Archery in the garden and a coffee break with cake

Early Sunday morning I headed round the loch to do a supermarket shop that had to include elderflower cordial for the archery club cake I was going to make later in the morning. I did the shopping and headed home only realising when I was nearly there that I'd forgotten to get elderflower cordial! It wasn't on the list! I had supposed having in my head would be sufficient. Let's just say I won't rely on my head for shopping list stuff again.

There was a possibility that the local shop would have the cordial so I passed our track and carried on to the next village. Woohoo! They had some – cake-making saved.

Then, as I unpacked the shopping I spotted what look like an elderflower cordial bottle tucked in behind where vegetables are kept. It turned out to be grapefruit and honeysuckle cordial and its use-by date was way back.

Anyway, the cake got made. I'd chosen elderflower cake because I'd found a recipe by Olivia Potts and I'd found such a recipe because elderflower cake is what Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have chosen for their wedding cake later this month. It was good.

The coffee and cake table well into proceedings
while it rained a bit outside

The newly opening wild cherry blossom was bright against the raincloud sky.

The day brightened up again and we continued our shoot. We ended up shooting a half Stafford round, three dozen arrows at thirty metres. I hadn't done any archery for about a year but my mended broken arm coped fine and I think the mopping, scrubbing and hoovering I do at the day care centre, not to mention  dealing with dragon-energised shrubs at home, have kept other requisite muscles (back and shoulders) ready to go.

Dennis, the archery club chairman, did not shoot but he spent some of his time re-fletching arrows. I found two of them on a chair that had been brought into the washhouse after everyone had gone.

Two arrows needing another feather each

Toad wants to gets people back soon to shoot the other half of the Stafford round. I'm all for it not just because it's fun but also because he finds the need for an archery range is the best motivation for grass-cutting. The ground might look fairly smooth in the photo but it's actually quite bumpy and mowing is hard work.

Sticks and elderflower cake

Last June friends helped us with some tree lopping including of this prunus species on the front bank. This was at the end of a busy afternoon so I turned down their offer of help to clear up the branches. Four days later I fell and broke my arm. I did shift some of the more scattered logs and twiggy bits but not this pile. I probably added to it actually!

And so it has stayed there over the winter as more urgent garden jobs came up. As spring approached I thought of tackling it again but then noticed what was growing into it: primroses.




I decided to leave the sticks be for now rather than risk ripping up the flowers. Lower down the bank a lot more primroses have seeded, making a cheering sight through this year's cold spring.

Up the bank from that pile of sticks and the tree they came from is a single self-seeded cowslip. I've put a cage round it to prevent it being cropped by roe deer. The other day I found a tiny mushroom beside it.

I'm never short of other branches to tackle. Yesterday Toad helped me remove these and a couple more from the ridiculous dragon hedge down the drive then informed me he'd invited some archers to come and shoot here today! "They'll want cake!" I said. Toad said not and I'm sure they'd be perfectly charming about there being no cake at a Boggy Brae archery shoot but it's a tradition now! More notice of such events in future has been requested from Toad.

Found a recipe for elderflower cake so I'd better get cracking assembling ingredients.

The Lesser Celandines by the pond were looking particularly luminous yesterday.

Archery in the garden

The ages of the archers who came for a garden shoot yesterday range from eleven to seventy-something. We had a couple of heavy rain showers. We used them as opportunities to socialise in the kitchen with coffee and cake, and Anna's sausage rolls.

Putting up the back net. Ladder to the right is to help attach the net rope to a tree.

Setting up bows

Some shelter for bows from the rain

Chat

Placing the rope that marked the shooting line

Target bosses up top

The oldest archer

Shooting line

My bow with hyper-recurved limbs–more pyoing! for a low draw weight

Close-up of my riser, made by Border Bows

Toad's archery medals and badges

Toad wanted his archery medals and badges attached to his quiver. He can wield a large pointy thing like  an arrow very well but a small pointy thing like a needle not so well ;)





He managed to pin on the ones below.

Making a new bow string

A little fraying near centre serving; black part is 2mm across

I noticed recently that my current bow string was beginning to look a little worn near the centre serving. For non-archery folks, that's the middle of the string which is strengthened for clicking the arrow on and because that's where your fngers go to draw the bow ready to shoot. Apart from my making a learner's sample piece of bowstring by the Flemish Twist method at a workshop, Toad has done all our string making so far. I decided it was time to learn the process properly for myself.

<< Flemish Twist end loop

Initially I made a white string with waxed Dyneema thread. Toad thought its slight tackiness would be easier to work with, at least to begin with. Unfortunately, following the usual 'rules' for working out string length didn't work so it ended up too short for my bow, Biddy (Black Douglas by Border Bows>>"BD">>Biddy). However, I made it well and it will do for another bow.

Doing a yellow end serving on the white Dyneema string

When Toad made his recommendation, he was perhaps forgetting that I'm used to doing fiddly things with thread. In any case, I decided my second attempt would use "Angel Majesty" thread, which is coated with resin instead of wax. I preferred the feel of it when working and didn't find it difficult. I decided to stick with yellow end servings.

I like the way they show up and make it easy to see if they are sitting in the limb tip grooves properly. One checks by feel as well, of course.

