My Garden (30 years ago)

I came to live in Eagleton 31 years ago although I've lived on the Isle of Lewis for half a century. When I came I bought a house 7 miles outside Stornoway and the commute to my job in Stornoway was very quick because the road was good and there was no traffic.

Just over 30 years ago I moved to my current house on the Eye Peninsula just above The Minch (the sea between the Island chain and the mainland of the Scottish Highlands).  The main part of the house was built in 1927 with various alterations made since then enlarging and modernising it. I have been exceptionally happy living here and I hope that I will be able to continue living here until the end comes (which, of course, it inevitably will!).

When I came, the 'garden' (the house stands in just over ¼ acre) was virtually non-existent. The front was like a building site and the back grass area was dominated by four huge pampas grasses. The latter had to be removed with a mechanical digger. The front took years of hard labour with a wheelbarrow, removing rubble and replacing it with lorry loads of topsoil which had to be barrowed manually onto the garden.  

Given that in the early days there was no labour allowed on the Sabbath and I worked full-time, my days were very long. Fortunately in those days I was also very fit. (I'm still fit, thank heaven, but my body has been in use for 80 years and isn't quite as amenable or capable as it used to be).

The garden is pretty much as I want it now but when I was thinking of some alterations a week or two ago I had a sudden realisation that my proposals would take quite a few years to be at their best. So I decided on a more 'immediate' approach to alterations from now on so that I can, hopefully, enjoy them.

I'll show you some current photos in another post.

A Wee Update

Life has been getting in the way of Blogland yet again. 

The Good Thing is that we have had five days of (mainly) sunny weather which has, about half the time, been free of the bitterly cold and strong wind that makes working outside in the garden a bit of a trial even when dressed up to the nines for the occasion.

It has meant that I have been getting up well before 7am and spending the vast amount of daylight in the garden and the polycarb doing hard labour. Well, that's the theory. When possible it's been the practice too. I would spend 12 hours a day in the garden if I could.

It has been helped by the fact that some of my social and other activities (like the gym) have had to be cancelled because I've been forbidden to drive until I've had an MRI scan to confirm that the incident that saw me ending up in hospital in the middle of the night, yet again, was labyrinthitis and not a TIA. 

Needless to say people have been very good and I've had lifts to town when needed.

I'm flying down to Glasgow this week for an MRI scan but it is looking uncertain as to whether I will get the hoped for resulting confirmation that I can drive in time to get down to Ayr for my delayed uretic stent replacement. This could mean another delay or very inconvenient travel arrangements on public transport.

C'est la vie.

I found some accidental potatoes left in the grounds when I emptied the potato grow bags from last spring/summer. 

Over the years I've shown some lovely sunrises from my kitchen window. This was yesterday's view 

A Quiet Two Hours

Apart from seeing a friend on Saturday morning and attending to the washing machine for 4 loads of washing on Sunday I spent from Thursday lunchtime until well into Sunday evening in the garden. The weather was fabulous.  By Monday morning my body knew it had had a good workout so it was just as well I was out for the whole day for coffee and then lunch over on The West Side with another friend of 47 years. My body appreciated the day relaxing in the sun. 

Today my Goddaughter, partner and young son arrive off the lunchtime ferry for a short stay. I'm hoping the sun will come out by the time they arrive.

So this morning I've done all Sunday's ironing and I've got a short while to catch up with life, the universe and everything.  However, I've just decided to write a few words instead.

Those were the words. Here's a few close-ups from the garden.

Oxalis adenophylla, Silver Shamrock

Libertia

Centuria montana, Perennial cornflower

Astrantia

Saxifraga umbrosa, Wood Saxifrage (I've always known it as London Pride) Flower is 1 cm across

Rhodiola rosea, Roseroot.

February

We are almost a year into Covid being a common part of our lives. How the world has changed in that period. 

The original lockdown was, for me, both very enjoyable and sad. Enjoyable because I have a sizeable garden and love gardening and I could walk all I wanted without moving the car although on bitter windy days I tended not to because I prefer to walk in the shelter of the woods in the Stornoway Castle Grounds. During the first lockdown 6 months my car did about 100 miles (to the hospital and surgery in town).  Then September was manic as I drove 3,000 miles to four hospital appointments in Glasgow and Ayr. 

