Finding Warmth in a Scottish Winter

It's minus one degree celsius so what better thing to do than sit down and write a blog post. We had our first snow this week, though just a dusting - the garden at work looks like someone's been liberal with the icing sugar.

To combat the cold, today we went to the Inverness Botanic Gardens which are known by locals as the floral hall as that was its name until 2014. There's two large greenhouses and a outdoor area that's still being developed. The tropical greenhouse was so warm that our glasses fogged up as soon as we walked in. It was lovely to walk around amongst so much greenery and beautiful flowers and nice and cosy even though there is snow on the ground outside.

As we wandered aimlessly we came across the fabulous site of a pineapple growing in the highlands of Scotland.

I really loved this pitcher plant and thanks to the informative information boards we discovered that this is also known as the monkey cup plant as monkeys often drink the water that is collected in them.

The pond contained normal sized fish and what my beloved described as a whale - he also thinks that the 'whale' has been eating the other fish.

There wasn't much to see outside due to it being the middle of winter, though it was nice to see some of the wooden sculptures like the happy mole and toadstools below.

My favourite area is the cactus and succulent house. There are some beautiful specimens here and I definitely have cacti envy.

 Ken has kindly put his hand next to these cacti to show you how big they are. I love these big ball shaped ones, and the one I have is about the size of a small apple - just a little bit more to grow to match these.

Selfie in the succulents house.

When I was young I had some sundew plants which are carniverous, and really fascinated me. At the gardens they have a whole table of different carnivorous plants, with these beautiful pitcher plants being the ones that are currently in season.

Another rare site in the highlands, an orange tree.

The gardens have a resident cat called Shadow, who chose the gardens over his original owners, and he even featured in the local paper in 2016 when that happened. Whenever we go we always keep an eye out for him as he obviously is a very sensible feline and loves the warmth of the greenhouses. We spotted him lying under some plants that were directly above one of the heaters.

When we moved the leaves to get a better picture of him he deigned to open one eye and then just went back to sleep. It's such a hard life being a cat.

Now we wouldn't want to disappoint anyone, so we did stop for coffee and cake. We drove to Drumnadrochit which is on the banks of Loch Ness for a scrummy banoffee pie for me and a decadent sticky toffee pudding for Ken (and yes I did steal a mouthful).

Hope you've enjoyed this day out in the Highlands.

Until next time,

Pamela & Ken
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Happy New Year

The first day of a brand new year where all sorts of adventures may await us. Goodbye to 2018, you were interesting and at times challenging, but we have lots of things to be grateful for as we move forward into 2019. I realise I haven't written a blog post for several months - lots of reasons why, but it feels good to be back at my laptop.

A brief summary of the last part of our year. In October we went to Sunny Dundee on the east coast of Scotland for a few days. It's a lovely city and has lots of really interesting statues around along with great art galleries and museums. We stayed in a fabulous bed and breakfast where Bramble was made very welcome as the owners had several dogs of their own.

 Ken with Desperate Dan

 Me with the penguins outside the cathedral.

We continue to explore this beautiful part of the world whenever we get the chance, and we find some very interesting things in our travels. One of my favourite things this year was when we went to Ballater in Aberdeenshire and we watched a game of musical chairs for dogs!! The chairs were replaced by boxes and when the music stopped the owners had to get their dogs into the box - needless to say it was incredibly funny.

I continue to annoy any cats we come across, stopping to have a chat with them and a cuddle if they'll let me. This gorgeous fluffball was in the churchyard in Braemar.

Our three furbies are the real bosses in this family, as they have us wrapped around their little paws. Princess Cookie Cat turns 15 at the end of this month, and loves curling up in front of the fire. She barely tolerates the two youngsters and her favourite time is when they're sleeping.

Bramble Jelly Sassy Pants will be three in March, and keeps Ken very fit with all her walks. She's such a cuddly dog, and slightly crazy as well, and loves playing with her brother.

Lord Rocky Horror has totally wormed his way into every part of our life and we're so lucky that he chose us when we went to the rescue centre. We think he was about one when we adopted him, so his birthday is probably sometime in the next few months, but we're going to use his adoption day as his birthday. He's a total little monkey at times, chasing Cookie until she retaliates, trying to open our bedroom door at night, chasing Bramble, and once he managed to chew through the side of the dog food bag.

We continually check out nice cafes and coffee is of course my drink of choice. Sometimes it's important to just stop and focus on each other, enjoying each others company and sitting in a cafe is a really good way to do that.

For Guy Fawkes in November we went to a bonfire and fireworks in Burghead - a little town east of us on the coast. It was a lovely evening with food, live music, and a pumpkin carving competition.

In November a fabulous new cafe opened in Elgin, further east than us, it's called Cafe Kombucha and is a vegan cafe. No, we haven't become vegans, at the moment we're still pescatarians (fish eating vegetarians) for now, but I'm always keen to explore new healthy eateries.

The food was amazing, the picture shows the sharing plate we had - in the middle is a bowl of soup and we also had flat breads with it. If you're ever in the area I would definitely recommend it.

In December we celebrated our 19th anniversary with afternoon tea at the beautiful Coul House with a glass of prosecco for me and tea for my beloved, all in front of an open fire. It was a perfect afternoon. We love this hotel as they are dog friendly and they have a fairy trail in the woods.

Just before Christmas we went to Grantown on Spey to see Santa before he headed off on his round the world trip. His reindeers were with him and I got very excited - a bit like a little kid.

I hope that this year you discover new things about yourself, get to meet some lovely animals and people, and remember to acknowledge the things you have to be grateful for, even on the most difficult of days.

Until next time,

Pamela & Ken
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