Midsummer 2008
After just about recovering from the Folk festival our gallery season is now in full swing!
Farm News
June was mixed as far as the weather was concerned but it seemed to be particularly good for the vegetables and garden. By now we are eating baby cucumbers & courgettes out of the greenhouse, which is great! I found a great variety of yellow courgette called ‘One Ball’ which as its name says , is actually round!
The piglets are now weaned from their mum & are fattening along quite nicely! They are enjoying days out in the field in front of the gallery munching on the grass & anything they can find! It is great to see them outside enjoying their freedom.
One very wet day Roger happened to look out in front of the gallery window & saw one of our call ducks in the grass & to his amazement a fluffy little yellow duckling was waddling behind! It was wet & windy so we brought it inside & put it in a box near our rayburn to keep it warm & snug. See our Flickr photo of ‘Friday’ as she was named as we found her that day. This puts a new slant on being a ‘bird watcher’?
Another amazing sight in July were young swallows flitting about catching flies in our garden & landing on the washing line. There must have been about a dozen at one point! You can just about make them out in a photo on our flickr photo’s. That was really quite a magical moment. Another incredible sight was the Merlin outside our gallery window which Roger discovered after it had killed a meadow pippit. He managed to get his camera in time! See the photo on Flickr…
Whales
Finally we saw our first whales on the 2nd July. A pod of at least 5 Orca’s feeding on a shoal of fish in Eynhallow sound, Evie. We happened to be at our friends place for dinner that evening. Very exciting as we watched the family group for about an hour.
Jo saw a Harbour porpoise the next evening in Birsay Bay about 10pm! A beautiful calm evening. She also saw 2 porpoise in Birsay Bay during the middle of July. Where are those Minke whales??
Craiglands
We enjoyed ‘The St Magnus Festival ‘along with my Aunt & Uncle (Jo’s) who had never been to Orkney before & they were enthralled by the diversity of Orkney’s magic! Midsummer week was mixed but we did have some gorgeous Orcadian skies. We toasted midsummer on our cliff along with the puffins!July was more settled weather wise & we were able to enjoy some glorious sunny days & sit outside. Jo’s nan enjoyed sitting out in the garden in the warm Orcadian sunshine drinking elderflower cordial!
The Elderflower was particularly good this year & saw Jo making plenty of Elderflower cordial & champagne for the coming year. What a beautiful smell the flowers have when picke. What a gorgeous & easy drink to make!Starting enjoying our First tatties of the season. What can I say but YUM!! If you haven’t tried them the variety is ‘Lady Chrsitl’. Jo is starting to plan what produce she might put into the Dounby show next month…watch this space.
Fluke News
Roger has been busy keeping the gallery fresh with a few new pieces including rings, brooches & colour corded bracelets with groatie buckies on them. It has been great to see so many familiar faces over the last two months so thanks for popping by.
August will see the annual Agricultural shows which is a busy time on the farming calender on Orkney. So we look forward to that.
Until then, keep well & enjoy the summer!
Jo & Roger