Had a pretty good Samhain gathering last night, around a blazing bonfire here at the Steadings. Not much ritual, but a fair bit of talking, and drinking and eating. Made our wishes over the flames….
It was dry, pity it was cloudy – the few times the Moon showed, She was a wonderful sight. Meant to stay up to watch the fire die, but after midnight my body started telling me that it was after 1 a.m. and I really should be in bed.
This morning, went out to put out the paper recycling box and was struck by the beauty of the beeches, in full autumn colours. Just couldn’t stop looking….

Oh, and Limetrees farm where we hold our annual Camp has now got it’s own website.

And I’ve got the November edition of Transit online. On time, for once! Hoorah!

We went for a walk yesterday, around the castle grounds next to our house. Signs of autumn were everywhere, especially in the square of ancient beeeches where the leaves were thick underfoot. We were surprised to find several clumps of crocuses sprouting in the sheep-meadow – it set B muttering furiously about global warming putting all the seasons out of sync; later, at home, I checked in our invaluble copy of Roger Phillips’ Wild Flowers of Britain and discovered we had just come across our first autumn crocuses.
We took the path around the back of the castle mound, finding our way blocked by a big old tree that had collapsed from the cliff-edge above. It was quite a limb over and through the tangle of branches and thick ivy-stems (it was clearly the weight of the ivy, combined with weeks of root-loosening rain on the shallow rocky soil, that had finally bought the patriarch down), but we made it and walked along the edge of the marsh to our goal: three or four big horse-chestnut trees, each with a carpet of fallen nuts beneath them. We filled our pockets.
Today, we planted them in pots of compost and set them out in a shaded corner of the graden. Next spring, we’ll be the proud parents of a small forest, perhaps.

Yesterday was not one of my better days – my knees hurt like h*ll. We went into town for some shopping, bill-paying and a library visit. I did very little walking and I snapped at B for fussing over finding parking spaces close enough to the places I needed to go (I HATE being an invalid!), but his caution turned out to be right. By the time we got to the library, I only just managed to grab an Ian Rankin book before I was forced to sit down.
Once home, I immediately necked one of my painkillers. Not very willingly – I don’t like taking any sort of pill at all; these painkillers, although they work well, turn my brain to mush. I just cannot concentrate on anything.
I tried to do some work on the computer, but found myself scrolling through blogs instead, then wandering onto message-boards. I cut off the internet connection and still did no work, ending up playing games against the computer. So I gave up, went downstairs, and sprawled goggle-eyed in front of the TV for the evening.
I didn’t sleep well. By the time I got to bed, the painkiller had worn off. My knees weren’t aching too much but my brain, freed from an afternoon and evening of drugged inactivity, came back to life and demanded some exercise. So I gave up on sleep, went downstairs and spent nearly three hours reading emails, reading books, watching TV news and doing the Guardian crossword.

Today, my legs are OK again. We drove to the nearby village of Parton and took a look at the James Clerk Maxwell exhibition they are holding in the village hall there. Maxwell had a house nearby and is buried in the local churchyard – the 125th anniversary of his death is in November. The exhibition was tiny, and it will end on Saturday. But it was interesting nevertheless, and will raise funds for the village.
So, we got back home, I went to do some work on the computer, B settled down to read and cook. At 5.40, the electricity went off – I had forgotten to get tokens for the electric meter. We hadn’t eaten, we cook on electricity, I had some work to finish on the PC. So we had to have electricity there and then – couldn’t wait til morning. The village Post Office, where I usually buy them from, shut at 5.30. So, it was a 15-mile drive into town. But first, we needed to get some desiel in the car. This means doing a 6-mile detour to the nearest garage.
When we got to the garage, I told B to only get £5 worth – we are short of cash. But, somehow he misunderstood. And put in £10 worth instead. Never mind – we still had enough to buy some electric tokens. It just wouldn’t leave us very much cash for the weekend.
In town, B dropped me off close to the shop, I got the tokens, came out to find him parked right at the kerb ready to pick me up.
“I’m not doing this for your comfort,” he said, “I’ve just thought – my chops were cooking under the grill when the electric went and I can’t remember turning it off before we went out. So we have to rush back in case they’re catching fire!”
It took him a good ten seconds or so to understand why I was laughing……

We drove home the pretty way, via Lauriston, along a winding road that cuts through forest and fields and runs a mile alongside the Loch. There were huge numbers of wild pheasants around; they are such brainless creatures that they made driving difficult as B kept trying to avoid them on the road. They just stand there, looking at you until you’re almost upon them. Then they scaramble awkwardly out of the way and just stand there again, blinking and trying to remember what had just frightened them. They are utterly stupid birds – which says a lot about the so-called sporting skills of the people who pay to shoot them; a blind paraplegic could bag himself a pheasant, so long as somebody pointed his wheelchair in the right direction to run it down.
Anyway, there were plenty of heaps of bloodied feathers on the road, providing a feast for the local carnivores. Jackdaws were greedily flocking all along the road; we turned one bend and startled a feeding red kite; we turned another bend and passed a fox crouching in the verge.
Autumn windfalls indeed….

