Okay, not sure how many pervs that title will bring out, so if you’re expecting anything at all to do with certain rubber products, then please stop reading now because you’re just going be disappointed.

And so on to the real post: I had a very pleasant but all to short visit from an overseas guest this weekend in the shape of bonsai and Facebook friend Rob Kempinski all the way from Florida. Rob was over on a golfing trip to St Andrews and had accepted my invitation to pop round any time he was over. (Need to stop saying things like that- the buggers sometimes take you up on it. 😉 ) But a very welcome guest he was, and in the short time he was here, he experienced (and survived) an evening in the pub with the Clyde Valley Fliers Friday club. At his own request he experienced (and survived) what he termed “a typical Scottish savoury delicacy”. In the absence of anything vaguely resembling that from our culture, I treated him to a Gregg’s Steak Bake which, amazingly, he actually ate and which, even more amazingly, didn’t cause him to spend the rest of the day in the toilet being ill.

Now as an aside just because we were speaking of toilets, when I picked Rob up from his guesthouse in St Andrews, I encountered this rather splendid offering:

I'm lovin' the lavvy.

Rob also offered some practical assistance on a couple of my wannabe shohin that I haven’t done much other than water and feed this year. I have a potentially decent wee Acer campestre that was the bottom half of a failed air layer and also a shohin Hawthorn that I brought home from Daldowie six years ago after it had been assaulted by a JCB, completely uprooted and severd about eight inches up its trunk. I ahve been letting it develop some primary and secondary brnaches over that time period and it is approaching a point where serious styling choices need to be made. Just shows the value of not throwing anything away.
Anyway, thanks Rob for good company over the weekend.

Working on the Acer

Enjoying a visit to Craig Coussins' garden