Highland Tiger..................

Katisha taking a walk on the hill...............

Fountain in action!

And on it I will pile all the flowers of the mountain..................

Slaving over a hot paintbrush..............

Rhodies in bloom, and fine crop of chives!

It actually works! The hill water now runs through the girder and trickles prettily into the pond then flows out the other side. I've planted some water mint and bloody dock for it to flow through; we have fed the red rhodie and given it some ericaceous compost to help it settle in its new position, plus moss and wild thyme from the hill. A bargain blueberry is also in position, not sure if it will make it because on removing the wrapper it was fairly obvious why it was a bargain, but OTOH we have quite a good record with rescue plants. Ditto the loganberry which in in between the raspberries where the compost bins used to be. Have planted some sedums and other creepers and crawlers in between the stones on the dry side..........lamium, snow-in-summer (its fourth move, from Mum's garden to S Queensferry to Trinity to Onich - not the same bit, obviously........), common thyme and saxifrage. Clump of meadowsweet on the boggy side which looks awful at the moment but hopefully will take OK. Now all we can do is leave it all to settle and see what happens............

By yon pure crystal fountain.................

Made in Scotland from girders...............I didn't really have any intention of building a water feature today, it started with a little light pruning and one thing led to another...........just as well I'm not a surgeon eh. Having moved the red rhodie we were left with an 'ole, and we were also left with the old RIG (rusty iron girder)..............add the 'ole and the RIG to Carrie's fertile mind, and hey presto! our very own burn, complete with cascade feature. Or not hey presto actually, but a great deal of hacking and slogging from me. Yes, at the moment it looks a bit eccentric and does indeed appear to be a muddy puddle, but it is in fact an original Gooch Artwork and will be worth a lot of money one day.........

Bye-bye kale

The kale surely holds the record for Most Conscientious Vegetable and we had yet another stir-fry with the shoots last night, but they are getting just a tiny bit tough so we steeled ourselves to bid it farewell...........not that it's gone very far because it's on the compost heap. In its place are spinach seeds and PSB (Purple Sprouting Broccoli or Pre-School Booster, depending on context.......)
Pleased to see tiny beetroot seedlings appearing and phacelia with carrot next door..........leaf beet, spicy salad mix and cos lettuce also on the way............last year's rocket seeds in between the rows of potatoes...........
Mint, parsley and chives from the garden on tonight's potatoes, so there are things to eat already..................

We're terribly house and garden..................

Fantastic weather continues..............so the indoor workers got the short straw. Blazing sunshine and no wind. Ground absolutely bone dry. So...........time to give the bushes a haircut with the new toy, a little electric trimmer..............it's very sweet but managed to chomp through some quite substantial twigs. No, we are not going to make the potentilla into a topiary roe deer. However some of the rhodies are getting a baldy to encourage new growth. The berberis have also had a trim shampoo and set, and we have structural plans.................but really too hot today for much heavy work, so a little light planting of courgettes, sunflowers, borage, squash and rocket was about all that could be managed..........

New hall lights are up! Carrie and John washing walls and caulking..........the strange hieroglyphic map above is Charles' wiring diagram so not surprisingly the electrics are taking a while to sort out.............fiat lux!