That is all that is left until the end of the year, forty six days, so you only have to put up with those few days of my photos and the year will be done. I hope I can keep this going as it is increasingly more difficult to find a new subject to bring to you daily. determined to keep this on to the end as I can honestly say it will be the first New Year Resolution I have ever kept until the end.
16th.
If you cross the river bridge after our drive and turn right to go down to the village, this is the view that greets you. A steep single track road with some now nearly devoured of leaves trees, but two weeks ago was a colourful sight for the eyes. A sure sign that we are nearly into Winter once again our sixteenth year of surviving it. Hopefully the council have all their snowploughs prepared and will provide us with the usual high standard of road clearance , up every week day morning before 10.30 and the road cleared and salted so that the Glen can get out and beyond. Just leaving us locals to clear a path at weekends, we are provided with plenty of road salt to spread around and normally it is not to much of a problem and we somehow manage.
17th.
Even at this time of the year if you want to find colour in dead weeds you can. This plant is a prime example, when I walked down the road yesterday the light was beginning to go and the white of this plant seed heads shone out. I have no idea what it is, but took it back home with me and today put it in my light box and photographed it.
18th.
Half way down the field in front of us we have a standing of about six Oak trees that are a wonderful advantage for all our wildlife. They are always the last to come into leaf in the Spring, which often determines the nesting time for many birds especially the Tit families as they rely on caterpillars from these trees to feed their young. They (as you can see from these two shots) are the last to lose their leaves and it has been great fun during the last month watching all different larger birds taking the acorns from them. I believe I am correct in saying that an Oak needs to be sixty years old before producing acorns so most of the trees in this collection are that old. For the first time ever we have witnessed the Crows collecting the acorns and burying them in the fields around, it has been an all day line of them flying backwards and forwards with them in their beaks. Yes I did try to photograph them with no great success. So not only are these trees some great specimens they are supporting so much life I hope they remain for a long time yet.
As an added bonus, unknown to us, where the River Fender flows behind these Oaks I went exploring as I had not ventured amongst the trees before and found the hidden gem below. A 20 foot waterfall with a great pool below it. I know our neighbour has discovered one further up the glen, but I think this will surprise him when I show this one to him at the weekend.
19th.
Today is a dull, mild but cloudy day and just after sunrise managed to capture this. during a break in between the clouds was a brief glimpse of the sun, shining just on the area that the timber had been removed. As if saying “this is now barren land not capturing any carbon dioxide and I need to be replanted”. A climate change message for all.
20th.
Autumn is nearly done with us especially as this mild spell is due to come to an end tonight and snow is expected on the hills. Most of the leaves have fallen off the trees or have been blown off with the strong winds. But I just love the one stubborn one that decides I am going to hang on until the bitter end. This is one such leaf, all the others on the tree have disappeared but this one, right at the end of a branch, just decides “I am staying”. Be interesting to see just how long it remains.
21st.
I have been trying for years to get a decent shot of Redwings and Fieldfares feeding in my garden, this is the closest I have managed so far. This is one of about fifty Redwings that descended on our Hawthorn tree and destroyed the berries in days, before moving onto the next area to deplete those trees. Thrush size and a winter visitor that is very welcome in my garden.
22nd.
Most of you would have seen the spectacular images of the ceramic poppies that were about for Armistice Day well our hedge of Cotoneaster reminds me of them. The beautiful red berries on the hedge flowing down are a lovely sight as you come up to the front door. If we have a harsh Winter these will soon be food for the Blackbirds who seem to love them and eat them in their tens all at once, which is great to see. Not only the fact that it is food we have provided, but also saves on our use of sultanas.
23rd.
As you are aware I enter a monthly challenge on a photographic forum for Canon cameras that I belong to. This months theme is “Stripes and Patterns” and this is my entry that will be judged on the last day of the month. The shot is of the railings on the Garry River road bridge on what was todays sunny morning, will let you know how I got on in next months blog. I know the suspense is killing you.
