Category: morning

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Deer damage and alien life

In a short burst of mild, sunny weather this morning I rammed on my wellies and headed out on to the croft. It’s well overdue time to prepare the raised beds for the seasons growing, and I’ve been waiting for a break in the storms for weeks.

The deer have been terrible this winter. They’ve eaten everything that was left in the beds, which I stupidly didn’t net for protection. Actually, the nets wouldn’t have survived the storms anyway.

Roll on next year when we will have time to deer fence the croft. I think it’s the only way.

These are the remains of a couple of my perennial Taunton Deane kale plants. There’s basically nothing left of them, and I think that the damage is so severe that they won’t re-grow. The deer have even eaten rhubarb, spiky artichoke leaves and garlic, all things that they’re not supposed to like! It’s soul destroying after such a productive year of cropping from them.

However, despite the deer damage there are tentative, wonderful signs of spring.

The mint has started to re-grow.

The berry cuttings are starting to break into bud.

We have the first signs of rhubarb leaves pushing up through the soil like wrinkled red aliens.

I managed to weed a couple of the raised beds and get some red onion sets in before my back started to complain and I decided to beat a tactical retreat. I must remember to take it slowly at the beginning of the season, otherwise I’ll seize up after a whole winter of inactivity. And cake.

Gardening is a marathon, not a sprint. but it felt so good to be out there again.

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Long days filled with light

For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere we are approaching the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year.

Beautiful pink evening light on the Sound, photo by Tricia Petri-Clark

On this day at this latitude we have daylight for eighteen hours, and it never really gets dark.

The significance of the Summer Solstice is two-fold: it’s the lightest time of the year but at the same time it’s also the moment at which the year turns to ever shortening days. A bit bitter-sweet, I’d say. Just as we’re celebrating the light we’re also recognising that it’s on its way out.

I’m holding on to these long, light filled days, though. I wake with the dawn at 4.30 am. There seems little point forcing it, so I relax and watch the often rosy dawn diffuse across the sky from the comfort of our bed. I don’t want to wake my husband who is asleep next to me, so I don’t leap out and do something productive. I just relax, read a book, the news, or blogs until it’s time to get up. It still feels like a guilty pleasure not struggling into the shower and work clothes, to be honest. The day stretches ahead of me like a purring cat.

I love this time of year. This is a first for us up on the island in June. Everything is green, lush and growing. The skylark and cuckoo calls fill the cool morning air and I’m reminded that even though the house is far from finished that we are very lucky to be here, just breathing all this in.

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Snowy days and wall foil

It snowed again overnight. We awoke to brilliant white, and the strange, blanketing silence that a covering of snow brings to the world.

Silence that is, apart from the raven, who called loudly from the old pine as the sun came up.

Husband managed to get out to insulate the water pipes yesterday, just in the nick of time. We had running water this morning for coffee, despite the overnight temperatures.

We’re cracking on with the interior wall foiling now, fuelled by hot coffee and egg butties.

Even though the house is a shell without insulated flooring or plasterboard yet, the solar gain from the big, south facing windows, coupled with a small 3kw heater is maintaining a temperature of about 13 degrees centigrade.

Which considering the temperature outside, and the volume of air to heat in this 200m2 space, is pretty good.

We think that this bodes well for when the house is fully insulated and sealed. It should be very energy efficient and cheap to heat.

Just what we need.

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Frozen pipes

We’ve had several nights of temperatures well below freezing, and although these have brought clear, beautiful winter days, they’ve also brought frozen pipes.

We run the water supply to the caravan overground from the house. It’s a temporary measure – we don’t want to have to dig the pipes in under the drive as the caravan won’t be here once the house build is complete.

However, this leaves them very exposed to the weather.

Waking up to a cold caravan, sometimes with ice on the inside of the windows is one thing, but switching on the tap to fill the kettle for coffee and realising that there is no water coming through is an altogether different level of morning discomfort.

On a couple of occasions in the last few weeks we’ve woken to this and husband has had to head out in jumper, dressing gown and wellies to try and thaw them out.

Insulation for the pipe has now been ordered and will be installed as soon as the weather permits..

In the meatime we now store large canisters of water in the caravan so that when this happens next, as it will with the worst of the winter months still to get through, we can at least have a mug of hot coffee before heading out to attempt the defrosting process..

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Chilly morning routines

As winter bites, we are settling into a kind of routine for survival in the caravan.

Our lovely but ancient spaniel was very confused and disorientated by the move to the croft. It’s not surprising really, as he was essentially an urban dog.

Here he forgot his house training and when he did go out, he’d stand in the wind and rain, ears streaming out behind him, rooted to the spot, seemingly not knowing where to go or what to do. He’d taken to leaving puddles on the carpet during the night. Not good.

Husband has been getting up in the wee small hours to let him out, which seems to be working. Bertie (!) is settling into new routines gradually and has even been seen bounding around in the horizontal rain as he accepts this new “normal”.

The mornings are the most challenging of times here. The static is cold from several hours overnight with no heating, often only a few degrees centigrade in temperature, and the bed is at its warmest and most comfortable.

When I can avoid it no longer, I get up. I layer up as swiftly as I can and wrestle myself into a warm robe, trying to expose as little skin as possible. Then it’s through to the tiny kitchen to put the kettle on for a pot of hot coffee to nudge us into consciousness.

Breakfast is my domain.

It’s usually a bowl of porridge with banana and maple syrup, or eggs and toast, or if we have good fresh bread, a butty with local cheddar (that’s a sandwich for those readers not from these shores).

It takes us a few mugs of coffee to get going enough to enjoy joined-up words together and be able to plan the day. By now the temperature is usually up to around twelve to sixteen degrees Celsius and it’s feeling less arctic.

We watch the weather and sip our coffee, chatting about build plans or deliveries for the day. We read the news online but at the moment are more absorbed by our own new, little world as we work together to start to establish our place in it.

It may be like living in the cold wash, fast spin cycle of a washing machine at the moment, but with every day it feels a bit more like home.