Gardening in May....oh and more sunsets...

So let's start with a beautiful sunset on a calm evening in May......

And now move onto battles with hens in the garden! Hee hee!  Every year I attempt to grow some vegetables and fruit.  Most years I lose much of it to the hens.  In the past I've covered things up with netting till seedlings grow but the pesky hens would find ways in, and then get STUCK needing to be rescued.  So, at great expense this year, I purchased a chicken fence which is supposed to keep chickens IN.  However I am using it to keep chickens OUT.... they have the entire garden and several acres, but oh no, let's have a dust bath in the middle of the peas and have a snack while we are at it... So.....

Robust netting with robust poles and pegs.  The netting is big enough to not be a problem in the wind but small enough and tall enough to keep pesky hens out!   Though I do suspect they might discover they can fly over the wall.... we'll have to see.  The fence will be rolled up and put away in Winter, but for Spring & Summer, it stays!  S came round to help me put it together as she has the same netting successfully keeping her hens IN.

Hens spot The Fence, as does Button.  None are impressed.

These two are  definitely clocking the fence to identify weaknesses!

This is me INSIDE the fence.  There is a cunningly disguised gate for me to sneak in and out.

It's also quite unobtrusive and not that visible from the gate.....

So, INSIDE the fence is a patch of wildflower seed, courgettes (under cover), salad leaves, ruby chard, broad beans and peas. Oh and some shallots.  Though either the mice or starlings had uprooted a couple of THOSE today! There are also two gooseberry bushes and a black-currant bush.  I rarely get much fruit off them as the pesky hens love them when they are tiny.  So far the wild birds haven't investigated too closely, but I may need to put netting over the fruit bushes to keep them away.

Outside the netting is the rhubarb and the strawberry patch.  Strawberries need to be undercover too but that's doable as I have a custom made "hat" for them.  And in raised tubs are carrots So, all we need now is some decent weather!

And now back to evening sun.... these ewes and lambs were showing an interest when I went for a walk along the shore the other evening.  Only because they thought I might feed them!  The grass is very slow growing this year (well except in my garden!) so they are getting plenty of extra rations and equate a human with food!

Meanwhile the beach had a rosey glow from the sunset.

It's May but in Orkney the daffodils are still very much in flower! The rosa rugosa and willow trees are greening up nicely though.

And in other news, a pair of crows had built a nest in the willows by the house.  Poor things are desperate for anything resembling a tree. Often in Orkney they nest in the heather on the ground! Anyway I wasn't that keen on having a crows nest by the house and it was on the way to the washing line. But I think the chickens scared them off! They like to gather under the trees during the day for a preen, chat and a bit of a crow (the cockerels, obviously).  I think the crows served them an ASBO (anti-social behavioural order) and the chickens retaliated as the crows didn't have planning permission. Anyway the crows seem to have abandoned the nest, thankfully.  It's early enough for them to build another in, hopefully, a more convenient place for all concerned!

And to end today's potter, another sunset!

Around Graemsay

Graemsay with the Hoy Hills in the background, and clouds!

Hmmm that should probably be called "Around a bit of Graemsay" Ha!  Anyway here are some photos taken other than outside my front and back door...er mostly.

And this is the Hoy High lighthouse disappearing into the distance as I head on the ferry to Stromness.

And, completely out of sequence, here it is BEFORE I got on the boat, with Stromness in the background. The sign on a pole to the left of the lighthouse is where our electricity cable comes ashore, from over in Orphir on the Orkney Mainland. Yes I know there is a lot of sea in these photos but it's a lovely blue colour and oooh look - it's CALM!

And this is looking in the other direction towards Orphir and other islands in the distance.

A wee birdie silhouetted on a rock.... lots of birds around now that Spring is here!

And these are eider ducks. I love the noise they make, they sound really surprised with their "Ooooh"!  There are whole flocks of these around the shore now.

And the primroses are out!!! Yay!

