Kitchen drawers and baby Christmas trees

Decided to clean out a kitchen drawer today – my 'lid, bottle-stopper, and plug-hole thingummies' drawer, which also contained a couple of those microwavable cherry stone or wheat berry heat bags. I've chucked those out because they are perfumed and so never use them. I could cope with the smell of hot cherry stones or hot dried wheat.

Anyway, the thing is, even after a good chuck-outery, I've still got quite a divers collection of lids and bottle-stoppers. Writing this I've realised the wine bottle stoppers can go in that drawer too. I'll have an organised kitchen one day...

Click pics to enlarge

And I love corks. Those are some of my temari needles in one of them. I suppose I could make a needle case...

It's all about balance ;-)

Also went up the hill a bit with DivingDaughter and did some moss-gathering. So far have identified Sphagnum inundatum and Dicranum majus. There are more.

And here's a pic of one of the old spruces that has fallen over the burn with baby Christmas trees growing out of it.

Root Soup

Root vegetables are plentiful at the moment. We had 'chips' of roasted carrot, parsnip and beetroot last night with pork burgers. Yesterday I defrosted some home-made chicken stock and made some root soup. Here's the recipe I used:

Ingredients

• Approx. 30 fl.oz. (one and a half British pints), or 4 cups of stock
• 1 large onion
• 2 medium carrots
• 3 small parsnips
• 1 fresh beetroot
• a generous sprinkle over the entire surface of ground coriander seed
• a generous sprinkle of freshly ground black pepper
• 2 bay leaves

Peel and chop the vegetables and place in a pan with the stock. Sprinkle over the ground coriander seed and the pepper to taste and add sufficient salt.

The onions float at this stage

Cook it.

Getting steamy and now the carrots are floating

Whizz it all in a blender, strain through a sieve, and eat – with a swirl of cream if you like. I did like.

The soup has a sweetness and a pepperiness that make it just right for a cold winter day. I shall make this again and experiment with a little lemon juice, or some orange zest, some cider vinegar, or maybe even with some pickled beetroot!

The morning wakes up well

The day has woken up splendidly so it's time to go and do some outdoor work. Muck boots, check; two pairs of gloves, check; Hebridean bonnet, check. I'm out the door.

Did some sawing and shredding of the fallen eucalyptus tree then, when I needed a break from that, I wandered around with my camera looking for snowdrop leaf shoots and more daff shoots if any.

Found some snowdrop shoots on the north side of the front terrace wall and under some decaying ferns. Maybe the daffs didn't beat them after all.

I've identified this as Neat Feather-moss (Pseudoscleropodium purum). The entire northern corner of the  front bank under the silver birch tree is 'lawned' with it with small amounts of springy turf moss interspersed, and a wee bit of grass.

The red-stemmed moss is Springy Turf Moss

 Here's a small part of the mossy bank

 On the terrace wall, wedged between rocks, the reflexed stonecrop is looking winter healthy.

I thought these dried Self-heal heads looked nice

 Dried self-heal heads with Tamarisk Moss and Springy Turf Moss

Yellow among the green Escallonia leaves

Then I came in for some root soup. Recipe on the next post.

Counting down to the winter solstice

In five days' time it will be the shortest day of the year. Good to see life getting ready to make use of the longer daylight when it comes, even if the temperatures won't warm up for a couple of months.

Daffodil leaf shoots appearing among the grass and tamarisk mosses

Healthy-looking azalea buds. the flowers on this azalea don't open until June.

Lovely colours on the back of ivy leaves tangled up amongst honeysuckle

More daff shoots under a gorse bush

Springy turf moss

Otherwise known as Rhytidiadelphus squarrosus

New green on cowberry bush. You can see where it has been nibbled, probably by roe deer.

Winter colours of tamarisk moss

And new leaf shoots on the Den Rose

The start of a woodpile

The bent climbing frame makes quite a good saw horse for the long branches

Jacket comes off fairly soon because it's a mild day and sawing is warming work

The pile begins across some other old logs 

I get distracted by the mosses nearby. This is a Tamarisk moss – Thuidium delicatulum, I think, rather than the more common Thuidium tamariscinum/Common Tamarisk Moss. The brown bits are cypress leaves from a nearby tree.

Winter grass and some ash bark

Ash nobbles in decaying wood

Then the rain started so I came in. An hour is enough if I'm not to cause too much horrible payback later. The pile will soon grow if I do a little sawing most days. I always was a slowly but surely sort of person anyway, just didn't have to go quite so slowly in the past ;-)

Some of what I saw on the way to Oban today

I went to Oban today to visit a friend in the hospital there. I stopped a few times along the way and back to take in Scotland's beauty.

A little piece of Loch Awe on a soft grey morning

Awesome reflections in the still waters of the River Awe above the Awe Barrage

Turning to go back to the car, I spotted these burrs

Winter bramble leaf colours

The turbulent waters below the barrage and some reflected orange light

A wee island on Loch Etive catching the light for a moment on the way there

And on the way back, light and shadows

Late afternoon winter light on Loch Etive