Preparing for New Arrivals

Frosty mornings

After quite a lot of rain in the last week we have been trying to stay off our land while it is a bit waterlogged. Thankfully though we have a wonderful country park quite close by and so we have been enjoying long morning walks there.

This is the river which flows through the country park. You can see by the colour and height of the river water that we have experienced a lot of rain recently.

This picture is of the large fishing lake in the country park and a couple of ducks. It always looks such an enticing hideaway but I'm not a fisherman/woman so we only stop for a brief look on our walks.

This is the central tree lined path which is also covered by a multitude of daffodils in the spring. On the left you can kind of make out the last remains of the old country house.

The views were wonderful and as the sun was rising we could just see the frost melting away ever so slowly as the temperature reaches a balmy 1ºC.

Hedgehog news

A while ago we had an encounter with a poorly deer and phoned the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals ( SSPCA) for some help. You may remember that I wrote about it here. Well, the visit from the SSPCA was really helpful and the lady asked us if we were interested in re-homing some animals. Unfortunately there are many we wouldn't be able to re-home, especially cats as Jess and Finn are not fond of the feline variety and will chase them and generally make their lives unbearable. However, she did mention hedgehogs and as we have an abundance of slugs and snails we thought this would be ideal.

Fast forward a few months and we have been in touch with Hessilhead Wildlife Rescue and offered our land as a release site for their hedgehogs. They said yes, and we are very very excited. So apparently we just need to make sure we have some suitable hedgehog houses in place and the night time temperature needs to be above 8ºC. The former we can get started on but the latter is out of our hands and we may have to wait a few weeks at least for the frosts to abate.

So M has scoured the Internet for hedgehog accommodation plans and has been dispatched to the barn and byre in search of appropriate building materials. I have a feeling he may get carried away and the result will be deluxe hotel accommodation for our new arrivals. He also mentioned the beginnings of a duck house so it could prove to be a very productive day.

This is a little sneak preview of model no.1 in progress.

And, tah-dah, the finished product.

With removable lid just in case we need access.

Keeping Warm Inside

It is definitely a day for homemade tomato and chorizo soup with posh (shop bought) olive bread - mmmmmmmm.

In the meantime I am trying to keep warm inside as it is ever so cold today and attempting to finish my Venice cross stitch before I contemplate any other projects. At least I can see some progress since I first posted about it here. It's a shame the colours are so poor in the photo as there's lots more detail in the sky and water then is visible here.

I am also taking time to read my latest Simply Crochet magazine and my new Crafternoon magazine which has been produced in support of Red Nose Day. There are so many things I want to try and make but I really must finish something first before embarking on anything else. I can almost hear my crochet hooks calling to me, oh and my knitting needles too - I just can't wait to try Christine's Sockalong.