Frosty sunshiny day

Sharp frost last night. Minus 6 had been forecast.

Not so nice for poultry. The orchard doesn't get a great deal of sun at this time of year, and the grass stayed frozen all today. An excuse to give them mash and corn - that made them happy.

Ben Wyvis from the end of our road.

We decided to go see the beach in the sun!

There were mushrooms still growing on the dunes - don't know what kind they are, despite hours spent poring over my mushroom book this autumn. (lots of rabbits here make it fun for dogs!)

Beach at last!

North Sutor

South Sutor

Lifeboat going past

Not complete without doggy pics ...

There was daylight enough to do some tidying in the garden when we got home.

Full moon is tomorrow.

I wonder should I sow some peas?

Woolly visitor!

Tuesday afternoon I got to sew.

Well not sew exactly. I was cutting, all afternoon.

So there I was, cutting away happily and I looked out of the window to see this creature:

Don't you just love his horns?

He must have come up the drive and had just come to a halt in the yard. I don't know how long he had been there. So he looked about himself for about a minute, and then turned round and went off again. (hope he ate some of our long grass on the way out!)

I don't know where he came from -its mostly arable farming around here and the fields are unsuitable for livestock - they generally don't have much in the way of gates and some of them don't seem to have fences! It's pretty much all arable, apart from some cattle on the hill above our house.

Hope he got home safely, wherever his home is.

Windy beach walk

On Monday we went to the beach in the village. It's our closest beach, but we don't go there often as it tends to be busy. It was windy and the sea was wild. Lots of foam to walk through and send blowing off up the beach.

Shopping

Two trips to Inverness in two days; another trip to collect R this evening will make it three...ugh...

I had time for a little impromptu shopping in one of my favourite shops, and look what I found! A Warren Kimble 'fat cat' spoonrest...now it just so happens that I quite like Warren Kimble, and a spoonrest is exactly what's been lacking in my kitchen. It will go nicely with my other new kitchen toy...(post to follow at some point)

I also bought a grey cashmere sweater (75% off, 'designed in Scotland') and a very soft, very fluffy, snow- white bath robe. Bath time for me tonight!

Lavender Hearts

I've been experimenting a little. The aim was to make a lavender sachet; something pretty and feminine.

There were many prototypes; it was fun! I may need to do a little more work on getting all those little hearts to line up straight though.

The lavender comes from our herb garden; a very old lavender bush there is almost as tall as I am. The crop is fantastic, but it has grown unsightly and is due to be removed soon.

November Poppies

I found these beside the composters. These will be our last poppies for this year.




We had our first ground frost last night.