Had a major planting day in the Polytunnel. I put in carrots, onions and broad beans. I also started off some flowers for planting out next month – including a load of lavender which I have an idea of making into a hedge. The garlic, radishes and broccoli I planted earlier are doing ok. Some […]
Today has been another real ‘Goil’ day – this is what R and I call days where the weather changes rapidly. This morning the sun was shining and we went for a walk up to the waterfalls. By the time we got there it was hailing and over lunch there was a real downpour. But […]
This morning – instead of the queue of small birds and squirrels waiting for their nuts – everything was eerily silent, with not a single small creature to be seen or heard. Then we saw the reason – there was a beautiful peregrine falcon sitting beside the feeder. It immediately flew off when it saw […]
I am not a big social media user – but whenever I complain about things like (for example) having problems syncing photos between all three of my tablets – R always calls it a #firstworldproblem. So I have a new category of this which I will call #ruralscotlandproblem. Rural Scotland doesn’t really sum it up – […]
After an inauspicious start to yesterday – it got out quite nice in the afternoon. Walking around the garden, various flowers are just on the point of bursting out of their buds – particularly narcissi, of which we have hundreds. But there are also primroses unfurling on the bank by the polytunnel where I can see from the leaves that […]
The heron arrived at 7am this morning and was not deterred by either R setting off for town or the post van arriving. He (or she) just sat incredibly still (nothing beats herons for immobility) until suddenly the beak struck out. At first I thought there were fish in the pool after all – but […]
Of course the weather this morning is quite vile – as always on Sundays when it would be great to go for a walk or get some serious gardening done. The Donich is running at full spate and the Goil river just round the corner has burst its banks and is all over the fields. […]
Last week we bought a huge organic salmon from Loch Fyne. I am ashamed to say that I bought it in Glasgow, so it made a journey 50 miles down the road and back (not ideal but could be worse I suppose). Anyway – I filleted it (not very expertly) and it made 10 good […]
I said before we moved that I would give an update on what the data situation is here and how we are managing with the greatly reduced Internet access (compared with what we had before). So what we have ended up with is 2 bonded ADSL lines (this is a service from the Andrews and Arnold […]
The heron we saw the other day seems to be making a pitch for our pond (or minature loch). There are several small islands in the middle, and it is visiting one of them for an hour or two every morning. When it sees us coming it flies off and returns to stalking down the ditch […]
