The weather has continued in its usual vein of constant rain and high winds. We get the odd day when the wind dies but it usually is the calm before the storm. There is an area of high pressure coming up so I hope we will get a few nicer days.

Birsay, Orkney.

 

Pretty much like my acrylic  painting. Roll on Spring.

I am typing this with the lights on and the wind hammering rain against the window. Yet another day of fierce winds lovingly mixed with rain and hail. The car  temperature gauge said it was 3 degrees today  and the wind has shifted to come down from the north. We have been lucky though, compared to mainland Scotland and so far still have power. Snow is forecast but it’s not likely to stay but the wind is set to increase.

I did manage to get out onto the beach though and made it back home before the hail started. It was so cold that it took my breath away so I didn’t hang about too long. Sometimes it’s not just the cold that does that but the difference in pressure seems to drag out the very breath from your lungs! It’s quite scary when it does that.

a brief break in the lowering sky.

Apart from very brief walks on the beach, today is another day to bake (stem ginger cookies) and to keep the coffee pot on. Do help yourselves!

I’ve added a new page with some photos of paintings and will add to them gradually.

I am starting a new year with the intention of blogging again, whether anyone reads it or not it feels better to be writing something rather than wittering about not writing.

The storm that has swept across mid Scotland is headed this way, with evening ferries cancelled and lights flickering ominously. It’s been one of those days when it never really gets light and  you just want to snuggle up under the duvet and eat carbs!

The last big storm in early December was rumoured to have been the worst one since the hurricane of January 1953 and it certainly left its mark. Poly tunnels were shredded and contorted, roofs were ripped off and a mobile home picked up a few feet and dropped. So far it’s relatively quiet outside.

The days are  actually getting longer now since the winter solstice  but it doesn’t feel like it. As there is no light outside  today, I’ll show you a few pictures taken a month  or so ago when we had a severe frost and the sea froze on the shore.

A black dog on a snowy beach.

The low light was stunning and I managed to get a few good shots. (I hope)  These kind of days make up for the terrible ones like today.

Low winter sun

ice and sand.

Pebbles and ice.

Ice and Tide Patterns

After a long time of RL getting in the way, I have finally managed to get back to my poor neglected blog. High summer is now settled over the island but the lovely sunshine that made the sky and sea sing with cobalt and azure blues has been replaced with a blustery and overcast sky.

The photos here were taken in June:

A typical summer’s day on the island.

But today the weather is much duller. Most of the silage has been cut and the tractors finished pressing it down into the silage pits. I say pits. but by the time it is all safely gathered in, the mounds tower over the farm buildings with the intrepid little tractors scaling the heights. Not a job for the faint hearted or vertigo challenged ones!

Most of the hay has now been bailed; either into large round bails or  smaller square bays stacked up in stooks to dry off. The shorn fields ar now full of every type of wading bird busy probing the ground for tasty treats. Oystercatchers and curlews abound and short reared owls waft over the fields busy looking for newly exposed voles.

Every time we go across the water to town, we ask our friends and relations if there is any shopping they would like from the “big shop”. One particular friend always asks for purple sprouting broccoli. We can get regular broccoli but not the elicit purple sort! It’s almost become a form of contraband, smuggled in under tins of cat food, waiting for shady late night meetings in doorways to exchange those rare purple spears for cash!

The remote Scottish Island that I have chosen to live on is gradually waking up to Spring. This morning I watched a cloud of small birds rise up from the horizon and disperse into an azure sky.  The skylarks are singing and the oystercatchers are piping day and night. Although the fields and verges still look tired and brown, there are signs of new life. Yesterday I saw my first clump of marsh marigolds in a roadside ditch. Brazen  buttercup yellow globes and lush green leaves were shining out against the gloomy ditch and in the grass, small coltsfoot flowers nestle. Beautiful as they are, it seems that nearly all the early flowers are  yellow!

The sad side of the season is shown in a tangle of white whooper swan which didn’t make the flight across the road and through the power lines. The Hydro company have hung bright shiny discs on the lines but this swan obviously didn’t see them. The collision not only interrupts the life of the bird, but also the life of the people here as the power often shorts out.  As I drove past I saw a  jet black crow  making short work of the poor swan’s body. Life and death together.

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