Daffodils – it’s Spring!

It’s only March, for heaven’s sake!   The daffodils are blooming by the riverbank, and look at all these people on Tweed Green, lying about soaking up the sun!!!!  It really was that warm!  Quite amazing!  I had come down to take photos of the daffodils as all of a sudden they were in full flower.  Aren’t they just gorgeous.  It never fails to amaze me that they keep coming up year after year, despite the river rising at times to flood the banks.

I had just taken this photo and was heading to towards the bridge when I heard a voice behind me calling “Evee!  Evee!”  Well, to be honest there aren’t that many people in Peebles that actually call me Evee, and it was one of my colleagues at the charity shop that I was expecting to see when I turned round, but I was in for a surprise!  It wasn’t Danni at all, but two ladies I didn’t recognise at all!  However they introduced themselves as Marion (right) and Victoria, and Marion told me that she follows my blogs!  That’s how she recognised me!  We had a grand chat together, and I discovered that Marion does the Bonnie Peebles blog. She lives on the south side of the town, and though it’s not a large town our paths have just never crossed before.  Her friend Victoria was born in Peebles, in a house on Tweed Green, near where this picture was taken, but  when she was a few years old the family moved to Helensburgh, in the west, where she grew up.  Now she lives in the USA, but was over in Scotland on a long holiday/vacation.  They asked me to take their photo with the daffodils behind them - We don’t have this variety of daffodil over there, Victoria told me -  and I hope that photo turned out better than the one I took with my camera!  I took theirs on Marion’s camera with the river and daffies behind Marion’s shoulder.  I hope that meant less shadow on their faces.  Lovely meeting you, ladies! 

After we parted I went on along the river taking photos of the daffodils

  and other flowers that were blooming among the grasses, 

 

like these shiny yellow celandines.  The sun was really too bright, but I don’t think the photo is too bad!

 

I rather liked the single daffodil with spider – don’t look if you don’t like even a wee spider – though I hadn’t even noticed the spider when I took the picture!  Actually you hardly know he’s there unless you click the photo to enlarge it!

  I walked under the right hand arch in the first photo above, something you can’t always do, but due to the lack of rain in the last while, a small causeway of stones allowed me to do so

and kept to the grassy bank, past the little pool with dozens of little baggie-minnies – little fish -  splashing about in the “shallow end”, and on up to the cauld or weir, taking photos of the parish church as I went .

Despite the lack of rain there was still a lot of water falling over the cauld, and I was amused to see this small black-headed gull pecking at something under the rushing water while doing its best not to get washed over the edge.   Later it wasn’t a gull I was watching on the cauld, but more of that later!  Just a bit above the cauld I rejoined the path to cross the bridge over Cuddy Burn, or to give the tributary its proper name, Peebles Water.  Looking out over Cuddy and on to Tweed is Gill’s house, a beautiful old place which I really like.  A photo would be nice, I thought, and as I was trying to avoid having the doggie-poo bin in the photo, I realised that Gill had come out on to her doorstep and was waving to me.  I waved back and responded with a thumbs up sign to her signed invitation to have a mug of tea. 

Not only is the house enchanting but the garden was looking pretty gorgeous as well with her erithroniums, snake head fritillaries,  and beautiful creamy daffodils.

 

 

And so I spent a lovely afternoon supping tea in Gill’s living room with views out over the river, chatting about this and that, till it seemed time I returned home.  We arranged to meet later to go to the Eastgate theatre to hear a lecture on a military officer’s trek in the Antarctic.

However, as I left Gill’s and began my walk home again by the riverside I was amazed to see a young man with fishing rod stepping out confidently along the top of the cauld.  What a fool!  There are signs on either side of the river warning of the danger of deep water.  Thankfully he didn’t come to any harm but I’ll bet his legs and feet were cold!

A few moments later and I managed to get my photo of Gill’s house.  I reckon the centre part of the building was the original house – door; window on either side and two above; chimney at either end of the roof - and the right side built on at some later stage.  The left add-on would likely be much more recent.  It reminds me, a bit, of Cabbage Hall, Peebles, which was where some of my ancestors lived in the 19th century. 

The evening lecture at the Eastgate by Lt. Col Henry Worsley was so interesting, as he described following the routes of Ernest Shackleton, Captain Scott and Roald Amundsen, and the “race” (or was it?) which culminated in Norwegian Amundsen reaching the South Pole before the British team, and then in the deaths of Scott and his team at the end of March 1912, 100 years ago tomorrow, 29th, in fact.  He also read pieces from Scott’s diary, and showed his photos of some of the same views taken a century ago. I think I might buy his book!

And on that note……

Talk again soon.