Since then there has been a small semblance of normality as the Islands were in Tier 3 with cafe's open. We could meet one other family (total 6 people) in a café but NOT in each other's homes.  I live alone so could have, in certain circumstance, been in a bubble. However, my son's family is in a bubble with his wife's parents (my son usually being away 2 months at a time). During lockdown I didn't see my grandson and the winter on Lewis isn't the best time for meeting outdoors. So I've seen little of my grandson or, indeed, my family (though it's easier to grab a coffee with my son. Keeping a wee one happy and occupied at coffee time isn't so easy.

Brodie fascinated by real live fish!

I'm assuming that our rules are stricter than in England because YP is fortunate enough to see a great deal of his new granddaughter.  

Unfortunately the Western Isles have not been so good since Christmas with a large outbreak in Barra after a wedding and New Year's party left over 40 with the disease and 110 isolating (the population os only about 1100) and a number in hospital on the mainland and here in Stornoway. Barra went into Tier 4. Now we have an outbreak in the Hospital and as the hospital is almost at capacity we have gone into Tier 4 so no more coffee's with friends in The Woodlands. We are in lockdown. Thank heaven for virtual coffees!

A few photos to lighten the day:

In Bishopbriggs near a friend - on Burns Night a pillar box with Tam O'Shanter (Tammie or Tam)

Gaz woke to a couple of stags on his croft. Next job is a cattle grid!

The Mainland in snow a few days ago taken from my window.

I decided to cut down a an area of cotoneaster to plant wild flowers. The daffodils are doing well.

Lewis Memories: Moving and Gardening

When I was looking for a house on Lewis in 1975 there were two available outside Stornoway within commuting distance.  I opted for the one nearer to Stornoway in the township of Coll, 7 miles from my office. It was an old 3-bedroom bungalow with an upstairs room reached by a loft ladder in the hall. However it had a large 'barn' built as an agricultural building but in effect a large double garage capable of housing both a caravan and a car or, in our case, a Bedford CF Autosleeper.  There was also the original byre attached. In addition on the ¼ acre plot was a good sized garden and a plot of trees. The latter was very unusual.

I had come from a village in Cheshire where houses were both expensive and sought after,  However on Lewis I had to pay very substantially (over 60%) more for a similar sized but detached house. Moving was not going to be cheap. Ironically when I sold the house in 2005 it had almost trebled in price whereas the house in the Cheshire village had multiplied in value over 10 times when I last looked in the '90s.

C'est la vie.

When I bought the house the neighbour opposite said "Oh. You're English. That's okay. The house has a garden so you'll be at home. You can always tell the English. They have gardens."

Outwith Stornoway it was true that few people had gardens in the '70s. They didn't have the time because they were tending the croft nor the inclination to have a hobby which was more of the same. For me, desk-bound during the day, the luxury of manual labour in the garden was wonderful.  

How things have changed. Within 15 years the neighbour's sister (they both lived in the family home) had insisted that her brother fence off a garden area for her. Nowadays there are so many gardeners that there is a Western Isles Gardening Facebook page and two substantial garden centres and quite a few people growing plants and food on a part time commercial basis too.  

Mind you when I came to the Island incomers were relatively rare. Now the place is full of them!

The Polycarb

If you live in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland the term 'Polycrub' is trade name synonymous with a polycarbonate garden tunnel which is the updated equivalent for windy places of the ubiquitous polytunnel. Mine is not a Polycrub but is similar so instead of calling it a polycarbonate polytunnel which everyone understands but is long-winded I have decided simply to call mine a polycarb or The Polycarb.

I've already posted photos of it when it had just been constructed. I don't thing they are actually 'built'. Or are they? One builds lego models.

The very first creature (apart from humans) that I am aware of entering The Polycarb was this Red Admiral Butterfly. I thought it had decided on a winter hideout because after two days it was still very reluctant to leave. However it did eventually just fly out of the open door. I regarded it as a good omen. Had it been a cabbage white I might have been less sanguine.

I decided on just one raised bed along one side of The Polycarb. 900mm x 5m will give me quite a bit of space and then any extra I need for growing things, in the first season at least, can be large square planters.

One of the problems as anyone trying to do DIY in the UK at the moment will know is that, because so many people are spending money on improvements instead of holidays, there is a national shortage of wood. Anyway having ordered wood in lots of time, a few days ago the wood suddenly arrived and I built the staging for working and bringing on potted plants.

