The loch shows an infinite variety of faces as the light hits it on different days.

Lucky used to be a stray girl but has now found her new identity as a Donich Lodge boy (the vet discovered he was male when we took “her” to be spayed). He would ask you to respect his new pronouns.

The high mountain pass over the Rest and be Thankful is the main route out of the village. Here it is in winter.

Spring sky over the mountain tops.

Sunset from our front door step.

A misty moon over the mountains as darkness falls.

View over towards the loch from near the summit of Cnoc Coinnich.

A rainbow appears in a clear interval between showers.

Lochgoilhead in the distance on a clear spring morning.

As the year turns, the mountains are white on most days.

Looking across the loch from the village, clouds form a band across the hills.

Tora and Schrodi our snow Bengal brothers used to live here. RIP both of you

A dragonfly pauses for a rest by the side of our pond.

The weather here can be appalling. Here gales and torrential rain have blocked one of the village’s few roads.

The colours on the mountains fade to muted browns as autumn approaches.

The Donich Water in one of its kinder moods as it runs through our garden.

One of a myriad insects pollinating our heather.

A group of wild haggis have made a den down by the river.

Our new Highland Tiger Saphy prowling her territory. She is a demon for the wildlife with her specialized prey item being shrews. She is not adverse to mice, voles or birds however.

This is Amber aka as Bramble. She is big, black, rather podgy and a bit of a scaredy cat. We had her cloned shortly after she arrived.

Although we don’t get much snow at loch level, the higher mountains are covered for five months or so of the year

SERRANO - MINIMAL, CLEAN, FRESH

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Mar 15th, 2023

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Learning Gaelic now

I’ve always wanted to learn Scots Gaelic. I find it very sad that whilst a hundred years ago nearly everyone in Argyll would have spoken it, the language was systematically and deliberately eradicated from the area and now is not widely spoken outside the Western Isles. So I’ve tried to start learning it from a […]

Mar 10th, 2023

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Stray Cat

Oh dear – we seem to have acquired a stray cat in our garden. We saw it a few times on the webcam over night, and then yesterday it appeared in the daylight and had to be shooed away three times. It is quite scrawny and scruffy and no one in the village seems to […]

Mar 6th, 2023

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More on the Solar

The weather of late has been unusual to say the least. It has been bright, sunny and moderately cold although today it started snowing again! There is snow on Beinn Bheula at about 500m this afternoon. R did some more clever technical work and integrated the Solar/PowerWall system into a dashboard which works with the […]

Feb 27th, 2023

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Beautiful Weather

We’ve had lovely weather over the last few days. Good for us but not so fine for the poor frog spawn. We noticed last week that as usual the frogs had been out in force – but this morning a lot of the eggs were white – meaning that frost had got to them. Having […]

Feb 26th, 2023

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Tree gone

R has been very brave and has cut down a tree which has been obscuring my view for the last year with his new battery powered electric chainsaw. I felt a bit bad about it but it was going to have to go before it got even bigger and risked falling over in a storm […]

Feb 20th, 2023

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Pet theft law

I just had an email from Cats’ Protection wanting me to email my MP about extending a law for having a specific law about dog theft to also include cats. I am not going to do this for a number of reasons. a) This is a useless piece of legislation for a load of reasons. […]

Feb 20th, 2023

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Many martens

At least three martens have been in the garden over the last 24 hours. First during the night there was what looked like a mature female and a much smaller male (perhaps a yearling). The reason I say “male” is that it was definitely trying to mount the female (with no success I will say). […]

Feb 16th, 2023

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Spring is springing

Out on our walk yesterday R and I heard several woodpeckers. There are at least two herons visiting our pond. Down the side of the roads the daffodils are starting coming up, there are catkins on the trees and buds on the honeysuckle. So we are well on the way towards spring – though according […]

Feb 11th, 2023

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Casserole

When I was a child my favourite food was my mother’s casserole. It was essentially a beef stew with carrots and onions, topped with potatoes and slow cooked in the oven. My only problem with it as a child was that I could never get enough – for some reason Mum never made enough for […]

Feb 9th, 2023

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Orcas

There was an article on the BBC website this morning about adolescent male killer whales being dependent on their mothers until well into adulthood. I liked the quote about how “if a man’s mother cooked dinner for him every night he would never leave home”. At the risk of sounding contentious I can think of […]