Mist in the trees

We have had torrential rain, even by western Scotland standards, today. It has eased off now but the road along the coast is awash in various places. Looking up the hill from the back door, I love the way the memory of rain hangs in between the trees while the air is still saturated.


The two bare trunks are the woodpecker trees. We often hear them hammering away.

Autumn begins

Autumn begins and, right on cue, the first autumn crocus flowers appeared on the first of September, plus a Birch Brittlegill mushroom (Russula betularum).

This morning I looked at patches of blue sky and wondered if we'd get through the day without the rain of which the forecast said there was a 10% chance. Here this usually means it's going to rain. It did, solidly from mid-morning into the afternoon.

A soggy morning on the Boggy Brae

Rain hammering on the porch roof as I took this shot >>>
straight across the loch from there. Gotta love the maroon spring shoots of downy birch.

this one through the front room window

Bright colour in flowers...

...and doorknobs

Patchwork in progress

 The gales and heavy rain of the last couple of days are set to continue for a while so I've used the time when I couldn't work outside very easily for making some new coasters. They are now for sale in my Etsy shop. Their sizes are between 12 and 14cm square.

I also finished making a table runner, which measures 79cm by 28cm

the back of the runner

And then there is work in progress. When I took this photo, my hair, which I just washed so it wasn't pinned up in its usual twist, fell and swung across the camera lens. I took another but then decided I quite like the shadow effect.

After this weekend, which will mainly be concerned with archery matters, I plan to get out several large pieces of scrappy patchwork that I made over  year ago and decide what they are going to be.

Meanwhile the winds howl, the house sings, the hail showers blow through, clattering on windows and down chimneys, and this may be the best sunlight we're going to get today:

Windy Day

From the back door 1

From the back door 2

Some things soldier on

The fungally eaten core of the old wild cherry.

One of its offspring caught the old tree as it fell

Collection of pieces of roof gutter

Some of the gum tree

There was a respite in the wind and rain but as I finish this, the snow is blowing through at a very acute angle from the horizontal. Warm and safe wishes to everyone on this day of interesting weather.