Sea fog

 This blog has been on hold for a while after Toad's macbook died, using the imac in the home office was just too uncomfortable – heights of working, of seats, of arthritic aches that are unaccommodating, and anyway the photos app isn't working properly for shifting iphone photos to the blog interface. Oh, and the Blogger app on an iPad was a nightmare to use. Now, though, I have my own macbook so I thought I'd start blogging again.

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When I looked out of Toad's working from home office (formerly Toadlet's bedroom; it has a good desk) window this morning before it was light, I was struck by the appearance of the light at Rhu Point. It looked like a broad, vertical, red beam which subtly changed to yellowish and then back to red. I haven't seen it like that before. Perhaps it has been recently updated. A little while later it had vanished in a thick bank of fog, which then enveloped the channel marker buoys as it rolled up the loch. As I write a ship's fog horn is blaring a warning note at regular intervals.

Sun is forecast for this afternoon but the fog will keep the temperature down meantime.

Fog over the field; it's thicker over the loch

Yesterday managed a bit more colour. It's amazing how much winter colour there is when you look closely. Raises the spirits. As does faffing around with scraps of colourful fabric in the warmth of the house.

Snow on old fern fronds

Trees across the lane

A mossy mound, shaded and sunny sides

Bit of fabric faffing

As I finish this the sun is making an effort to break through the fog ☀️

Some pics from this day in previous years

Looking back at our wee loch from up and along the hill a bit


Leaves and seeds in back garden




Hills to the north: Beinn Ime, The Cobbler, Beinn Narnain


'Round hill of the deer' (can't remember the Gaelic!) across the loch through winter larches

Hedge hacking continues

I didn't quite fill the bucket with dead rhododendron sticks during this morning's hedge hacking stint. Only two or three metres still to go to get the main stretch down to knee height so that I can trim it with the hedge cutter more easily. Shoulder height is too much of a strain with the weight of the hedge cutter.

Filling the old, leaky mop bucket with small sticks good for kindling and adding bigger branches and fresh cut pieces to the woodpile for future firewood is how it goes. I'm also making piles that are still in leaf do deal with later. So far I've filled a whole coal bag (they seem to drop off the local coal lorries regularly! If I find them I pick them up and bring them home) and started another.

That woodpile pic was taken about a week ago. It's more extensive now.

I also collected, as you see, that tube thingy that Toad had apparently 'planted' (chucked off the roof that he was repairing) below the den 😉. It could be a good plant marker for one of next year's orchids.








Before being driven inside again by rain I topped up my wildflower count for the week. There's a challenge on Twitter to find #thewinter10 for #wildflowerhour (8–9pm Sundays). I've found well over ten during the last three weeks. It will be interesting to see how the count progresses through the winter. Here's a compilation of a few phone pics from this week and my list of seventeen.

On a wind chilled day in March

During the visit by Toadlet's Spanish school exchange partner Toad thought a visit to the Victorian Gothic Revival house, Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute, would be a nice weekend outing. The day we thought most suitable turned out to be during the time the Mini Beast from the East weather phenomenon was hitting the UK. Although the ambient temperature in our part of western Scotland was about 0ºC, the wind chill was huge. We checked the website to make sure the house was open. We packed flasks of soup,  coffee, and peanut butter cookies into the car along with two down sleeping bags and took our "big coats".

On the way, via Rest and Be Thankful, we had a camera stop at ButterBridge across Kinglas Water, built by Redcoats under General Caulfield in 1745.
Ice patterns around stones in the river were pretty and icicles hung in the arch. The wind chill blasted us good and proper as we got out of the car.

The central bump in this pic is Beinn Ime, which we can also see from home on clear days

We took the ferry from Colintraive over to Bute and continued on to Mount Stuart. The house was not open. We sighed with studied patience. Toad sent an email after we got home explaining the confusing information on the website and, in reply, was granted two free tickets to see the house during 2018.

We turned around and made our way around Bute stopping to check out Scalpsie Bay where seals are often seen. We saw no seals but had another wind-chill-tastic, bracing escapade from the car.



Toadlet wanted to have what would now be a late lunch in Inveraray so we headed that way. We ate in the George Hotel and then did a tour of the fascinating Inveraray Jail. I asked our Spanish visitor if she thought Spanish jails of the same period were better. "Worse", she said. Certainly this jail must have been one of the first, if not the the first, to have central heating!

