Those boots ...

With echoes of Nancy Sinatra in my mind, I took my new boots for a walk this morning - it was a beautiful early morning of bright blue sky, even though by the time we were out the clouds were forming. At the time the rain that is now, at midnight, washing down the study window was forecast to arrive earlier than it did, and it seemed a shame to waste the window of good weather. So, having washed and hung out every towel in the house, we headed to Benmore Gardens so that I could wear the boots on rough ground rather than a road. 

It wasn't ideal - this holiday period meant that the car park was almost full, and the gardens, even up high where we like to go, had people perching on benches and, for some reason, talking on their phones even as they moved through the rhododendrons and magnolias, now all in their full glory. My photo was taken on the way down from the top of the hill, showing three of the enormous magnolias filling the middle ground in an improbable show. The boots were light and comfy - I just need to make them feel a part of me now, but there were no hot spots or rubbed skin. 

All this meant of course that lunch (butternut squash and chilli soup and the loaf I'd started before we went out) was late and that I fell irresistibly asleep after it, sitting in my chair in front of the fire with the paper slipping off my lap ... real old lady stuff. Later I roused myself to fetch in the washing, trot along the lane in a frustrated attempt to ask a friend something, and end up on my computer reading The Scotsman. 

Dinner was roasted salmon topped with oatmeal, steamed broccoli with lemon olive oil, and puy lentils. followed by a poached plum with yogurt. You really wanted to know that, didn't you?

And a thought, which I've just aired in a comment on yesterday's post: Nelson Mandela was a terrorist, back in the day of fading colonial power.