Author: David Miller

Ever since a small boy I have attended Remembrance Sunday parades, initially in a county town in the home counties, where my dad was a councillor & laid a wreath on behalf of the council. Then on parade as a Sea Scout (short trousers can make you very cold in November). Followed by attending just as an adult in various towns where I have lived, culminating in what I thought would be the best, representing the Fire Services of the South West of England at the Cenotaph in London

But in actual fact of all of these the service here in Blair Atholl really is the best. I do not believe that many village services could have as good a turnout of residents than this one has. Led by our own local pipe band, followed by the Atholl Highlanders, the castles own private army. In fact the only private army in the U.K. that is permitted to bear arms, an honour that was given to them by Queen Victoria.

We have no minister in our local church but the service is lead by either retired ministers or lay readers, this year led by Grace Steel who did a fine job, with those present giving a very good rendition of The Lord is My Shepherd without any musical accompaniment. The memorial is itself very unusual being just a large piece of local stone. Wreaths are laid by various institutions, but to me it is lovely to see youngsters from the local play group .laying one.

Have included a few shots to give you some idea of the parade.

It was during the 1970s & 80s that all the top stars in sport had this mad idea to infest their money into coniferous forest & the U.K. , but mainly Scotland, started to be covered in these evergreen trees. They of course were so dense that no other vegetation survived under their canopy, not many birds lived in them, maybe Crossbills, Goshawks, that was about it. You would see the occasional Roe or Red Deer on the edges, but basically they were an environmental nightmare & I am not to sure that the likes of Steve Davies ever made a fortune out of them.

Move forward to the present day & those trees are now fully mature & are being felled & some areas are replacing them with native trees. What is worrying to me is that some estates are just leaving the ground full of roots & ruts where the felling vehicles have been working. Okay this wilderness encourages all the plants that have been dormant to sprout into the light they have missed for years & native trees will replace the conifers, but it really is more of a blot on the landscape than the conifers were.

All around the view from our house the felling has been going on , mostly using those magnificent machines that cut the tree down, strip the branches off & cut the trunk to the required length, all in a matter of three or four minutes. It is not until you hear & see the trees come down that you realise just how dense that wood was & just how much timber they get out of that collection. The machinery that cuts, collects the timber into a stack, plus those mad drivers that collect it & haul it off to the timber yards, seem to have been working for weeks (from very early morning on until after dark) again showing just how much there was.

Of course you hope that Atholl Estates will replenish the woods with native trees sometime in the future, but in the meantime it certainly has changed our view. Below I will illustrate this to you, I have searched high & low for before photos to add to this article, but as usual I know they are somewhere on my cloud but will not find them until this has been published.

So just a few days ago I wrote my blog, boasting about the mild weather we were having & how the plants were still looking great. Honestly I should not have written that piece, because what happened last night, we went down to MINUS FIVE CENTIGRADE , that’s right minus five. Of course that has been devastating for the plants as I will show you in the next lot of shots. On the weather this morning the coldest place in the U.K. was also in Perthshire at minus 5.6 so we were not far behind that. But what a beautiful crisp sunny morning we have had since, though this time of the year with the sun so low it doesn’t raise the temperature that much, in fact it is only plus 4 now (3pm). A mate in Somerset has just informed me that the lowest they have got to is 7C , so we are still pretty cold for those soft southerners.

Just wonder how long before I tell you about our first snow?

That lovely Clematis wilted with frost.

Not sure if these normally upright plants will recover?

This has been a strange season, because we have had so much rain it has been really fairly mild. Okay we have the heating on ticking over & on the last two full moons we have had frost’s, the full moon before this present one we went down to minus 3C one night & 8C the following night. This one we have so far been down to minus 1C but we are expecting a frost tonight.

So I think this has been giving mixed messages to the plants. Autumnal colours are appearing on the trees & I can assure you (having cleared the gutters once already) that the leaves are falling from the trees, but some of our garden plants just have not stopped blooming.

Rained ALL morning here, but a lovely sunny afternoon, so out I went with my camera to capture some examples to show you.

The hydrangea to me is the wimp of all garden plants, one sniff of a frost & it curls over & gives up. I would have it out but we left it for one more year & it actually gave us over a dozen blooms for the first time since we moved in.

Where as our beautiful Acer is in it’s prime at the moment, 15 years ago this was a small shrub but now it is splendid & creeps along the path edge, making you smile every time you pass it.

Okay it gets covered when we have a frost warning, but to see this Fuchsia still producing blooms this time of the year is a rarity for us.

As for Foxgloves this white one is still producing buds & looking fine. All the wild ones in the garden are long dead, but this one is something special.

Going back to Autumn colours this shrub is looking so attractive in the late sun & has hardly lost any leaves.

