Jay's Take on Scotland (Part 2) - What's Wrong With British Food?

My Own Private Idaho: What's Wrong With British Food?: Nothing. OK, we had our share of "meh" meals during our trip to Scotland - like the fish and chips we had for our first meal in In...

Prehistoric Scotland - Part 1 - Clava Cairns

N.E. Passage Cairn from east

On our recent trip to Scotland, I knew little of Scotland's prehistoric past. It was thrilling to visit this prehistoric burial site with standing stones, which is properly called the Prehistoric Burial Cairns of Balnuaran of Clava.  It's beside a one-lane rural road not far from the Culloden Battlefield. Few people visited it while we were there, making it possible to admire the work that went into building the passage grave below.

S.W. Passage Cairn

 Both passage graves are no more than a metre or so in height, but when originally constructed the cairns are likely to have been around 3m or 10ft in height. But these weren't for mass buryings - only for one or two persons, most likely tribal chiefs. Archaeologist have discovered that under the rubble base of the grounds, there had been farming here; but then someone decided it was the perfect place for his grave. And that was that. This was about 4000 years ago. A couple of thousand years went by and then they were used once more.

There are three cairns, each one was surrounded by standing stones - as many as nine.

Not small standing stones, either, attested by Jay, though the perspective shrinks him.



The stone circle surrounding the South West Passage Grave has that small road going through it, leaving one stone marooned on the far side of the road and another forming part of the fence.

And, yes, the monument is aligned on the midwinter solstice. In recent years this phenomenon has been observed by covering the chamber and passage with tarpaulin. This showed that on a clear day the rays of the setting sun travel down the passage and divide the chamber in half.
A beam of intense light focuses on the back wall. The same effect would have been visible in the south-west cairn where the view is obstructed by a modern farmhouse. So, the Victorians, thinking this had been a druid place, planted trees to give it a wooded look. Which certainly does add to the atmosphere.

With woodland toadstools

What draws your attention toward the end of your walk-around is the split stone (or were two placed against each other originally and have slipped apart?

Who cannot resist having her picture taken between the stones?

When we drove away down that one-lane rural road, we didn't expect to encounter this monumental Victorian engineering feat - the Culloden Viaduct, opened in 1898 as part of the Inverness and Aviemore Direct Railway, built by the Highland Railway.  The 29 span viaduct crosses the wide valley of the River Nairn . At 1800 ft (549 m) in length, it is the longest masonry viaduct in Scotland. It wasn't in my Michelin Guide, so I guess that's part of the joy of traveling - discovering sites you didn' t expect.

Jay's Take on Scotland (Part 1) - Scottish Independence

My Own Private Idaho: They'll Never Take ... Our Freedom: Scottish flag stone in Ardersier Yesterday, a friend posted on Facebook a photo of Mel Gibson from Braveheart , painted in Pictish blue ...

Spring in North Idaho - Part 3

Arrowleaf Balsamroot

Now the more intense colored wildflowers arrive. Though there are still pastels.

Long-leaved Phlox and Wild Mustard

Wild Rose

Nuttall's Larkspur

The fruit trees are in full bloom. Every year I think the old plum tree has seen her last, but she looks especially lovely this year.

And does the old pear tree.

And even the very old apple tree that crashed to the ground last autumn, still has some living branches with blooms. Poor old thing.

Last fall with apples. This spring with apple blossoms on at least one branch.

Interesting, how some apple trees have pink blossoms, others large white blossoms (different types, of course)

Two white women (as opposed to Native American) have lived on this property.  Daffodils planted by Mom, who lived here 1951 - 2007 still bloom beside the creek.

And Alma Cable, who lived on the property during the first half of the 20th century planted pheasant-eyed jonquils, which are still blooming on a bank across from where her house stood.

I may have over-done the photos today, but Jay and I are off to the highlands of Scotland, so I wanted to get it all in before the flowers are gone for the season. 

Spring in North Idaho - Part 2

The large serviceberry bush is blooming in front of our house on the hill.  Here's a close-up.

My favorite wildflower  is the shooting star, which we always called the love dart. Has a lovely scent, too.

The yellow bell was difficult to find when we were children out picking flowers. But this is one of three I found just beyond the house last week.

Walking up the trail behind the house . . . 

 I came upon this woodland flower, whose name I've never known, my flower guide with blurry photos being of little help. It shall remain a lovely mystery.

 But the wild strawberries are in bloom. Maybe this year I'll beat the birds to some.

In the meantime, the elk have come back to calve. We have to be careful to stay out of some brushy steep areas the cows have chosen.

Spring in North Idaho

It's spring in Shenanigan Valley. Sunshine, warmth and wild grasses greening really does lift the spirit.

 The buttercup is always the first wild flower to bloom, sometimes as early as the end of February -- depending. When I was small, Mom and I always had a race to find the first one. Inevitably, I'd get off the school bus to her chortle of, "I found the first buttercup."

 The purple grass widow is always the second wildflower - a meadow flower like the buttercup. But it grows everywhere on our 66 acres -- among the pines, in the pastures.

Then the spring beauty, which Mom and I called the May flower. I don't know why - it normally blooms in April.

I didn't know until recently that this lily is called the yellow fawn lily - we always called it the wild Easter lily. It bloomed around Easter.

And the violets are blooming in the grass down at the house where I grew up. Oh, they weren't always there. I brought some to Mom in the early '80s from a meadow in Maryland near where I was stationed at Ft. Meade. Then they were white with violet spots, but through the years they've changed. Why? Soil composition? I just don't know. I'll just enjoy them.

The Sadness of Dementia

Mom about 1949 wearing my new cowboy hat.

My mother, Geneva "Jeanne" Charbonneau will be 89 on March 20th. She has been in assisted living at Guardian Angel Homes in Post Falls, Idaho, for nearly six and a half years because she has dementia. She'd shown symptoms of dementia a few years before 2007, but it was her not knowing who I was when Jay and I came up from Wyoming for Mother's Day that sounded an alarm I couldn't ignore. Anymore, it doesn't matter whether she was diagnosed as having Alzheimer's or Lewy Body Disease or just plain senility. Seven years of her life have disappeared into the mist.


Her mother lived to be 97 and still had her wits about her when she died. Her dad was 84 and a complainer to the end. None of her brothers and sisters had dementia before they died in old age. Mom was the youngest and is the last of her generation of siblings and in-laws. But Mom's Uncle Gus had dementia in his eighties - the family figured it stemmed from his having been  run over by a team of horses in his 20s. The resultant head injury caused him to "go off his rocker" from time to time, wander away from his farm until the neighbors found him and brought him back. And then he'd be all right again. Until the last couple of years, that is.

Mom 1968

Mom had owned German shepherds since 1953; would walk them sometimes three times a day over 66 wooded and hilly acres. Exercise increases your life span, they say. Perhaps so, for Mom's heart keeps beating, though she can't speak or understand when spoken to, or walk, or even focus her eyes on me. Exercise didn't keep her from getting this awful end-of-life disease.

She deserved a good old age because her fifty years married to my dad, who was schizophrenic, had been  difficult and often unhappy. The marriage of my fictional couple in my novel A Devil Singing Small is based on their marriage. But as we know life is seldom fair.

I am filled with grief to see her as she is now -- a grief that continues month after month, year after year.  I go once a week to feed her lunch and to see how she's doing. She receives quality care and attention at Guardian Angel, which is another reason she is still alive.  I go because she's my mom. She was always there for me and so I try to be there for her. Happy Birthday, Mom.

Feeding Mom a bit of maple bar, always her favorite pastry