Hill House sunsets

Rare sea creature......................

A very rare species found in Loch Linnhe, Fryingpanus tefalensis, or possibly Omelettepanus jamieoliveroides, difficult to tell in such poor visibility, but it takes a bit of culinary skill to fry seaweed underwater............also saw lovely sea cucumber called Psolus phantapus, page 191 in "Great British Marine Animals", sounds like a cat that's had too much orange fizzy drink.................

Hill House views

Red squirrel

This morning a red squirrel ran in front of the kitchen window from underneath the trampoline, and disappeared into the bracken before I had time to reach for my camera!

Live action!.....................

I like to be, under the sea.....................

Beasties seen on dive to 12 metres depth on road to Kingairloch 1 mile after Kilmalieu...........long-clawed squat lobster, common starfish, spider crab. Yes, some of these are edible.

Beautiful brassicas

Oh rapture, we are self-sufficient in kale..........well, it is very nice in a stir-fry. deciding what to do with the cabbage does become a bit more problematic after a while though.........if we were cabbage white caterpillars this would be our idea of heaven, but we're not so it isn't. the salad has also done extremely well, we flung in a handful of Italian salad mix and rocket and it's all come up - now bolting a bit so we'll pull it up before we leave and put in some more. meantime it's wonderful to go out and gather fresh leaves every evening for dinner........runner beans progressing well up their poles and beginning to flower so beans should follow soon, and we have already eaten the first pea. leeks also doing well despite valiant attempts of cats to dig them up, and chard in beside them. rhubarb in process of being made into juice along with elderflowers from bottom of the hill.
Flower beds dug over, weeded, and spread with home-made compost. No point in any permanent planting until the windows are done so a few packets of cheap annuals thrown in to hopefully provide some temporary colour. the Great Sunflower Race is on by the side wall, several varieties so at least a few should come up if the mice don't eat all the seeds. Something called "mixed annuals", could be anything, and some dark love-in-a-mist, and something called Sweet Sultan which we've never grown before and indeed, may not be about to grow this time. depends, as always, on the weather..................

Wildflowers on Beinn na Gucaig

Bog asphodel, heath milkwort.........no idea what the Christmassy one is though, the red bits are seed pods. We found some blaeberries ready to eat, and a super owl pellet (?little owl) containing lots of iridescent beetle shells and a tiny femur from some digested rodent.............

Katisha enjoying Hill House..................

Most strenuous activity of the day is to heave a deep sigh and turn over........however she did catch a shrew and bring it in dripping blood all over the carpet, just to show that she is not a city cat after all........