Boarding @ Home: Day 22/84: Julian's Bocage and leaves arrive in The Dip

That indoor exercise cycle I ride 4km each day taking 15 minutes has gradually enabled me to see first the buds and now green leaves appearing outside the window, and birds cooing on the branches. The two chestnuts below were planted long ago, one for each of the Asplin sisters who stayed as children at The Manor House during the 1920s and thirties. [They called a decade ago and told us so!] A third chestnut closer by has now disappeared, totally devastated by lightning; the nearest remaining is in poor shape today having lost major boughs. But the farthest away still stands serene.

...and of course Baron Julian of Dolphinstoun has included a Scottish Saltire in the sky as he looks and paints across The Dip to The Grange, immediately to the right hand side of the chestnuts shown.

Good job I was indoors on the cycle since the temperature outside has dropped viciously with a cold NE wind. Avril's worried that her wee boxed potato crop has responded too well to last week' warm weather and she was festinate, acting at pace to mound them up [as seen only last weekend on BBC Gardeners' World. Even my rhubarb has been battered by that wind. Julian, who prefers the outdoor Mountain Bike for exercise also complains about that NE wind, slowing him down as he bikes east from Towcester Racecourse towards Shutlanger.
Mary Seacole in the news again. Whilst I was well aware of Florence Nightingale's work in the Crimea I was blissfully unaware of Mary Seacole until she appeared in our Scottish Diaspora Tapestry [Panel 227 stitched by fellow Jamaican Professor Sir Geoffrey Palmer 2014.] Then she was everywhere including a Scottish £50 note and as a June 2016 statue outside St Thomas' Hospital where PM Boris Johnson has been recovering from Covid 19 - and last night off to Chequers to recuperate. Sir Geoffrey posted the image below on Twitter.

Arran's HES Report from Dunbar arrived. After being doubtless cursed as obganiate, irritating by repetition, his HES Report #8 arrived on my email for onward transmission to HES and our final request for £4,000 from their 3 year grant of £32,000. It's enabled extensive interpretation of Dunbar 1650 and two re-enactments there but the biggest dividend is yet to come and provide the design for much future work by Scottish Battlefields Trust. It's The Scottish Battlefield Communities' Guide. Building on all we've learnt since 2006 guidance will be offered to local groups at the 40 'Designated' Scottish Battlefields on what can be achieved and how. It'll be online of course but hopefully in print as well. Of immediate Jacobite interest to us is Inverurie, December 1745, not yet Designated but very much in our sights and good friends too through our tapestry exhibitions and associated activities.