The Polycarb has ventilation at both ends in the form of a barn door (to keep cats out) and a window at the other end. Despite that the biggest summer problem will be keeping plants shaded and cool when needed. In the few weeks since it was constructed the maximum and Minimum temperatures have been widely apart. Particularly given that the outside daytime temperature even in the sun has hovered around a maximum of 12ºC. 

Blogger's Block

I'm conscious of the fact that it's a while, even for me, since I posted. I've had Blogger's Block. It's not quite the same as writer's block because I write a lot of letters and emails constantly. The difference is that on my blog I have various 'don'ts': I don't do controversial topics (and almost every current topic is controversial); I don't go long walks in interesting places most days (so I don't have a variety of photos to post every day); I lead a busy life in my garden (not the greatest blogging topic in a garden like mine) and socially (definitely not of interest to anyone else) and whilst croquet gave me a great many interesting blogs in New Zealand and when I won the Scottish Golf Croquet Open but bowls is probably as boring a topic for blogging as I can think of (not that I've been bowling this summer with lockdown); and I don't generally blog about my family (my grandson is of great interest to me but many people have their own grandchildren). 

Do you ever do aides memoir for blog topics or anything else that happens to take your interest? I do all the time. Today, however, I found one that I'd put in my phone shopping list when I was out on Friday because I didn't have a paper and pencil handy. It reads "A stake through the heart is not a good way to die." The problem today is that, although the words are crystal clear, I have absolutely no idea what they are supposed to remind me of. That and many other things can join the 190 draft and partly finished and occasionally incomprehensible blogs that I have started and languish in the dashboard.

Despite the atrocious weather we've been having and despite the fact that I don't think poppies are generally associated with this time of year my poppies are still flowering daily:

Garden Addition

I am very content with my age at the moment. Which is a Good Thing given that I have absolutely no control over the hours, days, weeks and years as they march relentlessly on towards life's end. 

Today I moved the best part of a tonne of gravel from near the gate to my property to the other end of the garden. Oddly it wasn't walking with the wheelbarrow that was the tiring part. It was shovelling the gravel into the barrow.

When I bought the house 27 years ago there wasn't really a garden just some grass at the back of the house and bare croftland filled with builders rubble at the front.  I barrowed lorry loads of soil, gravel and debris over the years when the garden as it is now was formed. It was in the days when Sabbath manual work was 'forbidden' on the Island so most was done after work in the long summer evenings because I worked 6 days a week until 2005.

Somehow I don't remember barrowing being so hard and tiring back then. Today I was quite tired by the end of it and once or twice I did wish that I could be 20 years younger for the day. 

Why was I barrowing so much stone? I have had a new gardening aid constructed. A polycarbonate tunnel. I had to lay a new gravel floor.

Home and Isolation

I'm now home from my pre-op and in isolation (as compared with the restrictions of lockdown) for 14 days whilst I wait for my procedure to replace my kidney stent. 

I'm perfectly happy. I have enough in the way of provisions for 14 days and if I run out of anything (milk being the most likely) I am fortunate to have friends and neighbours who will shop for me.

It will give me the opportunity to catch up in Blogland and, if the weather will calm down a bit, get into the garden to start some autumnal clearing up. I last posted about my garden on the 20 July and it is astonishing to look at the photos then and the photos now. This is the garden as it was at the end of last week. Having said that the Lavatera has far more flowers and there are far more poppies now but the weather is too wet and windy to take a photo.

The rose is a 'Peace' and is the first tea rose I have ever grown. In fact this year is the first year I have ever grown roses. My Dad and my Maternal Grandmother were both successful rose growers.

Some Garden Thoughts

It's been a bit of a battle in the garden the last few weeks. The weather has been distinctly unfriendly and today although the sun has now come out the wind is very strong so the plants are suffering a bit if they are in full bloom. Midsummer weather it ain't, even in the Outer Hebrides.

The yellow pansies have been putting up a good show for many weeks from my kitchen window even though some of the plants were actually blown out of the ground in one gale and the heavy rain has given them a real battering. They are hardier than I could have imagined.

I have said before that one of the thing that has helped me to enjoy isolation has been the garden. It's not only working in it that is a pleasure though. Just looking out of my kitchen window as I type this I often just sit and gaze at the view and admire the plants, the birds and the sea and mountains of the Mainland in the distance - hidden by haze in the pictures on this post taken today during a sunny few hours in between the rain.