Sorry the shot below was the one I submitted in the end (old age strikes again).
Which do you prefer?
24th.
Our log burner is giving us plenty of heat tonight ready for the cold snap forecast for over night. Minus temperatures with a strong wind and the likelihood of snow at lower levels. Going to Killin tomorrow let us hope the roads are clear but some good snow on Ben Lawers to show you.
25th.
This was Ben Lawers from Killin today, not as much snow as I had hoped for, in fact I think our Munro’s have more on them than this. But at least the roads were clear and we had a good run both ways. This is in fact the view from my wife’s cousins house and is shared by a lot of residents in the village, nearly as good as our view. Tomorrow is forecast to be cold, strong winds and plenty of snow and looking back at some shots on this day eleven years ago we had two inches of snow, so it is not uncommon this early into winter.
26th.
Well the storm has arrived, very strong winds, zero C temperature which can only mean some snow and snowing it is. Admittingly only in short burst and disappearing before the next one, but as you can see from the above shot, it is a blizzard when it does snow. This is the bedroom window on the prevailing side of the wind and the outside of the sill soon built up, very pretty but could do without it as we have a (hopefully) B.T. engineer coming this afternoon to sort our broadband out (again hopefully).
27th.
This is a shot taken on the 27th but was unable to put it on the blog on the day as we have just spent twenty six hours without electricity and as we have night storage electric heating (apart from the log burner) we have been somewhat cold. The temperature outside never went above minus two C so you can imagine what the house was like, took me right back to my childhood pre central heating.
Any way this is our poor Hydrangea which once it drops below zero just turns black, it always comes back the following year with plenty of greenery but not to many flowers. Looks attractive with the snow modelling the shape of the leaves.
Below is a bonus , as I have covered Red Deer many times before. This is a herd of stags about a mile away on the hillside, when I enlarged the shot I counted forty nine stags.
28th.
Plenty of snow overnight and as the house was still cold we slept in the living room with the log burner to keep us warm. Cleared the road first thing as at weekends we do not get the snowplough up, then got the camera out. What a enjoyable sight of a colourful Heather shining brightly in the snow and all the while I was photographing the garden my lovely tame Wren followed me around saying “if your not going to feed me , at least get a shot of my good side”.
29th.
It is that time of the year when I take all the Rainbow Trout I have caught during the season out of the freezer and cold smoke them for friends and neighbours. The picture above shows the curing procedure that is underway. First I place them in a brine solution of a kilo of salt to eight pints of water and let them defrost and absorb the liquor for three hours, this is known as the wet salting. The shot above shows the next stage. I wash the brine off of the fish, dry them and then cover them on both sides and inside with salt, this draws all the moisture out of the trout and they stay like that for a further three hours. Then I will wash them off and dry them again, before hanging them in the smoker for at least eighteen hours . I use various woods to smoke the fish , which comes in a fine sawdust that allows them to smoulder rather than burn quickly. For this years mix I am trying Oak whisky barrel dust, mixed with Hickory, which I hope sounds like a good mix, in the past I have used Beech, Apple and a plain Oak, all have been good, so will have to wait until tomorrow to find what this batch taste like. Tomorrow I will follow this up with shots of the fish in the smoker and the finished fillet. P.S. The small fish on the right is in fact a wild Brown Trout that I want to see what it comes out like.
30th.
So the follow up sequence to yesterdays blog, this is some of the thirteen fish having done their time in the smoker overnight, then begins the preparation for getting ready to eat.
I remove the heads and tails and fillet from the main bone structure, then each side needs to have the fine bones along the body removed. This is a long boring procedure where as you can see above the bones are removed one at a time using tweezers, some come out real easy while others take an age to find and remove. It in fact took me two hours to fully fillet the twenty six sides.
The final bit is wrapping each side individually and dispersing them to friends in the village as early Christmas presents. Some of which you can see above.