeded onto the excursion, checking out a weird metalworking “sculpture” I had found … but only after John insisted on a nervewracking drive down a very bad track haha. He was stumped by the metalworks so that was worth it.
On the way home we checked out two recently sold derelict crofts – one was seemingly abandoned and the other was in a parlous state. The second one was in a much worse state than the estate agent pictures from two years ago 🙁 and it has a current planning application to demolish and build a shit new house. Why are people like this?
What a great outing! The rest of the day went swimmingly too.
It’s good to feel happy sometimes.