What’s with the mosquitos around here lately? They are swarming onto anything warmblooded, biting like crazy.
Just last week, B got bitten on his arm; the two bites swelled up into golfball-sized lumps, so he went to the doctor. The doctor had half-a-dozen similar lumps of his own and had given up counting the number of patients he was seeing with severe mozzie bites. B cam home with some cream, which seemed to do the trick – the lumps disappeared in a couple of days.
Then yesterday, John-next-door came round, asking to borrow the cream – most of his hand was swollen with bites. Just now, his wife Pauline was round with the cream – it hadn’t worked and John’s hand had continued to swell. He’d been to the doctor last night and had sceptecaemia diagnosed. He’s now in bed and swallowing antibiotics like crazy.
And I’ve heard others complaining about mozzie bites – it seems this really is an unusual and severe outbreak. Climate change, anyone?

It has been beautiful here today. I’d been planning to take the bus to Dumfries, to get some library books, but when I woke up the sun was shining on the hill and the sky was a cloudless blaze of deep blue. So me & B went off for a walk instead.
With my knees, we couldn’t walk very far, of course. We first drove up the road to Mossdale, then took the car along the disused railway line towards Arie. We parked it about a mile along, just past Stroan Loch, and walked up the track past Arie farm. By the time we got to the gate that led into the forested section, my knees were twinging, a sure sign that I had walked enough. So we slowly walked back again, stopping several times for me to rest. It was a bit of a disappointment, having to stop – if we had managed about another mile and a half, we would have come to Loch Skerrow. B’s been there, and says i’s a wonderful place – just birds and hills and the odd sheep.
But it was a nice walk anyway. The hedgrows were filled with blackberries, rosehips, hawthornberries and rowanberries. As always, I had bought along a plastic bag and collected quite a few blackberries and rosehips, for winemaking – rowanberries are mildly toxic, while hawthornberries are simply tasteless (even the birds don’t touch them until there is nothing else to eat). And it was good to get out in the sunshine and gaze across all that empty landscape.
That particular bit of line was only closed in the 60s, as part of the Beeching closures. It ran from Castle Douglas to Newton Stewart, and would be a fantastic tourist attraction if it were reopened. It would also be very useful to some of the natives – for instance, Arie farmhouse is just a hundred yards or so from the line. Getting there by vehicle involves going over a mile or so of rough track; it was obvious, with a track going from the house to a gate onto the line, with a large postbox beside the gate, that the train used to stop there and drop deliveries and perhaps passengers.

Once home, I got out the map and calculated that I had managed to walk nearly three miles altogether. Not bad going for me, these days. But not too good when I remember how, less than five years ago, I could easily have mamaged three times that without even stopping.
Bah.

…just a little. We have our friend Norm staying for a few days and we are showing him the local sights. Which consist mostly of trees and hills. And sheep. And trees. And hills. And a few more sheep. And trees. Oh, and a few cows as well, for variety…
Anyway, today we drove him over to the coast, via Stranraer. It was quite misty and damp – a pity, because Ailsa Craig is a terrific sight in clear weather – a big cottage-loaf shaped rock rising straight out of the sea. But today, it was only just visible. Still, the rest of the sights were quite spectacular. For instance, the row of houses along the coast road that all have house-sized boulders and outcrops decorating their gardens – real rock gardens!
We almost went back home via the cycle/walking track that goes past Loch Trool and Loch Dee. It’s rough, but worth the trip. Cars actually aren’t supposed to go along it, but B ignores such petty restrictions. All that stopped him today was the knowledge that the gate at the other end of the track some miles away might be locked (as it usually is), so that we’d have to turn around and drive all the way back – and we were short of fuel.
But as I said, it’s worth going that way, whether on foot or on wheels. It is really beautiful, wild country. Empty too. We’ve walked up to Loch Dee and it is a natural loch (not dammed in Victorian times, as so many are) and it actually has sandy little beaches all around the shoreline. Apart from a seat and a fishing club’s hut, not a sign of so-called civilisation anywhere. Just acres of hills and sky and water. And acres of silence!
When we were there last week, we took some pictures of it on our mobile phone, but haven’t yet worked out how to get them onto our computer – we don’t have one of those docking thingies.
I really do wish we had a decent digital camera. There are so many things around here that I’d like you all to see.