Catching the best of the day

Today brought another morning on which I found myself lurking in bed till the sky lightened - though I have to say today's sunrise sequence was glorious, even with a small submarine bang in the middle of one of my photos of it. It was also one of these days when I realise we're running out of vital garments (ie undies) and start the day by bunging a whole lot in the washing machine before breakfast. It was sunny till late afternoon, but not at all a drying day - I'm not sure that the sun actually rose high enough to shine on my whirligig for more than an hour. 

That aside, however, it was too good a day to waste indoors, so we decided on another morning hike up through Benmore Gardens. I think we were the only people in the whole place other than the gardeners, a couple of whom we met on our way down. They'd just finished wedging a tractor right across the path with some logs, all ready to do some heavy duty work on drainage channels or something, and we had to retrace our steps and find another, slightly obscure, path down to the foot of the hill. We ended up on one of the old paths that I remember exploring when my boys were small - we've not been there for the best part of 40 years. The photo was taken at the top of the hill overlooking the white frosted fields in the bottom of Glen Massan; this is the so-called Andean Refuge, built in the manner of a chapel. There used to be a rope dangling which rang the bell in the little bell tower, but they looped it up out of harm's  vandals' way shortly after it was built. 

We came home to a bowl of thick green welly soup (made from kale stalks, carrots, onion, garlic and a chicken carcase) to fortify Himself before he went off to practise the organ. (Again). Meanwhile I did some reading, listened to an impressive speech to the UN about Gaza by the representative of Pakistan, and started wrapping presents - by which I mean taking the chance of his being out of the house to do something about Himself's presents. Morrison's wrapping paper looked quite nice when I bought it, but is hideously difficult to start, being stuck down in its roll and bound by a sticky label, so that you waste far too much paper just getting into it. 

Compline online was lovely as ever - I noticed that the email link to zoom was sent on 5 January 2021, 100 weeks ago; it wasn't the first but I seem to recall that the address changed.     

And then I caught up on Vigil, having been out last night. I'm enjoying it - it's quite tense. Just what I need at bedtime ...