Recipe for a hot day

Oh, all right - I think it was probably hotter in Edinburgh, and I know that Europe is struggling with intense heat just now, but today was one of these lovely warm days that leave you feeling you'd like just a little coolth in your bedroom at night (mine is at 70ºF just now). And if you want to know why I'm still thinking in Fahrenheit it's because the thermometer in the bedroom was a freebee from Damart when I was at home in the 70s with babies ...

Enough of this. I feel I've done nothing today, though I felt I was fitting in sitting in the garden round other things. I made bread before breakfast, and emptied several small bins about the house that seemed to be overflowing with empty packets of things like Paracetamol, and tidied up the odd thing - all because I forgot to take my very last antibiotic an hour before my breakfast so decided to do useful things while time passed. The result of this was that washing up breakfast dishes ran into time for coffee, which we took out into the already hot back garden. Then I did my Italian, and if you can see my extra, Himself took a photo of me looking entirely disreputable and studious while I sat there. We even put up the parasol ... Di dropped by with a bag of apples from her tree - she'd picked them all before the wasps got to them. 

After lunch I sat outside and read for a while; Himself was already upstairs packing and I suppose I shall have to start soon. Then I came in and stewed all the apples - I've frozen three boxes full and will take one away for our first night's pudding. The gardener came and gave our front grass its monthly haircut. And we decided we couldn't sit/stand around all day and drove down to Toward to walk out the Ardyne. That's where the main photo comes from - we suddenly saw this big white ship sailing past, very slowly, dwarfing everything else on the Firth.

I think these photos show why I'd find city life very hard these days - I know my garden is just a wee town garden, but I also know that the sea is five minutes' walk away and I'd miss that dreadfully. 

The moon, by the way, made a dramatic orange appearance tonight. But I've not seen any Perseids ...