The garden isn’t quite as colourful now as it was back in May/June. In particular it is missing the wow factor of the primulas which were out in force for more than three months but are past now. We still have some nice ones in July though – the hydrangeas are looking lovely, as is […]
Another beautiful morning and our friend the heron (or at least a similar looking heron) is back on the pond. Interestingly – I read somewhere that frogs are not much seen between the breeding season (which here in Argyll was in March) and late July when they re-emerge (not sure why this is). I had […]
There’s lots of activities on the water and in the village as a whole at the moment. I was recently asked to be on the committee for the local paper (“The Wee Goil”) and on my way to the monthly meeting on Tuesday, I think I saw more people than in the whole of Jan […]
Well cherries and other mixed produce. I’m picking a bowl of mixed edibles most days now. Today I got strawberries (the last of these now I think), raspberries, beans, potatoes, courgettes, tomatoes and quite a lot of cherries. For some reason the birds seem to have given up on them now and we are getting […]
I just tried an experiment with both cats (don’t worry – nothing nasty). Very early this year I started off a propagator’s worth of catnip. It is now ‘ready’ and is probably opening me up to suspicion of cultivating illegal substances because I can’t open the propagator up without exposing it to the cats! It […]
I’ve rarely if ever seen anything quite as beautiful as Lochgoilhead today. The weather was perfect and I walked out along the loch side to get some provisions for a surprise barbeque to share with R. The pictures speak for themselves, but the weather was perfect, the Loch was blue and dotted with little yachts. […]
Good wildlife week here. The day before yesterday we saw our first otter in Loch Goil. Unfortunately it was too fast to get a photo. We’ve also seen quite a few seals there – mostly over on the Carrick side. We also saw the first lizard I have seen in Scotland out on the path […]
When I was a little girl in 1970s most eggs were white. You got the occasional brown one, and the common belief at the time was that the brown ones were ‘more natural’ and had a better flavour. So of course what happened was that farmers caught on to this and adjusted the hens’ food […]
We’re starting to get fruit through from the garden now. We’ve had loads of strawberries – both the big ones I have been growing in the polytunnel – and now a sizable crop of tiny sweet wild ones. Against all expectation we also have quite a few cherries (I thought the birds would get them […]
About 10pm we noticed what a truly fantastic sunset we were seeing. R and I both went outside with our cameras to see what photos we could get. It was super-lovely for about 30 seconds before we were attacked by a ravenous cloud of insects – I haven’t seen anything like it since we were […]
