An impossibly monochrome afternoon, the island is dreich and damp. Chronic procrastination is allegedly symptomatic of creativity, this bagatelle of a post as an excuse for not finishing a very long and tedious report in data mobilisation. A friend recently sent us a photograph of our croft house (now Croft Garden Cottage) taken in the
It may have taken 140 years but finally Fanny Mendelssohn’s Easter Sonata has its UK premier on International Women’s’ Day. Culturally, politically and financially we still live in a patriarchal society and the only we can gain equality is through persistence. Silence is what allows people to suffer without recourse, what allows hypocrisies and lies
As January draws to a close we’re still wrapped in a cocoon of grey spun from wet silvery threads of salty cloud whipped up from a plumbean sea by the breath of Zephyrus. The rain slowly dissolves the coating of salt from the windows to reveal a monochrome landscape highlighted only by a pale yellow
In January the Hebrides can live up to their reputation of being cold, wet and very windy, so before cabin-fever sets in, as soon as the rain stops and the wind strength drops to blustery, it’s time to get out for a walk. Actually it’s more like a waddle with a full set of thermals,
When is an artichoke not an artichoke?When it’s a sunflower!Unfortunately a totally inappropriate vernacular is the least of the problems of the Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus).It has a reputation as a garden thug and according to the gardener John Goodyer, the 17th century gardener and botanist, quoted in Gerard’s Herbal “Jerusalem artichokes: which way soever