Make silage whatever the weather?

Not just flowers providing colour in the veg garden, as the tomatoes begin to ripen. They are not quite as tasty as last year's though.

We have increased the bird feeders this summer, and seen a massive increase in numbers - this one is dominated by siskins.

Field Gentian.

Very orange Birds foot trefoil?

Along the shore between the boathouse and the Point. This field, imaginatively called the New Field, is where the cows are grazing at the moment.  They have  squashed a few Grass of Parnassus but there are still areas of lots of unhurt ones, plus lots of smaller flowers such as those above!

A very well camouflaged Grayling landed on rocks near the old boathouse.

Yesterday, in wonderful blue sky and sunshine, Farmer cut some patches of thicker grass in the in bye fields, adding about 40 bales to our winter supply - 40 days worth of feed, so well worth doing.

Its important to grease up before starting baling.

Its not a bad view for tractor work.  Beats the views from the fields he used to work in before moving to Mull by a long shot.

Being watched by Zwartble ewe and lamb.

Not so good when the weather suddenly changes and you are baling and wrapping in the rain, but what can you do? You have to just keep going.  Farmer is well known for his 'carry on regardless' gene, which was exhibiting strongly this morning when I took him a flask of coffee on the tractor. 

The jewel of August

We had our Green Tourism inspection today.  It is always good to talk about green issues and I always learn something new!  We were talking about how to close the gap between the electricity we generate and consume.  It would be so easy to put another turbine up so that we generate more, but actually we need to consume less.

It was nice to get out into the fields and the flowers later on.

Devil's Bit Scabious in the Black Park.

The cows and calves are in the new field.

We were looking for the Grass of Parnassus.  The cows came too.

We found hundreds of them.

And the Ling heather flowering on the cliff tops.

Lots of white heather.

Devils Bit Scabious.

Roots.

Field Gentian.

Some very late Common spotted orchids.

Bees..

Fast growing lambs.. as we start to think about lamb sales.

 This ewe looks as if she will be glad for the lambs to be weaned.

And here it is, the jewel of August, the Grass of Parnassus.