This is on the East side of the island.  Looking towards Hoy.

I love these cliffs, covered in heather!

And, ahem, back to my doors again..... outside the front door.  Clouds choo-chooing along like a train.

And from the back door....sunsets!! Well A Sunset....

And a little closer......

Meanwhile Button wants to know what all the fuss is about and will I please come in and feed her as it is supper time....

Hope you enjoyed the wander about....

It's May it MUST be Spring!

Walled garden. Stromness on the horizon

Ha!  Well sort of.  The sun is warm, if you can find a sheltered spot. But the weather is what can only be described as "changeable"! And temperatures are still a bit on the low side even for Orkney. Although the temperature got up to 10 degress C today. Double digits. Wow! Spring IS here.

So - of course it's time to get into the garden.  The gardening season is short in Orkney, usually May through to October IF you are lucky.  It takes till about now for the earth to warm up, but from now on things put on an amazing growth spurt.  You can HEAR plants growing!

So this weekend I cut the grass around the house and in the walled garden, and started thinking of planting "stuff".  So far I planted broad beans and peas.  Everything has to be protected from pecky hens till it has grown a little sturdier.  Hence all the green netting.  I also have a chicken fence to put up to keep them OUT so we'll see how that goes.

I do love being in the garden with the hens though. They love rootling around as I dig.  I'm creating a new bed in the walled garden.  Bit ambitious as I can't really cope with all the borders as it is. Though I do have help from neighbour, S, who does lots of the hard graft for me. Anyway the girls were having a good rummage in the earth where I had turned back the black plastic which was put down last winter to kill off the grass.  So far I've just planted some crocosmia "Lucifer" in this bed. But there are some plants to be moved from another border where things have got a little crowded, and some new ones to introduce too.

Um, yes that picture is a little off the horizontal!  But it's tricky trying to photograph hens while holding the camera with gardening gloves!

However Button did NOT like being ignored and is yelling at me to come and pay her some attention...

Meanwhile the rest of the hens and cockerels were having a snack on the remains of the carrots from last year!  I grew them in tubs which worked well but some were not worth pulling up but seem to have grown recently!  So - snack time for hens...

Did I mention Button?  Well clearly something distracted her...thankfully!

And then the weather went a bit weird for a while.  There were some short rain showers before the sun came back.

But a lovely afternoon in the garden for all of us, enjoying some warmth and sun!

A mixed bag of Spring Weather!

The weather forecasters always talk of "April showers" - well there has been rain, hail, sleet and snow for the last week!  But lots of sunshine too.  The sun is now setting past the tip of Graemsay so I KNOW Spring is here.  And the days are definitely longer now.  Sunset will be 20.54 tonight.

And there are lambs in the field!  I feel so sorry for them though in this changeable weather.  I want to bring them all indoors!  Here are just a couple.  The ewes and lambs are numbered so the farmer can tell which lamb belongs to which mother when doing the head count.

When the sun comes out there is warmth in it and it is a joy to see. AND we are having more sun than not.  This next photo was taken on a calm day....  This is the "main road" round the island! A single track of tarmac. There are no "formal" passing places so you need to judge your direction just right at boat times or there's a lot of frantic reversing so folk can get to the pier in time.

The hens enjoy being out in the sun, and the grass is coming through nicely in front of my house so they are happy to peck away at that.  In the background of this photo is Stromness, across the blue water.  Lots of sky in the photo is deliberate.  I love big skies!

And a wandering male pheasant!  Not native to Orkney but introduced to the island some years ago.  Not prolific breeders (or at least not successfully!) but there are always a few around.

And then there is the weather over the last few days..... choppy seas, fluffy clouds and blue skies during a gale yesterday.

Hail/sleet shower over Hoy in the distance.

Hail battering the study window at the back of the house yesterday.

And a slightly warmer reminder to finish this post - a sunset. with the sky ablaze.

