All the rings ...

Apple watch wearers will know what I mean by today's title - this was a day in which all my rings were closed long before bedtime, meaning that I stood, moved and exercised long before bedtime more than the modest demands set by Apple. Daft, but these things become a habit - like keeping a journal...

The day began with Pilates class, where Himself and I found ourselves in the same session because our classes were amalgamated with so many off on holiday or Covid. (Been reading about that - though some sources say there's a huge upsurge, others maintain that it's much the same as usual and point out that it's reaching the same status as a bad cold virus. Interesting.) Anyway, having missed a lesson last week I found myself grunting more than usual with the effort and staggered home for coffee. 

It was a strange day weather-wise: our garden felt quite windy because the wind was from the south; further up the road was very different. So in the afternoon we went to Benmore Gardens quite late and had it more or less to ourselves, with the sun coming back out before we'd finished. It's on afternoons such as this that I feel how lucky we are to have this magnificent place to wander in, to sit in the silence at the top of the hill and hear a blackbird strike up as we look down on the glen and over to the hills, and to have it to ourselves (because by then the garden was officially closed) at any time we choose. That's where the two photos in the collage come from: the rhododendron was particularly beautiful with these huge white flowers and the bee so wonderfully busy on that golden whatsit in the former formal garden. Mainly I'm thrilled with the definition on the phone camera; the reproduction on this site loses some of it, but it's still a bit of a miracle.

I made a really old-fashioned dinner tonight - we've been eating rather oddly in this little interval between two stays in Edinburgh, so I made ordinary, straighforward mince and potatoes with some sugar-snap peas to accompany it. My only change from the way my mother made mince was to add a couple of cloves of garlic and a slug of red wine, and it was strangely delicious. 

Any minute now my backup will begin and slow everything down - I'm off. Back to phone-blipping tomorrow, and I'll get round to reading other journals soon. Promise!