Changes

October 25, 2025 sareenmclayLeave a comment

Education, salvation and *damnation.* Aberdeen with the beautiful gardens below.
(Central Library, St Mark’s Church and His Majesty’s Theatre.)

Recently I was asked to take a photo which would represent Aberdeen. Where to start, the imposing tower of the Marischal College, the miles of beach, the bandstand at Duthie Park? (Not to mention Old Aberdeen, Footdee/Fittie, I could go on …)

The photo is for a writing group.

I have been the local volunteer co-ordinator of The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI – or Scooby as it is known!) these past few years.

Our group encompasses Aberdeen and the Northeast but truly, it has members from around Scotland. It is a wonderful group of writers who support one another and provide insightful and helpful critiques as well as a whole host of encouragement and bookish advice.

Recently we made the decision to open the group to all, so you no longer have to be a member of the SCBWI to belong. Scooby has also been going through a lot of changes recently, hence the need for a photo of Aberdeen so our group can be mentioned on the website. I hope this photo does Aberdeen justice.

New members are very welcome and if you would like to join, please feel free to DM me on my Instagram or Facebook page.

The same morning I took the photo of Aberdeen, I nearly missed my bus. I was distracted, taking pictures of the clouds because, why not? I am always trying to remember the names of the different types of clouds, not very successfully, I admit, but it is fun trying.

Standing at the bus stop cloud spotting seems a good use of time, craning my neck to look up rather than down at my phone. The other day, when I began to think about what I would write in this post, I knew I had to include these two photos.

Today, I am on the train writing this up, trying not to be too distracted by the sheer variety of white puffs in the sky (one looks like a giant zeppelin!).

By chance, I bought a magazine for my journey. This time it was Prima and inside, guess what, you’ve got it, there is a whole article about skygazing. Gotta love a coincidence.

Positive psychologist, Paul Conway has coined the phrase ‘Skychology’ for the ‘practice of intentionally looking up at the sky for a few minutes a day to improve your mental health’. Love it. I didn’t really need a name for it, but it is clever and apparently the science behind it proves my sky gazing instincts were worth acting upon. I’ll need to do more!

Those of you who have seen my few and far between posts on Instagram, FB or Bluesky, may have seen these pictures.

For a few years there, I wasn’t too keen on the arrival of Autumn. Not that I could do anything about it, perhaps I just wasn’t looking forward to the colder days.

This year, I am embracing it. How lucky to be able to watch the trees and plants change colour.

The thought of time spent inside as well, being cosy with the opportunity to carry on with (yet another) crochet blanket, fills me with joy. Bring it on!

Wishing you all a very Happy Autumn.

I am reading ‘All Adults Here’ by Emma Straub (although by the time I post this, I will guarantee I will have finished it. It’s compulsive reading!) I bought it in my brother and sister-in-law’s fabulous bookshop, Book Moon in Easthampton, MA.

I am watching ‘Oak Tree: Nature’s Greatest Survivor’ on BBC 4 with Gavin McGavin.

Birds · Holidays · Lighthouses · Nature · Photography · Resolutions · Seasons · walking · wildlife

Of Stonehaven, Sculptures, Stories, Snow, Squirrels, Surprises, Sunrises and …

January 24, 2025 sareenmclay

What a way to start the New Year.

New year, new me? Well, perhaps not, but my family and I certainly started 2025 with a new experience!

This was the year. We had talked about it so many times but now, here we were in Stonehaven, on Hogmanay, to watch the fireball swingers at midnight.

My jaw actually dropped as I watched the fifty swingers marching by. Each had a ball weighing between 3 and 5 kg. As they swung it up and around their heads, the flames licked the air sending sparks scattering. The crowd cheered, whistled and clapped. The swingers shouted ‘Happy New Year’ to hearty replies. Any thoughts of the cold, or why we had ventured out into a winter’s night disappeared as we were caught up in the display.

To the skirl of the pipes, the fireballs lit up the street and we could feel the warmth from them as they passed us by.

According to the Stonehaven Fireballs Association, the ‘idea behind the ceremony is to burn off the bad spirits left from the old years so that the spirits of the New Year can come in clean and fresh.’ In years gone by it was also a way to burn old fishing gear so perhaps it was an early way to get some spring cleaning in too!

In an amazing atmosphere, the finale was a superb firework display. Amidst a sea of upturned faces, bobbing pom pom hats, phones held aloft, I joined in with the oohs, aahs and cheers. I kept my phone firmly in my pocket; it’s not often I go to see a fireworks display, and I wanted to enjoy every minute.

