Thursday 31 August 2023
There was a gorgeous, large, bright full moon last night and it’s sunny this morning for the last day of summer. I have been outside and it is chilly, properly chilly. According to the app on my laptop it is 4°C, which does not seem as inaccurate as it sounds for a temperature in August in the northern hemisphere.
Around the Ettrick Valley, the temperature today is forecast to be sunny and between 4°C and 16°C, with the low being close to the 2°C record low for 31 August. Sunrise was 05:15 and sunset is 19:09.
Around Lewisham, southeast London, the temperature range for today is between 12°C and 17°C and largely rainy. Sunrise was at 05:10 and sunset is 18:49. So there is still a bit more daylight in our part of Scotland compared to London, but, unsurprisingly, it’s colder. The sun versus rain is great for us here today, but is not a reflection of how it’s been over August.
This morning, it would seem that extractor fan mouse was either having a party with friends or he made an extra determined drive to eat his way through the fan. There is more debris (shavings of white plastic extractor fan) and more droppings (at least five) than ever before.
Yesterday was the first day since I started wearing a Fitbit again that I didn’t walk 10,000 steps. I did walk around our land and round a forestry track to the road but only made it to just over 7,000 steps, though that is more than I was doing most days pre-Fitbit. I didn’t feel too bad about it, knowing I had walked 22,000 steps the day before while I was in Edinburgh.
I took quite a lot of photographs while I was walking yesterday, in part because I suspect that where suddenly it seemed to go from winter to spring, I think it will morph into winter remarkably quickly.
I have just been looking at a few photos we took the first time we came to view this house. I had thought it was exactly a year ago today but it was two days ago. I suppose when I took those few photos outside, we didn’t know that a year later this would be our home. The photos have reminded me that when we first visited, a fire was burning in the burner. I suppose I should have realised then that the house would be cold. Even in August. I also noticed that there were six swallows perched on the overhead cable. There are still a few swallows around this year but definitely fewer. It is also apparent that August this year has been wetter than last year; the grass is more lush last year and last August was scorching hot pretty much all over the country.
