Monday 10 July 2023
We seem to be having a more normal Scottish summer at the moment, meaning there is on/off rain and greyness and the temperature is not forecast to rise above 15°C (23°C and sunny in Lewisham today). Then, as happened yesterday, usually late afternoon, we get an hour or so of blue-sky summer.
I happened to look at some photos of the areas I regularly take photos of and noticed just how much everything has grown recently. My paths through the long grass are slowly disappearing. Ubiquitous around here is meadowsweet, which looks a bit like elderflower heads close up but which are the height of long grass and have a fluffy, yellow-white appearance from a distance. Similarly, more bright pink rosebay willowherb are sprouting up; it looks stunning when there are big clusters of bright pink amidst frothy off-white flowers.
We first started house-hunting in Scottish Borders this time last year, though not this side of the county. We had no idea at that stage that a year later we would be living here, though after our first visit to view houses it was definitely the area we most liked. At the time, once you have an offer accepted on a house, that you then have to wait a few months before you can move in; those few months seem like an age. But now that it’s just over ten months since we first saw this house and made an offer, it seems like ages ago.
We spoke to our new friends on Saturday night about ponds and frogspawn. Although I have seen a few frogs on the road on wet evenings (usually, sadly, while I’ve been driving and they’ve been jumping across the road), I have only seen one (decapitated) frog in our garden. I saw tadpoles for a while but their mass seemed to disperse, or disappear, far quicker than I expected and there has been no sign of frog life in the garden. The neighbours said the same, that they had had loads, then tadpoles and then seemingly nothing remaining. I don’t think it’s been a good year for the frog population.
Our extractor fan mouse is still shaving bits of plastic off the extractor fan and still depositing the odd dropping. I dread to think what else they’re eating up there. Still no mouse sightings indoors, fortunately, but I suspect we will need to address the mouse problem at some point.
The mysterious addition of water to our tank a month or so ago was from the neighbour pumping up another hour and a half’s worth of water. Fortunately, with drips and trickles, we have only needed those two additions of water to our tank from his borehole, though it has been a very close call.
The midges are still a minimal nuisance because of wind, though I have still attracted the odd midge and currently have three areas I’m trying not to scratch.
We visited a new town, St Boswell’s, yesterday, though discovered, as we had actually been warned, it is a village rather than a town. Very pretty and probably not what I expected to find in Scotland. There is one large shop that sells books and fancy deli stuff as well as being a cafe. That is pretty much the only shop, but it is a very lovely place, if London priced. We spent longer having coffee and cake than we probably did walking up and down from one end to the other end of St Boswell’s. It was worth visiting though, particularly while the sun was shining; almost Cotswold chocolate box-y.
We are still going to bed before it’s properly dark and it does feel like almost all of the night is not dark-dark.
We will both be going to London this week, Chris likely tomorrow, me likely Thursday, but that is all subject to change.