when the sun shines...

Often Scotland is quite wet and cold. Very often it's extremely wet and cold. Oh, and dark in the winter too. This makes young people frustrated, old people ill, and most everyone in between illogically fond of sunburn and cheap sangria.

But when the sun shines (and it does you know) there is no more beautiful place to live. And not just in a gliding eagle, crystal loch, soaring mountain kind of picture-on-the-shortbread-tin way (though that stuff does happen too).

There's the first poppy of the year, and the last apple blossom, flowering on the eve of the Chelsea Flower Show.
There's broad bean soup with homemade sourdough, and baked ricotta on pancakes. Al fresco.
There's elaborate mud pie making and flapping lines of laundry. Hopefully not in combination.

Domestic Scottish life, you gotta love it. Especially when the sun shines.

(Though if someone could magic me to Chelsea for tomorrow afternoon, I'd be theirs for ever after.)