One of the joys of a garden, though, is getting to know the individual plants.

My little wild strawberries would take over the garden given a chance, creeping around under all the taller plants and popping up wherever there is a chink of light. 

It's always a good idea to look at both the whole plant and then marvel at the the flower heads. This Persicaria campanulata or Lesser Knotweed is not much to look at in the garden because it's straggly. However if you look at the individual flowers they are pure works of art.

I am hopeless at remembering names off the top of my head even if I know the names somewhere in my memory banks. So I have started keeping photographs of those in my garden with names on them in the hope that they will eventually be recalled more easily. Two tiny flowers of great great beauty are:

When we look closely there are all sorts of creatures living off and on the flowers. In this case these were all on the Leucanthemum: 

The first is, I think, a Myrid bug of some sort, perhaps a Common Green Capsid.

And these two are a fly (and don't ask me what sort) and a bug (a Myrid Bug again perhaps):

 

Hopefully Adrian or CJ or someone else who knows about bugs and flies can identify them although I know from my brother (CJ) that flies can be extraordinarily hard to identify without a very powerful microscope to look at parts no self respecting reader of this blog would look at.

Monday Meanderings

Sunday is the last day of the week. It's usually, in normal times, a day when I'm at home. So I've got into the habit of making it my bedding change day and the day when I do all my washing - usually 4 loads. Thank heaven for a heat-exchange tumble drier which uses virtually no electricity because it has no heating elements. Drying clothes on the Island without a tumble drier is very weather dependent and I like my routine rather than being dictated to by the weather.

Now that's about as boring a start to a post as I've ever made. And that's saying something.

I've been in a bit of a lacklustre mood for the last few days. The weather has been really crappy recently (to use a meteorological term) so I've not done much in the garden. However the varnishing of all the garden furniture is now making more progress in the workshop. 

However I got a message this morning:

My brother, CJ aka Scriptor Senex, who has been my inspiration for a lot of things decided in his mid 60s to grow his hair long and have a queue (or were they braided?) or pony tail. Whatever, that is definitely not my style and, despite having relatively little hair, what there is is now long and unruly and undesirable. So in 17 sleeps I shall, once, again return to a degree of hairtorial (Why is there no such word? There should be.) normality. [Added later. Of course the word is 'tonsorial'. It suddenly came to me.]

I'm glad that after a number of revisions in the Blogger interface it seems to be possible to position photos to one side and type around them now.

   

I found the shell of a  Blackbird's egg by my front door this morning. The Blackbirds nest about 100 yards away from my house so how does an egg shell find its way here? Yet another mystery. 

SID 43 Catching Up - That Was April

Is it really 11 days since I visited Blogland properly. I used the word 'properly' because I have made the occasional Covid-19 type skirmish there hoping that The Authorities would not notice that I was travelling further than strictly allowed when on gardening leave. We, on Lewis, have had one of the longest spells of constant sun that I can recall for a couple of years. We have had the occasional shower in the last few days and the wind has been very chilly from the North East but I have managed a great deal of garden and external house maintenance. Much, I have to say, to the detriment of my letter writing. My coffee's in The Woodlands have been replaced by virtual WhatsApp and Zoom coffees (or G & Ts depending on the time of day).  Well, everyone has to have coffee breaks.

I have discovered that it's easy to walk 4 miles in a day when gardening and add to that the 'hard labour' humping 100l bags of compost and removing small tree/shrub stumps etc and it's a good workout each day. Apart from trips to the local postbox and a trip to the medical practice for my Trial Review bloods and my 3-monthly bumjab I've not been off the property. 

Of course I miss the family (who are now out of quarantine but still subject to lockdown rules which are not quite as strict as my self-isolation) but I confess that the days are flying by at an alarming rate and I've hardly scratched any of the items off the 'To Do' lists. I am fortunate generally to sleep well but a day in the garden certainly leaves one pleasantly tired (I was going to say 'knackered' but that's not very polite). Apart from the news I've hardly even watched television.

However the birds have been enjoying the garden even with me working in it. 

Bird box in use. Note to self: clean it up next autumn.

Meadow Pipit: Bathing; Checking claws; Under wing clean?; Aren't I a pretty pipit?

 Blackbird. "These raisins are good." 

Golden Eagle exiting over the sea. 

Female sparrow looking for extra nourishment for egg laying in the form of delphinium leaves. 

Blackbird bathing in the waterfall.