It doesn’t do any good to moan about the weather and although November was supposedly the warmest on record for the UK, it was certainly wet and very windy in Kintyre. Plenty going on though…. 
Fraser finally decided that we’d waited long enough for the fencing materials and we now have the fence with double gates at the side of the house. It took a bit of time to work out the correct spacing on the boards to prevent them acting as big sails in high winds but luckily, I’d decided to screw them rather than nailing so it wasn’t too much work to adjust things after the first big blow of the autumn threatened to demolish my hard work. We have fencing for the veg garden and will block the deer entrances and exits to save the trees.
The next job we tackled was to provide some additional visitor carparking closer to the house. This avoids the “double shuffle” of vehicles which happens occasionally, especially when we’ve arrived home at night and simply abandon the car as close to the front door as we can. It has also highlighted that we another outside light with a PIR. There is no light here other than what we provide!
The other benefit of forming the additional carparking was that it created material that we have used to give the back garden a bit of “structure” as Hamish put it. Basically, the garden is too flat and we need some raised beds to give it a bit of shape and interest. The lack of daylight and the poor weather has hindered progress but the plan is to cultivate the mounds and hopefully, whatever we plant won’t simply drown in the soggy ground. We’ve also been collecting seaweed for the equally flat (well it would be having been a tennis court in a former life)vegetable garden and pebbles to go around the bases of the standing stones.
In the middle of the month, it was Margaret’s 90th and Suse’s 60th birthdays. Suse organised a “surprise ” party for her Mum and invited friends and relations. Emily and Richard did a fantastic job behind the scenes and the movie of John’s barber shop singers was a big hit, especially with the ladies present. Margaret had a good day but struggled a bit afterwards and needed another spell in The Victoria.
After the party we came back home and dug new rubble drains beside the old driveway and scraped mud off the original surface. Oh joy! After that we went on our travels! We have long standing friends in York, Neil and Dorethy. This year, Neil is the President of the local St Andrew’s Society and some time ago, he sweet-talked us into attending their St Andrew’s Day Dinner and also suggested that we were just the right people to do some after dinner speaking! The text for my talk is here and I’d be delighted to hear any responses. Suse spoke without notes and probably got the loudest applause of the evening! We both thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and were well received. I got to wear a dj for the first time and even did a little bit of waltzing! So N & D, what are you going to be saying at our Ruby Wedding celebrations next summer?