The first day of Spring is here and though the overnight temperatures have been below zero for well over a week the days have been sunshine and not a drop of rain to ruin it.So now was the time to replace the rotted roof off the potting shed, an epic job to remove the layers of felt then the old wood before putting a new one on and re felting it. Hard work for an old man like me, plenty of hot bath’s and evenings of relaxing.
27th.
The overnight frosts caused all the snowdrops to collapse, but as soon as the sun came up, these wonderful strong bulbs just came bolt upright again.
The Crocus enjoy the sunshine as well and when the full sun is upon them they burst opeen with such beauty.
Today was a busy day for us, as coming up from England was a week long display practice for the R.A.F Display Team, the Red Arrows at R.A.F. Lossiemouth. They published their route North which included coming within a mile of our house and not much higher than us also. They came in two waves these shots being of the first five and the other four behind them, unfortunately I was so busy watching the first group I missed the second group (at least with the camera. They followed the route of the A9 road the major route North but I was hoping they would have come through our Glen as that is normally the route for most military aircraft heading North.
The three highland ponies in the field in front of our house enjoyed the sunshine also.
1st March.
Once again part of our boundary wall had collapsed and we had the wonderful craftsmen from Dry Stone Walling , Perthshire in to repair it and after a day of hard graft Nathan produced this great piece of craftmanship and a wall that will out live us two by many a year.
Inside the wall he found some wall treasure this squashed up aluminium kettle, an old milk bottle and this lovely shaped door hinge. So I had to try and find something for ta future generation to find and placed a solid iron dumb weight which was used to operate sash windows and buried that in the middle of the wall. Nathan didn’t even know what it was for so future explorers of the wall will never guess what it was used for.
The main task I had while the day time weather was dry was to replace the potting shed roof above the stone wall, as over the years (even before we moved in twenty years ago) the roof had leaked and the wood was slowly rotting away, so off came the old plank style roof (now chopped up for kindling) and on when a brand new composite board roof and new felt. At my ripe old age I felt every part of the three days it took me to complete and it required,as I thought, a good hours soak in the bath each night to recover. Not a true professional job but done to my standard which will out live us two (I hope).
Well as we move forward into March I am already see the trees starting to bud up, the birds that have flown here for the winter disappearing and the local birds singing out for a mate, hopefully we will have the days getting warmer and enjoy what I consider to be the best season of the year Spring. All meaning more chances to capture some decent photography.