You see – more old stuff that’s gone to seed and become more beautiful for it. This time it’s the grass Stipa gigantea or golden oat grass to you and me. I grew this from seed. I nurtured it and coaxed it into life and it‘s now repaying me by looking stunning against the sunlight.

I‘ve started the reclamation of the garden behind the house today by cutting the lawn for the first time this year. It now looks (as DM said) less like the rough at Muirhead and more like a field that someone is trying to turn into a campsite. He‘s wrong re the latter. I don‘t camp. Not under any circumstances short of life or death!

We had a stroke of wonderful good luck today because we "found“ 400 litres of fuel oil so we will now be able to start to heat our water for baths and showers again once we‘ve managed to relocate it into our fuel tank. (We‘ve had no oil for months now.) That‘s going to be the tough bit but we‘ve researched how to do it and planned the procedure like a military exercise! Wish us luck or our golden oats may become toasted oats!