Trying to pack; I'm heading up to Inverness to go to work on Skye tomorrow. My car is too small for everything including the quatrain  and lances from Bothwell castle :-/ as well. I'm doing a Bronze and Iron Age activity series for Historic Scotland and I've got firelighting, breadmaking, basketry, fresh foraging and pottery making stuff to take too, and a burned bowl for the kids to scrape out .....it's a messy job but someone has to do it :-))

My garden is growinglike a jungle and I don't have time to deal with it properly just now, though I do believe that we are mortal and try not to leave any other living thing trapped and unable to escape if I don't attend to it, so the garden will thrive anyway. Little baby newts in the ponds just now and those clambering beasties that build their tubes with bits of detritus too. Everything seems a bit off kilter,  it's only May and the meadowsweet is trying to bloom, the red campion is already out and the bluebells seem to have come and gone like greased lightening.

The trees aren't as happy as they might be, the hornbeams are dead right enough but they're sending up new shoots from the base. The top hamper is all rapidly losing it's bark. I'll need to cut the tree down I think, it overhangs a pathway, but the timber is good. I'll put up photos when I get home, and my rowan tree has masses of flourish but virtually no leaves, I think it's gotten fungused and is on the way out :-/ 

Finished forty feet of rush rope this morning but I need 60 fathoms for a kishie basket so still got a waaaay to go. Found a great source for dockens across the burn so might make a docken kishie instead of an oat straw one.

My acorn coffee hasn't lasted long this year, I've just had virtually the last cup. I have a stash of acorns that dried out in a net bag though....wonder if they're worth doing anything with other than dye? We'll see.

Might not get back on until I get home, quite looking forward to it; Lots of raptors last time and stunning views and collected some mica schist too, was really looking for soapstone or steatite, the stuff from nearer home does cut with a saw and a knife but it's harder than the serpentinite that I gathered from Port Soy, that is good stuff, carves with a sharp bone let alone a steel knife.

I'm getting used to the new site, still a few hiccoughs but it feels steady now ^^cool^^

I'll be home in a week.

cheers,

Mary