One man went to mow.....

The weather has been beautiful this weekend, lovely and sunny and warm. Makes me feel guilty as I have friends in the US who are baling out a flooded home. However I have made the most of the fine weather this weekend and got on with some gardening. Mick of Hoy High has a new toy – a ride-on mower, and he has kindly been cutting the grass around Sandside for the last couple of weeks. You can see in the picture he is supervised by about a dozen kye – just to make sure he does the job properly…..!

It’s great getting the grass cut as if I do it with my walk-behind mower it takes a couple of hours and the worst bit is emptying the grass box. So the energy saved from mowing has been spent working weeding the borders. Also transplanting some plants – Irene & Bobby at Breckan are reorganising their garden and had a plentiful supply of plants to give away. So these have been shared around various gardens on the island and I’ve been putting mine in the new border at the rear of the house.

Hopefully the plants will take – it’s very dry at the moment and I did water them in, but I was mindful that our island water tank is pretty low at the moment so didn’t want to waste any water! Our water comes from the Hoy hills, into Sandy Loch at the north end of Hoy and then treated before being pumped through a pipe on the sea bed over to Graemsay. Although the loch is full, there is a limit to the capacity of the treatment works and pumping station, and since a new Hostel opened on Hoy a couple of years ago which uses quite a bit of water, Graemsay and other Hoy residents have noticed a drop in supply. In fact no new connections can be made on Graemsay or at the north end of Hoy – so if new houses were to be built owners would have to put in a bore-hole. Scottish Water do have plans to upgrade the system but no date for the upgrade. So meantime I try to be careful with the water I use!