The tubs at our front door give you a real lift with the berries & variegated leaves, add as bit of colour to a dormant space.

Had a few Redwings & Fieldfare on the Rowan berries but nothing, not even the Blackbirds, have started eating these juicy berries yet.

Now for a couple more plants that should be finished weeks ago, this Harebell is a prime example.

This Clematis is still producing flowers as it has done for several months.

This plant certainly adds some colour to the garden, not sure I have seen it smiling this late in the year before ?

Rock Rose (I think?) is still attracting a few late Bees, though they have certainly reduced to what they were a month ago.

Of course the Winter Heathers are looking good & will add some colour once all those other plants eventually die off.

Captured a late Blue Fly soaking up the late afternoon sun, I, plus the sheep in the field in front of the house will be pleased to see the back of them.

All we can wish for is a decent mild Winter with not to much snow to clear from the drive.

Apologies for no posting for a while, but I had a week in Cornwall before returning & doing my couple of weeks at Loch Dunmore preparing for this years Enchanted Forest.

Now I know every year I have to apologies for the fact that (by about 1/2 mile) this event is outside the Cairngorms National Park, but it is such an important event for not only Pitlochry , but also all the surrounding area, which includes our little village. You can imagine the influx of just under 3,000 visitors every night to the area for 30 days makes a lot of difference to traders, whom normally are either preparing to close down for the winter or a very much reduced footfall to a radius of 20 or so miles around.

Traders, be it cafes, B&B, gift shops or even the traffic wardens, all report a wonderful number of day time visitors. Every hotel is full as families make a couple of days break out of it, not forgetting the transport companies. Due to the fact Pitlochry has limited parking spaces (hence the wardens wandering around every night until 10 o’clock) , many people from Edinburgh & Glasgow arrive in coaches or on the train, all extra revenue they would never have dreamed of 15 years ago.

This year was a particularly busy year for me as an awful lot of the show was on the water, with some very tricky builds, which the only part I had to do was row the boat, one to get the various equipment to its correct spot & secondly keep the boat still while the very talented engineers constructed it.

So for these reasons, let alone seeing so many people enjoying the show, I feel it is only right to share some of the images with you.

The theme this year to coincide with the anniversary of the moon landing, is The Cosmos. Here is my partial eclipse as seen by spacemen. The Moon is an 8metre diameter balloon & the Earth is about 4metres. with 3,000 twinkling stars below it stretching 100 metres back into the woods.

On the press night the water was so calm & showed such wonderful reflections onto the water, as you can see here.

My shot really does not do justice to this little area, 3 of the satellite dishes were scattered around the site giving off a signal into space, the strands were strips of LED lights that sparkled.

Again it is the reflection that I loved over the projected images of this & the next three. The projection has occurred the last 3 years with a different 7 minute film each time. The wonderful thing that most people do not realise is that the show is projected through a very fine, high pressure, water spray.

I just love this eye, so much detail.

The gasps of amazement & joy as this spaceman emerges out of the water is incredible, the following shot is the spaceman floating in space & waving, the number of children that were waving back just added to the magic.

Every now & then you have to accept that you knocked the camera while it was taking a long exposure, which is what I did here. But funnily I rather enjoyed this piece of abstract “art”. It just echoed the movement of the whole show. Sorry for any that are unable to visit the show, but after many years of attending, this was the best ever.

It just does not seem right that today is the first day of Autumn, mainly because up here , apart from a few days here & there, we have not really had much of a summer. The good weather always seems to happen when we have visitors from down South & they say ” I thought you said the weather has been really bad up here, this is lovely”. I am just hoping for a Indian Summer & September will be good & warm & Autumn is short of bad days so we will not be prepared for a bad winter.

Old folk tales state that if we have an abundance of berries, then it is going to be a hard winter & as you will see below, the Rowan are nearly breaking their branches they are so laden with fruit. One year I must make some jelly out of them, not sure if there is such a thing as Rowan wine, shall have to check that one out. I shall be very disappointed if we do not get a good show of Redwing & Fieldfares eating them this year.

As Autumn has commenced I thought I would put in a couple of shots of the Autumn Crocus that grow in the garden. Went out before the rain today & took these few, very surprised at the number of Hover Fly & other creatures that are attracted to them, never really noticed that before.

The ever faithful Rhododendron shrub at our back door has flowered from May & is still sending out the odd flowers which is good to see, plus the Herb Robert is still attracting the bees, most probably the best we have seen it for years.

It does not seem a year ago that I put up some photos of the Harley Davidsons going up to Avimore for the “Thunder in the Glen”, seem to be more than ever going up this year, even though we are a mile away from the A9 from Thursday until Saturday Morning & then Sunday night, all you could hear was the rumble & throb of the bikes, just a great sound.

