or in my case 9 cows and their calves…..The Ladies are back! These are my contract mowers who arrive every year for 4-6 weeks in October to graze the grass on our headland. The grassland on our croft is managed to produce suitable breeding habitat for corncrakes, breeding waders such as lapwings, oystercatchers, redshank and
Waiting for the Tide of Inspiration syllables dancing in the spray,words rolling in grains of sand,antonyms hiding in fronds of kelp,synonyms twisted in shining alginates,will the wind release the rhymes,sonnets to soar above the waves,or leave them tangled in flotsampoetic debris, drowned doggerel?
Pinkgills, Earthtongues, Fairy-clubs and Parrots In these islands there are no hedgerows adorned with hips and haws, orchards laded with apples or woodland walks full of glowing leaves and the chance discovery of spiky, sweet chestnuts, milky hazel nuts or golden chanterelles. Our native woodlands are confined to deep ravines where the rowans, birches and
While the gardener was away the chickweed made a bid for world domination in the vegetable beds and secured its empire with an outer defense of 3 foot high nettles. Now this is obviously a tribute to the fertility of my soil but I must confess that after a month of neglect I was probably
Defining a Hebridean summer is like trying to catch sunbeams in a fishing net. In many respects it is like this post, you thought it had arrived only to discover that when you took a closer look it had mysteriously disappeared only to reappear a week later. As a scientist I should quote meteorological statistics: