Seven months - condensed!!

Having been chided by a number of my friends for my failure to keep up with the blog I can only apologise and hopefully this summary will get you up to date after a fashion.

The snow finally disappeared and this year we were able to hold the easter egg hunt on grass rather than snow and actually enjoyed an amazingly hot April where we barbequed and generally enjoyed being outside - just as well as the rest of the year has been pretty disappointing weatherwise and visitors over the summer didn't experience the sunshine that we had come to expect at that time of the year. Tim and Ruth in particular noticed the difference as the children were running around in shorts and t shirts in April and bundled up in jumpers in August.

It has certainly been 'the year of the visitors' this year with guests here for around ninety nights since the last entry!! In terms of 'bed occupancy' that translates to nearly two and a half times that number of nights and I have been heard to remark that if we were running a B&B we would be very pleased with our occupancy!! As it is, we have really enjoyed being able to have so much time with friends and family and are getting our 'tour guide patter' down to a fine art. For some, it has been the first time that they have visited the highlands and we hope that it has been a positive experience and that they will return. Highlights of these visits have been watching the capercaillie lek at 5.00 am with Steve and Mary, watching for pine marten and badger late at night with Kevin and Maria, a trip in wild weather to Skye, also with Kevin and Maria, a lovely meal out with Steve, Mary, Richard and Judith overlooking Loch Ness and introducing Matt's friend, Nick to the world outside Aviemore. We have also had the pleasure of renewing some old and neglected friendships. The grandchildren have enjoyed collecting eggs from the chickens, riding on nanas tractor, riding on the steam train and the purple train up the mountain, swimming and of course all is accompanied by much cake eating!

In addition to the visitors here we have made around eight trips down South , including a celebratory meal after Richards brother made his inaugural speech after being made a professor at Canterbury University where we also celebrated Richards Mum and Dads 65th wedding anniversary and Dads 88th birthday! Liz managed to sneak in a few hours in Sutton before flying back the next day! Their anniversary celebrations continued over several weeks and included a cake, balloons and a speech at the community coffee morning and a trip to the Castle of Mey which they really enjoyed, not forgetting of course another card from the Queen. We have also attended a reunion of a crowd of our friends from our days at Kings College Hospital where we both trained, Richard spent a day watching the cricket in Birmingham the day after the riots and then spent a few days in Sutton catching up with friends as well as attending the funeral of an elderly friend from our previous church. Sadly, he also recently attended the funeral of an old school friend who died following a cycling accident. We were thrilled to be able to share with Daniel and Julie in the adoption ceremony for their oldest son and also to get to know his younger brother, also now very much part of the family. Richard has made two overnight trips to Glasgow with Mum and Dad to see the eye specialist there and Liz spent a week at CLAN (Scottish branch of New Wine) camp with some girlfriends and enjoyed glorious weather which showed St Andrews at its best although the heat made the smell of the manure in the field where the camp was held eye wateringly pungent! It made a change to be off site and not catering for the 5000!

Travelling aside there has still been a lot of activity here. The library is now complete and has already been the scene of much snooker playing and whiskey sampling. Putting the books in order is going to have to wait until the winter but we are thrilled with it and guests have spent a lot of time hunting for the two secret cupboards! The electrics are pretty much complete as is the insurance part of the decorating so we are looking forward to being able to start putting some pictures on the walls.

The chickens now have a new run in the paddock, courtesy of Pete - after they stole a cake at the easter egg hunt we decided that they couldn't be quite so free range and although I miss their greeting when I get home, overall it has been a good move, certainly meaning that the garden remains more intact. They are still effectively free range as they have a huge enclosed area with the burn running through it and we are hoping to get a few more soon and start selling eggs at the gate. We are waiting for a fence to be installed to divide the paddock as we are hoping to rear some weaners next year and have our own free range pork. The turkeys are arriving this week - just two this year for Pete & Trish and us as we decided that we had too much on to deal with all the slaughtering and plucking etc even though we had been asked if we would be rearing this year. We are also hosting two horses - Magnum and Rosie who will be grazing the paddock for the forseeable future.

The wildlife continues to entertain and although we were disappointed that the osprey didn't appear to have had any eggs hatch this year we still had plenty of bird life around as well as the red squirrels and were entertained for several weeks by a curlew chick in the paddock, fiercely protected by one parent who circled angrily around any perceived predator.

The polytunnel has been a great success and we have been almost self sufficient in vegetables and salad since May. We have been hiding courgettes in just about every dish and although production is slowing as the temperature drops we have been very pleased overall. The star of the show has to be the mooli radish tho' which grew to be monsters. We had a bit of a disaster with some of the veg when we had a sheep break through the fence from the fields behind us. She lopped the foliage off all the swede, mange tout and french beans as well as cutting the leeks down to about half height! Leo declared her a 'naughty sheeps' and I am inclined to agree! I am about to lift the onions and potatoes and plant out garlic and onions for next year as well as get some more winter veg in the polytunnel. We still have parsnips, carrots and swede to lift as well. It will soon be time to start the end of year clear up in the garden and the recent high winds have caused a lot of leaves to fall making it suddenly seem like autumn.

Many of the activities stop over the summer in the village but Mum and I have enjoyed trips out with the SWRI to Logie Steading and the Cairngorm mountain rescue centre where we had a great insight into the work the team do. Liz has given talks and demonstrations about the neonatal unit and machine embroidery. Sadly, Liz too sang as part of the SWRI choir at the funerals of two of our members, only two weeks apart but on a happier note (!) came third in the competition for six voices being only two points behind the winning choir. We hosted a strawberry tea here on what was possibly the wettest day of the year but still managed to raise around £180 from the stalwart souls who turned up. The coffee mornings run all year and are always well attended and the youth group have successfully completed the yurt and have hired it out for several events as well as a group travelling to Glasgow and Edinburgh for a 'two cities trip' which was great success.

Moy church was officially closed on March 25th and it will be sold in due course but it will take some time before it is valued and marketed. It was a sad event for the community as there are many associations with it. We had enjoyed having folk back for coffee after the service for the final few months and had a packed house on the evening it was closed.

So that was pretty much the last seven months - which brings us to recently..... a month ago we collected a golden retriever puppy, something we had been talking about for some time but hadn't felt was quite the right time. She is delightful (what puppy isn't?) and seems to be settling in well. We are getting broken nights as we tackle the housetraining but not as many as Sarah and Joe who welcomed Harvey Jack into the family at 03.50 on Sunday 11/09/11 weighing 7lb 8oz. Sarah had a straightforward delivery and was able to come home later that day. They are all doing well and are very happy. We are looking forward to a more settled few weeks while we all get used to being a larger family.