Bag the Bruck 2016

"Bag the Bruck" is an annual event in Orkney and is the time communities go out collecting bruck (rubbish) from around the beaches.  Not only does it make the beaches look better, but more importantly it helps the environment and all the marine life and birds that live along the shore.

This year Team Sandside were out in force - Irene from Breckan, who together with myself, co-ordinated our team which was made up of Becky, Katiem and James Braddock.  They did all the scampering around among the dunes, sand and rocks collecting all sorts of bruck.  They are very switched on to this and James was explaining how the rope and string on the beach might catch around the feet of the birds and they would die, trapped on the shore.

Becky valiantly helped remove the tyre from the beach which had been full of sand. It was a joint effort, I spotted the tyre, James scooped out all the sand, and Becky carried it up to the road.  I asked her if it was too heavy for her to carry, to which she replied "It's lighter than Mum's handbag".  Hee hee....

James collected driftwood with a vengeance.  I'd spotted this wonderful long piece of driftwood across the beach, but gave James the chance to get it as I'm sure a wee boy will have more fun with it. He said he's well armed against vampires now.

It was a very cold, windy day and sand was blown into our faces, but we valiantly carried on!  The two beaches we cleaned up were actually not too bad. They are the most frequently visited and most folk try and remove any litter or "bruck" they see.  Though as Katie said, it was remarkably clean considering there was nothing between it and Canada!

So thanks kids for an entertaining time, and you will now be a permanent addition to Team Sandside, which used to just be made up of Irene & myself, and formerly her old dog, Shandy, and once, HRH Princess Button.  But Button stayed indoors snoozing today. Way too cold for a puss cat to be out and about.

Other folk on the island will be doing other beaches and then all the bags will be sent over to be collected by the local authority for disposal.  All around Orkney over the last two weekends lots of groups will be "bagging the bruck".  A great community effort.

The old pier at Sandside

(Click on the images to see in the "lightbox" - bigger!)

There is a lovely old pier that separates the two beaches I walk on most days.  On one side is the curve of Sandside Bay, a sandy beach with a few shells, but not many, and on the other side is the coral beach and lots of rocks.  I always imagine there is a sub-sea roundabout with directions to each beach depending on whether you are sand or coral and shells.  Hee hee.

Anyway, this pier was built around 1860 specifically for the building of the two lighthouses on the island, Hoy High and Hoy Low.  The "Lighthouse Stevensons"  built most of the lighthouses around Scotland over a 150 year period, including the two on Graemsay.

The stone for the towers and lighthouse buildings were cut over on the Orkney Mainland and then shipped across to the pier at Sandside and taken by carts to the each location.  I'm not sure where the stone originated from, but it will have been one of the quarries in Orkney I would think.

Anyway, back to the pier.  It has always fascinated me as it just appears to "sit" upon the rocks.  I have NO idea how it was built but I love it's shape and form.  So here are a few photos. In some ways it's a tricky pier to approach by boat as there are lots of rocks on one side and as the tide goes out it's easy for a small boat to hit these, but there IS a channel safely through - you just have to find it!

Here the pier ends and joins the land.  Various efforts have been made to stop the coastal erosion around it, including cement bags, and dumping loads of concrete blocks!

This is the familiar view as I approach each day (usually with Button!).  Stromness over in the distance and the Point Of Ness (near the white pointy marker in the water just to the left of the harbour) where the stone for the lighthouses would have set out on it's journey across to Graemsay.   At low tide you can see the rocks!

I love the curve in this pier, a bit like a "buttress".  This is the bit that Button usually walks down.

This is at the end of the pier, just to the right in this photo.  Steps leading down to the rocks....

At low tide you can walk right out - though it's quite slippery with seaweed.  When the tide is in this makes a nice natural pool to swim in.

When you are standing in the "pool" at low tide the rocks rise up around you.....

This might be a better view - probably should have taken pier photos on a dull day! I love the stone work...

And here is another familiar view!

Both Button and I love this old pier - as you can tell as it features in most of our beach photos :-)