I had not intended to take a sabbatical from recording the gardening year and new projects at Croft Garden in the decadal year, but sometimes the weather, completing new projects and the continuous round of repairs and renewals is relentless.

So after a period of serious neglect, a fresh start and a new website home for the next volume of the Croft Garden Diary was required. Island life has changed over the last 10 years, but my life on the croft and my efforts to grow vegetables, herbs and flowers are unchanged. Over the years, I have learnt a great deal about how to garden on an exposed coastal site in the Outer Hebrides, but it takes a lifetime to create a garden and I still have a long way to go. Each year is different, presenting new challenges, so I am continuous learning and experimenting. Sometimes I succeed and sometimes I fail.

The meteorological autumn arrived yesterday, and we enjoyed the last day of our short Indian summer, just four days of blue skies, a zephyr of wind sufficient to ruffle the waves and suppress the midges and warm sunshine, a balmy 18C. You may laugh, but while you have been enduring heat waves and droughts, we’ve been sitting in a very cool northerly air flow, under a blanket of heavy grey cloud, with rain, drizzle and blustery winds. Today it is truely autumnal, the blustery winds and heavy rain have returned.