Thank you to the Stonehaven Fireballs Association, the police, council, ambulance crews and all the many volunteers and others, without whom this event would not be possible.

Our New Year’s Day walk was a bit different. Along the Stonehaven seafront, we joined dog walkers, families and those clutching coffee cups against the newly arrived freezing temperatures. The slate grey sea hurtled towards us, waves crashing in before thundering off as they receded through the piles of pebbles on the beach. We stopped to watch three majestic shags, or were they cormorants I always have to check, dipping into the icy sea.

Author in front of a lighthouse sculpture. Two sculptures, one a boat and the other a metal love heart with thistles inside and two fish on the top.

And, yet another highlight, I saw my first lighthouse of the year. The sculptures along the bay have been placed there by Stonehaven’s mystery sculptor.

We returned home just in time, as snowflakes began to fall and for nearly a fortnight we lived in a snow covered world.

So it was perfect timing to discover I had a story, ‘Helping Hyacinths’, published in The People’s Friend special winter, cosy fiction magazine!

To the songs of robins, bluetits and blackbirds, I watched as our garden was filled with visitors. A lovely surprise was the woodpecker who became braver each day, hanging onto the fatballs for a good feed. Wood pigeons, chaffinches, great tits, blackbirds, magpies all popped in and, our day would not be complete without the three crows, not sitting on the walll, but strutting across the snow like mini sergeant majors. New to our garden, as far as I know, a volery of long-tailed tits descended, darted around the garden as if it was their playground and tucked into the food.

A thrush had a great feed on the holly berries, glad I hadn’t brought them inside for a Christmas display!

The chattering of the bluetits near the nest box alerted me to their presence there and I saw one disappearing inside so, fingers crossed!

A bluetit chick needs one hundred insects a day. So ten chicks will need one thousand per day and it takes them thirty days to fledge. That will mean thirty thousand insects. Hopefully our log piles and bug hotels will help!

Keeping the bird feeders filled, I also put out squirrel food as there is a resident couple of reds who live nearby and we had, on occasion, seen them darting along the fences. So to see this wee visitor was a real treat and he or she, seemed very happy feasting in the relative safety of the bird table. as I watched, the squirrel waved it’s tail at times, investigating further I discovered this is to warn off others from their patch.

Once or twice I saw a crow move towards the squirrel threateningly but, once the squirrel built their confidence up, they didn’t seem to hesitate in retaliating.

Today is the start of the yearly RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch. I have my binoculars ready!

So, onwards into 2025. I am still to set my goals, perhaps it is more, SMART targets (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) I need to think of. Whatever they are, I have had a look back through some of my previous posts and this one ‘Balancing Life‘ and the five ways to better wellbeing, always resonates with me.

Listening as the Pink-footed geese fly by and watching a stunning sunrise to start the year.

Happy New Year, wishing you all a very happy and healthy 2025.

… Space!

I have just finished reading: Orbital by Samantha Harvey

I loved watching The New Year’s Day Concert From Vienna, available on BBC iPlayer – with a space themed film by Barbara Weissenbeck during the interval, it fitted in well with my reading.

bees · Books · butterflies · Flowers · Garden · Happy · Holidays · Inspiration · Latin names · Nature · Photography · Seasons · wildlife · Writing

Gardens, Photography, Reading, Writing and Learning- of course!

October 29, 2024October 29, 2024 sareenmclayLeave a comment

I began this post in the summer. For some reason, I couldn’t get my head around what the thread of it was until I realised, that was the point. This is about meandering.

In gardens that have been specially designed, the aim seems to be to have a winding path. One to deliberately make you slow down and take your time. Along the way, there will be side shoots, leading you to ‘moments of interest’ in the garden. At the end of the path there may be an area that was at first hidden from sight.

I confess to not knowing much about garden design, despite the many I have visited! One designer I have read and heard mention of over the years is Gertrude Jekyll. On a visit to the Holy Island (Lindisfarne) on the North East Coast of England, I was delighted to learn there was a garden she had designed. Oh, how beautiful it is too! Filled with an abundance of summer blooms in a riot of colour, it was an absolute treat to see. Fragrant sweet peas and roses, poppies, daisies and flowering Lamb’s Ears (Stachys Byzantina)amidst others.

