Bleeding to death

Two happy events today - the sun was out all day and a blipmeet with SheenaghMcLaren .

Inspired by the warmth of the sun I spent a delightful morning in the garden weeding, moving plants into the cold frame, delving into the compost bin, dead-heading and generally pottering. Eventually Cara and Bruce became a bit fed up with all this activity and kept nudging me to take them for a walk. So I did!

Sheenagh lives in the south of England but was spending some time in Scotland visiting family and we agreed to meet this afternoon in Crieff so that we could enjoy a walk with our dogs and I could introduce her to my blip patch. Accompanying her were her own two, very well behaved, spaniels (take note Bruce!) and a delightful "all sorts" hound recently arrived from Africa, courtesy of her niece, and answering to the name of "bow wow". I know!!! We enjoyed a wonderful two and a half hour walk with the hills, woods and moorland looking at their very best. Cara and Bruce were thrilled to have new companions to run around with and I reckon all five dogs must be blippers in disguise because they immediately became friends. Blip is amazing how it enables you to meet someone for the first time but feel that you already know them!

Whilst on the moor we came across an old tree which had been uprooted many, many years ago but had just enough root remaining in the ground to enable it to send up new growth at intervals along the length of its prostrate trunk. These growths now had the appearance of fully grown trees which was quite bizarre really. Sheenagh called this effect "re-iterating". Then we noticed that there was quite a deep scar on the trunk of one of the "new" trees and this was oozing a dark red, sticky and pungent resin. We figured that perhaps the tree had been damaged in the recent gale force winds but whatever had caused the fissure, it was now bleeding to death from the open wound. I have never seen this before and it was fascinating.

An excellent afternoon was enjoyed by all and neither Cara nor Bruce have stirred a muscle this evening.