Plenty going on in the village over the English Bank Holiday (not one up here) with the International Horse Trials going on at the castle. Plus the venture that is Davy at the Fish & Chip shop with his marque & live music . I have never been but all who do go love it, so I must get down to it next year & share some photos with you.

With the Horse Trials they had this year a Bird of Prey display & as I love them I have included shots of the birds, all just have had a bath, as that was one of those rare hot days. Of course we had visitors at the time. 🙂

There is nothing like village events that bring the competitive side out of people to make them popular & the annual church flower show does that. One good thing about it is that it is open to the whole village not just churchgoers. For the past 10 years I have judged (along with one other) the vegetable section, which is of course highly competitive. Two highly respected members of the church have an annual rivalry in this section, with normally one of the two winning the coveted veg cup. Last year both missed out as a newcomer, one of Atholl Estates gardeners entered his own veg & walked most classes. Fortunately he didn’t enter this year so it was back to the usual battle. As judges we are not aware of who entered what , as their names are in sealed envelopes, so how demoralising must it have been when one of them won the first 5 categories & then went on to be above the other in all other classes. Hope I get a pint from one & not to long in the doghouse from the other.

Of course it will be of no surprise to know that I entered two photos, where the theme this year was Scottish Views, I have a bit of rivalry with one of the girls who works in The Mill, who is a great photographer. She sells cards with her photos on within The Mill & also at other local events, all of which are excellent & professional. She also entered two shots into the field of 20 or so photos, I managed a 3rd & she was not placed, so of course I had to go into The Mill & have a small boasting session.

Below are the shots I took of the various sections & I do apologies, I did get a bit carried away. 🙂

Please do not worry, this is not photos of me having my annual bath, I don’t want to lose what readers I have.

No, this is a great sequence I caught this afternoon from my garden hide. Both my wife & myself had been busy in the garden, she decided to go indoors for a cuppa & my first thought was to grab the camera. We have had some rough weather this week & the next 4 days are meant to be even worse, so as the sun was shining I thought why not.

The hide is set up (at present) to focus on the area of my pond where most of the birds go down for a drink & bath, this part of the ponds plants had grown considerably since I last took some shots, so a quick snip with the shears was in order. Concentrated on the photo opportunity area & on looking through the lens all was clear for some shots. What happened, the first bird to come down for a drink, landed on an iris leaf bent it into the focus area & the stem never went back, hence the annoying section in the left of the first three shots.

I never have to wait long on warm days for something to appear on the rock & sure enough down came this young Great Tit. At first it just had a drink then must have thought to itself that the water seemed about right for a bath. I do not think I have ever seen a bird bathe with such enthusiasm as this one, it really went for it. Hence the reason I just had to share the sequence with you. A great 15 minutes of shear enjoyment, both for me & the bird by the looks of it.

By now you are all aware of my love of photography & wildlife, especially birds. Well when we are told about the birds, we are also told about the Bees & this time of the year and some decent weather has certainly made them come & take as much food from our garden as possible. Though we do not always pick the right sort of plants for them to feed on, we do try and encourage them in. The wild Foxgloves (though nearly over) have been a great source of food & wherever they set seed, we just let them grow, hence we have a fair few.

The majority of Bees in the following photos are feeding on a wild flower, that is not common in Scotland, but one we had in our garden down in the West of England & we were aware that it was a great insect attracter so we came up with a few potted up, just to try up here in the new garden. Fortunately it has taken well to this climate & as you can see is doing a fine job for the Bees. The plant is a Purple Toadflax, one that we find attractive & well liked by human as well as insect visitors.

Though when purchasing plants from local nurseries we do look for Bee friendly ones, we often find that wild plants, such as the two above attract far more insects than cultivated ones, I expect the experts will disagree, but that is what we think. In fact today when we were walking down to The Mill for a coffee, beside the village hall, we discovered that a colony (is that how you describe them?) of teasels is just coming into bloom and is covered with Hover Flies & Bees, so guess who will be taking some of the seeds before the Goldfinch get to them?

Photographing Bees is something new for me & they do not tend to sit around & pose for long, so after much effort trials & a lot of errors, here are some from yesterday.

At this time of the year the garden is constantly changing, mainly down to the wives hard work & dedication to make the display look good, me, well I can mow the lawns & the heavier manual work, beyond that I am useless. Many flowers are still going from when I put them on last month, I (the expert gardener) think it is due to the fact that summer was held back by the cold wet start to this month, but now the sun has decided to come out things are spurting on. I do like taking photos of the flowers, though I have said before I have trouble naming them, so will just put them up for you all to enjoy & leave you to know or make up their names.