Garden designed by Gertrude Jekyll at Lindesfarne (Holy Island).

A long time ago I planted Lamb’s Ears in my garden after admiring them in the walled garden at Drum Castle: the leaves are so soft to touch. So it is with gardens, each one I visit inspires me to do something more with my own. Returning home with renewed determination to try sweet peas again, I think of how amazing their perfume is and how they are so pretty in a posy.

I am a meandering sort of a person, I think. The years have taught me that I do get there, slowly, following paths I choose, often without a clear idea of how it will all turn out but willing to give it a try. Perhaps my way is like the butterflies and moths I enjoy spotting, flitting from one stem to the next but with an overall sense of purpose.

Often I am inspired by others who have followed their own paths. Watching the documentary on the writer Joan Didion, reading about the photographer Imogen Cunningham and Kate Bradbury’s ‘The Bumblebee Flies Anyway’ have set the tone for my summer.

Always one to enjoy a learning opportunity, the talk by Annie Ives on identifying bumble bees for the Scottish Wildlife Trust was right up my street.

Writing this blog has given me the perfect opportunity to use some of the photos of the natural world around us that I love to take. This love of photography combined with writing meant I very much enjoyed running a ‘Scrawl and Crawl’ workshop with SCBWI‘s Karen McDonald at the wonderful Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at Aberdeen Art Gallery. I am hoping the exercises we did will get me writing!

As ever, the garden provides me with so many opportunities to take photos, it is hard to resist! Here are a selection of September moments. Sunshine, spiders and sunflowers, a white-tailed bee on the Sedum (Hylotelephium) and stunning white anemones.

To see the wild flowers amongst the apples this summer was a delight.

I wondered whether to post this or not, time has run away with me but today, as I swept up piles of leaves to let the grass breathe I thought, why not. Perhaps this is a summer/autumn round up.

Leaving the leaves (!) on the flower beds with the aim that they will break down as a natural mulch, I gathered a couple of bags full to hopefully create leaf mould. Making sure there were holes in the bags, I poured in some water from the rainwater butt and am keeping my fingers crossed.

Outside, in the October sunshine, I heard the honks, quacks and barks of pink-footed geese flying in a ‘v’ formation overhead. As I swept the leaves, a beautiful light green frog moved to hide in between the cracks in the wall. So that was the end of my clearing up. I left the rest for the frogs.

The Fuchsia are still going strong but are there any ‘froggy friends’ lurking underneath the beech leaves?

I am reading:

‘Haddo Reimagined‘ by Rae Cowie and Susan Orr this is a wonderful collaboration between writer and photographer.

Do you have a book recommendation which would be perfect for this time of year?

Birds · Flowers · Happy · Hope · Inspiration · Nature · Trees

Forest Fauna and Flora

July 8, 2024 sareenmclay

Sometimes you are lucky enough to find somewhere magical. Where you feel transported to a time and place of tranquility. In those moments, all else can, surely must be, forgotten to fully embrace the experience.

Black Spout waterfall and wood at Pitlochry is, for me, one such place. It left me filled with wonder and an amazing sense of peace. Perhaps it’s the lushness of the greenery this year. So much rain followed by days of sunshine.

To walk in the forest was to feel the softness of the paths underfoot. To listen to the birdsong: chaffinch, coal tit, grey and white wagtails was to smile at those wagging tails. To feel the soft, velvet of a hazel leaf and to admire tiny newly forming hazelnuts.

To my delight, there were oak trees of every size and shape. I thought of how their burls may be labelled as an ‘imperfection’, and yet their many layered beauty was undeniable. Useful too, they are often sought after by those who work with wood. No two burls are ever the same, with their layers and patterns. How wonderful that, in nature, we celebrate individuality.

There was no way I was going to miss the opportunity to hug a tree. To feel the smoothness of the moss on one side as opposed to the rivulet-like bark on the other. How amazing to consider its lifetime as I stand in silent awe.

It made me think of ‘birch tapping’ where the sap of the birch trees is collected to drink. I thought of all the water running through the tree. Of course, it could have been the water running over the Black Spout waterfall that made me think of this! An excellent viewing platform has been built and, if you carry on further up the path, you come to a beautiful section where there are large flat rocks above the waterfall.

When not hugging trees, I was using my phone to identify birdsong and plants. Wood avens, speedwell as well as cow parsley to name a few. What a complete distraction from everyday life. My visit to Black Spout wood, in such good company too, was a joy.