This is what the red string looks like on Biddy. The wee bit of chamois leather is to rub over the string to make sure all is even. The centre serving and nocking point for the arrow are still to be done at this stage but the bracing height (distance between the bow grip and the string) is within the recommended range. Border Bows, with these extra-recurved limbs, have lower bracing heights than standard recurves. The red is right too – looks good and makes a nice note when twanged, an F#, I think.

Clyde Muirshiel Regional Park

To avoid close of business traffic across the Erskine Bridge, I headed early to Largs Archery Club yesterday, where I am going for some coaching and mentoring in my attempt to become an ArcheryGB Level 1 coach myself, taking the single track (with passing places) Old Largs Road across Clyde Muirshiel Regional Park so that I can do a little exploring on the way.

 Stopped at a little car park by Outerwards Reservoir to eat my sandwiches and went for a wee wander. There was a Dipper on the rocks top left of this photo but he bobbed away.

Outerwards Reservoir

A neatly made small weir above the reser. The stream is called Noddsdale Water.

An old gate post and newish stile

The bridge over Noddsdale Water, mended and "upgraded". The line of grasses and ferns marks its old top edge

Solid sandbag support underneath and some last year's seed heads

The wind was quite strong so I didn't manage to get a clear picture of the new larch cones but you can see them growing here

And, across the way, lots of young oaks with lots of oak apples, or galls

I spotted some more places to explore for next time. :)

December News 2013

December started well. I met up with a bunch of Gransnet friends, old and new, at the Royal Overseas League on Princes Street, Edinburgh. The organiser had got speakers from Genealogy Scotland, Scottish Beavers at Knapdale, the Children's Hospice Association of Scotland, and a supporter of the SNP's Scottish independence campaign. All the talks were interesting and informative. The last one in that list, which was actually first in the programme, generated the most discussion, as might be expected. I shall be voting No on 18 September 2014.
           The organiser of the meet up persuaded her brother and sister-in-law to come and lead a Scottish sing-song in the later part of the afternoon. Funny how all the non-Scots knew all the songs ;-) – Scottish culture and uniqueness is alive and well in the United Kingdom (not to mention the rest of the world). 

Some of us

Me laughing; can't remember at what.
There was lots of laughing.

A Rotary colleague and I have been getting a Rotakids club up and running at Luss Primary School on the banks of Loch Lomond. The certificate of its formation arrived on 2nd December so now it's official.

I took advantage of Toad working at home (and therefore the availability of the car) on the 9th to head Oban-wards to visit another gransnet friend, KintyreAnnie, who'd been transferred there with a very stubborn bout of pnuemonia. The pictures I took on the way there and back are here. Annie was in hospital for another week after my visit and had worked her way through an astonishing variety of anti-biotics. Thankfully something kicked in eventually and she recovered well. She expressed her appreciation of the care she received at the Lorn & Islands District General Hospital in a letter to the Oban Times.

I passed a number of vintage cars on my drive. I wonder if they were heading for Oban Airport for the "Le Jog" classic car rally?

At Taynuilt I noticed stone field walls that I'd like to have a closer look at some time; at Fearnoch it was oak trees; and in Oban itself evidence, in the form of piles of seaweed, on the landward side of the waterfront road of the storm that hit on 4-5th December (the storm that brought down our eucalyptus and old cherry trees).

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I've identified a few more of our garden mosses, and a lichen or two, this month. The moss count is up to nineteen. One of the fun things about looking at mosses through a microscope is seeing a variety of wee beasties that make the mosses their home. So far they've come in white and pink, with white legs and greens backs, and in segmented grey. Most are too tiny for me to see without magnification. Food for troglodytes and Paridae, I presume.

The old Salmonberry bush at the top of the garden has died. I broke up the branches and shoved it in the old goose house along with other small twigs and branches. More firewood.


Christmas came quietly to the boggy brae. The commercial razmataz holds no appeal. For me it's about celebrating the passing of the shortest day, celebrating without excess. It was not an untroubled day because Toadlet succumbed to a migraine. She had allowed herself to become dehydrated the day before. Beats me how a thirteen year old manages to do this so I'm beginning to wonder if she just doesn't feel thirst in the usual way. So now the question is: do we go back to the doctor and say the preventer medication didn't work, or do we first attempt some dehydration prevention? Maybe both. The phrase "learning the hard way" keeps popping into my mind. Once the up-chucking and bucket emptying was over we settled down to a pleasant Christmas meal with DivingDaughter (who had come over for a few days) of roast lamb and roast vegetables. Toadlet ate a boiled egg.


On the 29th Toad and I took part in the Archery Interchange UK (AIUK) Ironman Frostbite Challenge with Giffnock Archers on a draughty rugby field down Newton Mearns way. Toad had injured his lower back slightly the previous weekend and this came back at him towards the end of the tournament when he found he couldn't pull his full draw length because of pain and lack of strength. This affected his scores for the last few ends. Given how little outdoor practice at appropriate distances I'd had this winter, I was pleased with my shooting and my score, which happened to be the highest in my category, "Lady Recurve Barebow". My ability to shoot eighty-four arrows with my new Border limbs (that's archer talk for the bendy bits of the bow), which are a heavier draw than my old Samick limbs, also pleased me. I guess it means I've got used to them and can now concentrate on the finer points of shooting accurately.

Ready for the cold

A bit of the cherry tree

Late December sunrise

The back terrace

You can give your boots a wee rinse in the 'moat' before you step inside.
If water does run over the doorstep it doesn't matter as there's a drain in the concrete floor of this outhouse.