On nights when the depth of the silence echoes the murmur of the waves and there is the cool caress of a zephyr the planets dance. The silver crescent of the waxing moon is crowned with the diadem of Venus whilst Jupiter’s pale light reflects her mystery. The Pleiades glitter like a swarm of fireflies […]
Croft Gardener
Botany with a twist
Not all botanists are gardeners but are all gardeners botanists? If you ask a gardener whether they’re a botanist most will probably tell you they know a little about plants and then name most of the plants in the garden using a Latin or a Greek tag. True you don’t need any formal botanical training […]
Gardening Dilemmas 2
The Time and Space Conundrum I am sure that it is possible to devise a mathematical formula to resolve my problem, however just thinking about it makes me want to lie down in a darkened room. So this post is about juggling and not mathematics.At 57°N the growing season is very short and relatively cool, […]
A wee tim’rous beastie in the wild wood
A vacation sounds exotic and exciting but a wee jaunt to the mainland is a more apt description of our annual excursion to the Highlands. I must have a very good reason to leave my island retreat and prefer to travel no further south than the Cairngorms. This involves a 2 hour ferry trip and […]
Sky Dancing
It is still too cold to do any gardening that does not involve some fairly vigorous exercise – digging up creeping buttercup (pernicious weed and bane of my life) fits the bill. Stretching to ease my aching back it is easy to spend a few minutes watching the ravens tumble and roll their hoarse cronk […]