Green explosion

Drove boxes to Edinburgh on Saturday. Ambushed by a blown away bin store; had to fix it. Not as off duty as we’d anticipated. Collected more household hardware from Ikea and B&Q. Came home Monday with a surplus sewing machine from Steve – a brilliantly useful piece of kit. From west of Loch Lomond to here the bluebells were in full glory.

Back on the plot I started painting the renewed render with limewash and repairing the render round the base of the workshop (Mike Wye – Traditional Limewash – made in Devon). The wash dries dark grey, the colour chosen to make the rendered Isoquick as invisible and shadow-like as possible. And it’s similar to the window frame colour. The instructions say four coats for new render, with twenty four hours in between each and to avoid a cracked or powdery surface you shouldn’t let it dry too quickly. So I spent a fair bit of time crouching and water-misting my way round both buildings, arranging and rearranging protective boards, according to where the sun was. My thighs ache. Wednesday – I’m up to two coats on the house and half the workshop. When neither render nor limewash need attention I’ve been weeding, adjusting ground levels, moving stones and contemplating how to manage spreading and rolling twenty tonnes of MOT Type 1 aggregate. It occurred to me today that I should simply hire in the muscle and machines. The contractor who did a good job of fencing our neighbours’ plot will drop by after work tomorrow for a look-see and a chat.

Thursday: after painting every rendered surface with another coat of limewash I walked the site thinking about what I actually want a contractor to do and how it might best be organised. More of our pet rock by the front door is being revealed, as I shift pea gravel and adjust adjacent levels. I want plants around it as soon as possible but that might have to wait until our next trip to Oban.

Reluctant to work indoors in such fine, warm weather I started clearing a strip at the north end of the house. This spot catches the evening sun from spring to autumn and the view over wooded slopes is interesting all year. We want more sitting space there and I can’t spread new aggregate over vegetation as it will end up compromising whatever paving I eventually lay.

The mattock is my perfect tool for lifting the varied turf off the underlying rocks; I put larger stones aside for later use and heaped matted, soily roots along the lower edge of the cleared area. Smaller pieces of turf containing foxgloves, yellow rattle or coltsfoot I replant nearby, softening the stone edges I’ve built by the drainage inspection covers. By six o’clock I was spent, but pleased – I’d cleared the strip – and I collapsed on the bench with a refreshingly sour beer.

The contractor failed to show but had said if not today then tomorrow, but in the meantime my dear neighbour said that if I hire a mini-digger and a roller for a couple of days he’ll help me deal with the MOT Type 1. He hired a digger recently so is reasonably adept. Tomorrow I’ll price those items and compare it to the contractor’s quote – if he shows up. So long as I’m not shovelling and barrowing for several days…

Pleasingly several bushes of broom and gorse have sprung up around the plot; one we collected as a seedling has red and yellow flowers.

Tuesday 14 May. Where is the time going? I’ve applied the final coats of lime wash and been working on the upstairs shower, fixing the rail and pelmet to protect the shelves at the back. I wanted to find a solution that was as reversible as possible so that if the rail supports had to be moved it wouldn’t ruin several tiles.

The sewing machine from Steve has been in use already. I was dreading that it would need much fiddling and time that I don’t have to get it behaving, but it’s doing the business smoothly. I’ve sewn two cushion covers, mended my old bush hat for the umpteenth time (with sofa fabric samples), repaired a bag-for-life and adjusted the width of the new shower curtain (I guess it’s actually a cupboard curtain in a shower). Next I’ll cut the curtain to length and hem it. Then there are the overly long cotton curtains in the magic room to be shortened to fit. The machine is a good thing, the only negative being restricted bobbin access for my large hands.

There were no hanging holes in the shower curtain but I’d been using a brass eyelet kit so we could rope two tarpaulins together – I put a dozen eyelets in the top of the curtain.

Late last Friday evening Tash called me outside. She’d gone out to look at the stars and call the cat. The sky was crossed with strange pale streaks, radiating from high overhead and slightly to the south; some glowed pink. It took us a while to work out we must be looking at the northern lights. Changes were very slow, almost imperceptible. There was no flickering. Colour was muted. Sometimes we could just discern a greenish glow, but I couldn’t tell whether that was my brain compensating for the pink elsewhere… I took some photos on my phone.

Back on earth, West Loch Tarbert, the spring explosion has happened, green flooding you eye whichever direction you look. I’ve been crouching in the ‘front garden’ pulling up rushes and noticing how well the yellow rattle is proliferating. On the gravel path to the old fire pit there are stretches where you can’t walk without stepping on them.

The regenerating woodland has been closing our view of the loch, so we finally went to snip a few saplings. I’d forgotten how steeply the land dropped away so, instead of dealing with birches two and a half metres tall, I was facing trees of up to six metres, with trunks eighty millimetres across. I felled and dismembered five or six then sawed them into small logs.

The effect is not huge, but it’s positive. I anticipate more (endless) pruning, hopefully not so much felling, and, as the trees grow, removing lower branches to raise the crowns and allow views beneath.

Oh, and talking of West loch Tarbert, don’t worry about that yellow scum. It’s not the farm runoff you read about, but pollen (probably from the massed spruce). It’s covering the freshwater lochs too, and the car and…