Ready, steady,...... not yet....

Another cold day. I spent a small amount of time in the garden trying to get rid of some of the pine needles around the bin area. They fell off the tree while it was there waiting to be collected. Every time anybody came to the door though they tramped some more into the house and I was getting fed up of hoovering them up. It was cold work, but nice to come indoors afterwards.

I blipped one of my white hellebores a few weeks ago. This one is in the back garden, it's 'my' hellebore, I think of it that way as it's called Sally's Shell. It's always quite a while behind the white ones but it stays in flower for a good six months so it's worth the wait. I see it's got a good number of flowers in waiting!

It's extraordinary how figures can be made to say anything you want. I've said for a while how well Edinburgh is doing in general in dealing with the virus. The figures for positive tests per 100k put us at 127. 8, that's ranked at 26th out of the 32 local authorities, well under half of the rate of the highest areas. I was taken aback therefore today to read that an Edinburgh suburb had the highest number of deaths of Covid in Scotland with 36 people having died over the past year, which is 1in 100 people. It is put a little more in perspective though when you read that 19 of those deaths were of residents in a care home. It doesn't make it any better for the individuals but it does mean that if the care home had been in the neighbouring suburb, the figure would have been less than 1 in 200, or less than half of that cited. Statistics can be interpreted in so many ways and what is on the surface is so often not the full story. I'm not sure what the purpose of the story was other than to frighten people.

Keep safe and well everyone, and at the moment, keeping warm is pretty important too!