A Sad Story

Many thanks to Rachael for sending in this lovely picture of last night's sunset, taken from the shoreline just below Glenborrodale Castle, looking across Loch Sunart with Mull in the distance.

The sunset may have been peaceful pastel colours, but the sun rose this morning over Maclean's Nose looking angry - and with every reason because, although today has been another lovely day, with the temperature soaring (by our standards) to 12C, the forecast for the next few days doesn't mention the sun.

A couple of days of bright weather have galvanised the small bird population.  They're now in full mating mode, with the robins shouting their territorial rights from the twig-tops, and chasing each other around the bird feeders, and the blue tits busy checking out nesting boxes.

The sunshine turned human minds to the vegetable garden.  Fish boxes being reasonably plentiful along the shore line, we use them for things like growing salad leaves.  This one needed last year's soil cleaning out, but when we lifted it....

....we exposed a sad story.  Something, possibly a mouse, had built a winter home under it, and had gone to great lengths to collect and store a mass of hazel nuts in one corner.  We have no idea where the mouse got them from because, although there are some hazels in the local hedgerows, we can't recall seeing any nuts on them last year - and in any case, they're a long way from our vegetable garden.

But not one of the hazel nuts have been eaten.  Either it was a very forgetful mouse or, as seems more likely, just as it completed its winter preparations it came to a sticky end.

As well as shifting earth around the place, we did some weeding - and it's amazing how quickly the weeds have not only appeared but burst into flower.  This very pretty little nuisance is common field speedwell.