Sugar Radif up at the Ghazal Page

You can see this sweet collection of ghazals about sugar here. The link to my ghazal comes under the Sugar Cubes heading in the sidebar.

As some people have asked, I have now written a post with links to my poetry published online. You can read it here. I'll update it as necessary and will link to it in the sidebar.

Dalkeith Country Park

frosted woodland -

the constant chatter

of jackdaws

We visited Dalkeith Country Park today, just a short bus ride out of Edinburgh. The trees near the entrance to the park were full of redwings, feeding and chattering. It was freezing cold.

We walked through to the ancient oak wood, which is full of the most magnificent trees, many of which are decaying and falling apart, offering wonderful homes for insects and food stores for birds. There were several wrens hopping around!

On the river

a dipper bobs on a rock

and flies upstream.

When we came back to the entrance, we saw a fieldfare with the redwing flock that was still in the same area. Then we walked into Dalkeith town centre for lunch.

leafless tree

alive with the bustle

of long tailed tits.

The Meadows

The Meadows is a lovely area of greenery in the middle of Edinburgh, it has few fences around it and feels like part of the city rather than a cordoned off park (though we have plenty of those too!). I wandered round the Meadows this morning, walking from the Shelter second hand shop (where I bought two books and 2 small picture frames for a total of £3) to the recently expanded New Leaf organic shop (where I had my Ecover washing up liquid refilled and bought some organic pears) to Real Foods (where I bought loads of food and some Sarakan toothpaste).

I was hoping to see redwings in the Meadows as they are often seen there at this time of the year. I didn't see any but that was more than made up for by the other birds. The whole Meadows was shimmering with a mist of low whispers from the trees. Looking up I saw that almost every tree was full of long tailed tits, busily eating and twittering. There were also a lot of blue tits and some goldcrests, one of which came really close and I got a wonderful view of its little yellow head crest.

Leaves for Weekend Wordsmith

the garden steps
hidden under fallen leaves -
a blackbird calls


Leaves for Weekend Wordsmith

A Night at Club Mak

Expats are living it up at Club Makakola
The diplomats wife sips gin
'God!' she says 'it's hell in that village!
How do they cope, knowing
this civilised place is so close?'
The researcher next to her stretches his legs
'my two week study here has shown
how this place works, what it lacks
I'll be able to change things,
get them on track, just you see!'

There's a murmur of approval
as a waiter brings another round.


Club Makakola was a popular ex-pat drinking place in Malawi, 1980s.

New Website for Gorgie City Farm

Gorgie Farm launches its new-look website today, and it looks great! You can see it here. Some readers of this blog may feel there aren't enough rabbit photos in there, but otherwise I think it is definitely a success.

Growing Communities in Scotland

Just a quick update about what I do at work! Although I'm based at Gorgie City Farm I don't work directly for them, but for the Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens. The Federation is a national organisation (hence my recent trip to Bristol!) "Growing Communities in Scotland" is a partnership between the Federation, the Scottish Therepeutic Gardening Network (Trellis) and the Allotments Regeneration Initiative (ARI). The partnership supports community growing projects - including community gardens, city farms and horticultural therapy projects, enabling them to offer better, more consistent and wider reaching services. The project is funded by the Big Lottery Fund. We've just appointed our new Fieldwork Co-ordinator for this project and are looking forward to seeing things really start to grow!