The heating wasn't on for our visit! We went back to the George for hot chocolate before setting off home.

Nearly forgot: I spotted my first Colt's-foot flower of the season near Butter Bridge.

Car tumbles

On my way back from grocery shopping this morning, looking towards home across the water

Ice on the steep hill down towards the loch yesterday morning made me realise that BlueCar, which I'd left at the bottom on Thursday when it started to snow quite heavily, would not make it up to the house with the grocery shopping I was planning to do. I arranged with Toad that he'd come down in Rusty Trusty 4x4 Rattletrap to pick me and the groceries up from the bottom when I got back.

On my return I found our neighbour filling his wheelbarrow from the grit bin (that also resides at the bottom of the hill–what we call 'DTH': down the hill) and gritting the steep slope spade by spade. It seems his partner had 'totalled' her car during the week by skidding on ice along the shore road. Apparently her car ended up on its roof. I'd noticed some police tape on the seaward side of the road on my way round the loch and hoped the accident hadn't been too bad. Like my car wrecking somersault over the sea wall and onto the beach at Cove seven years ago, it seems our neighbour wasn't hurt but her car was!

It was after LucyCar's somersault that we got the Rattletrap. Gosh! it looked quite smart back then! Baboons tore off the spare tyre cover on a trip to Knowsley Safari Park several years ago when I was visiting the DerbyshireDudes.

LucyCar after her tumble. First pic was in a local newspaper. Toad took the others later. Thank goodness for seat belts, airbags and a sturdy car 'box' I say! Me, another mum and two young cub scouts were not hurt and there was another car load of scouts behind us. We were on our way (I was a Cub leader at the time) to a Thinking Day service at Craigrownie Church. The scout leader and his teenage son stayed with the car till the police came and emptied the contents of the boot and glove compartment into a bag. The Beaver Scout leader took the rest of us to the church where I was happy to sit among friends in a warm place for an hour or so. The police came and talked to me afterwards.

Thinking Day, 22 February, was the joint birthday of the founders of the Scout and Guide movements. This is what Wiki says: On the day, Guides and Girl Scouts everywhere think of each other and of their commitment to international friendship and understanding. It is celebrated each year on 22 February, which was the birthday of both Robert Baden-Powell and his wife, the former World Chief Guide, Olave Baden-Powell.

That year, 2010, Peninsula Guides had been collecting old, often chipped mugs in which they then planted miniature daffodil bulbs which were flowering by 22 February. They gave one to every scout and guide in the church. It was a lovely token of hope on a day that left me rather shaken. 

It was three years before I would drive at all when there was ice on the ground. It was a skid on ice that landed us on the beach; I had turned into the skid but then saw a hefty stone wall in front of me and reacted! On our side on the beach was the result. Not too bad a result all things considered. It was kind of the tide to be out! Rattletrap can cope with ice but even now I'd rather Toad did the getting down the hill to gritted roads bit when our hill is like this (I've 'smallened' some of them to make them fit better in a clump; you can click on them to 'embiggen' them if you want):

Winters with conditions like this are not common here but we've had two out of eleven and there are always a few days, often in February or March, when the postman doesn't deliver stuff because of ice on the hill. The last few days have been such but I met him DTH yesterday and he handed me our post. At times I've pulled my Kahtoola Microspikes over my boots and gone down with a sledge for stuff that was being delivered. Toadlet and I sometimes needed them when walking to her primary school one mile along the shore road.

Chilly welly wander

I've been wondering who had yanked up the liverwort on top of an old spruce stump (a Christmas tree from a long ago Boggy Brae family). This morning I saw a magpie mining the wood, presumably looking for grubs or ants. I wasn't quick enough to get a pic.

Down there beside the stump the ground is very soggy... well, it's soggy everywhere at the moment!

The lichen and the mosses on the stump are lovely.

From higher up the garden I was surprised to see some snow on the hills to the north but I noticed that the rain had hit "Scrawny" from the north-west so I guess what was rain here was snow a bit higher and 'norther'.

Scrawny's trunk dry on one side

Wet and ivy-clad on the other

I enjoyed the colours of fallen leaves, young birch bark, and dying lemon-scented fern. It was chillier than I expected out there. I haven't taken my hat off yet.