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« Last post by Rosemary on October 26, 2025, 10:57:47 am »
Well, Dan and I, and the dogs, are on holiday in Gardenstown, on the Moray coast. We arrived yesterday to foaming seas and high winds, throwing salty spray onto our living room window.
Ay home, our polytunnel is empty and manured, apart from some chilli peppers, but we have lots of cooked and frozen tomatoes to use for soups and stews over winter. Potatoes and shallots in store, and cabbage and sprouts, carrots and beetroot, and lovely leeks in the garden to keep us going, along with cooked and frozen apples, rhubarb, raspberries and blackcurrants too. The log store is full.
Our B&B sheep have gone home; they'll be back in the spring with their lambs. All the remaining grass is for our old ponies, Smokey and Mickey - and the bugs and worms and birds. Our seven hens - five Disney princesses and the Flossies - are in their winter pen, closer to the house.
I have cleaned the house from top to bottom; windows cleaned, paintwork washed, furniture pulled out - so that's it done untli Spring cleaning. I'm already looking forward to Yule and our "winterfest".
So I am determined to use this winter to progress my Gaelic learning. It is my small rebellion against the colonisation of my country. This morning I started to read the poetry of Somhairle Macgill-eain and I find myself appalled but not surprised that he never featured in my formal education. How we neglect our own culture. And history. Such is the nature of colonisation.
And such is the nature of winter.
“No animal, according to the rules of animal-etiquette, is ever expected to do anything strenuous, or heroic, or even moderately active during the off-season of winter.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
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(it's because I can't do much walking and it's cold on my scoot, just sitting while zooming about)
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