28th August - yet another gale has hit us. Since breakfast it has blown harder and harder and now, at 8.00pm it is really wild and the rain is horizontal. It’s very dark and more like November and I am so sorry for all the visitors to the West Coast...However tomorrow will be better...
It seems a long time since Moira and Colin and the children were here. They were not too lucky with the weather and each night Moira bundled Sean and baby Daniel in the car and ran round to find the cows, which delighted Sean. Sam did a sailing course in Toppers and Catriona helped me willingly and went various jaunts with all the family.
Catriona stayed on when the others left - Moira to return to work as Daniel is a very good baby who goes to nursery and Sean will start playgroup very soon. A day or two later, lifelong friend Dorothy motored from Bathgate, stayed for a lovely few days and dropped Catriona in Edinburgh on her was home. I had a lovely time with everyone...
On September 16th I’ll drive to Inverness and meet Ian and Alison, who will soon leave Australia at the start of their holiday. They will be in Plockton for three weeks and I’m sure we’ll have a visit from Ian’s son David and his wife Caroline, who are returning to Australia for good in December, after many years away. Before the 16th I expect John for a few days - the list of “to do, have tried, can‘t“” is not as daunting as the last, so I hope he’ll have a day or two of complete relaxation at home.
The garden has been flattened twice in less than two weeks so, again, I shall be out as soon as possible tying up plants and sweeping away debris. I do not know how keen I am this time to try to restore the broccoli, spinach, rocket, giant mustard and coriander. Can someone email me with easy ways of preserving/drying any of these? Can I use the microwave? Help!!! And has anyone a recipe for anything using lettuce, besides lettuce soup? Cheque the tortoise and I are both manfully eating salads daily and I have made enough batches of soup - good taste, horrible colour!
I found a big clump of small leaks the other day so they got planted - I now have enough for all of Plockton and the outlying villages, I imagine!
Last week I finally defrosted the big chest freezer in the cellar - possibly two years after I thought it should be done... Well, the elderly potato soup was still edible and brambles from what year I know not are now being made into various concoctions - it’s chutney tomorrow. Seriously, it is such a novelty to have baskets, which glide along the rail again and to have quite a lot of order restored - and even a list of contents!
I hope, wherever you are, you are well and that we’ll meet in the future.
Best wishes, Ann.
