New horizons

Today was lovely. I noticed a few firsts: the sun has started actually shining into our bedroom in the morning - it rises too far south in the winter months; said sun then reflected off my cheval mirror onto my face in an irritating fashion while I was still in bed reading other people's blips. Spring is definitely on the way. I was out in the front garden taking photos before breakfast and noticed that there is no longer any grass - it's a lovely green, but it's all thick, bungy (spelling?) moss. Quite thick, too - can you mow moss?

The friends who used to run The Trading Post in town - the outlet for local artists, burned down in an arson attack a couple of autumns ago - came round for coffee this morning and picked up some copies of my book Washed Up to sell via the new website set up to replace the shop (Yes, I will post the link when it's live, never fear.) I also had some urgent mails to shoot off - church business is suddenly hotting up and I'm involved.

Lunch over, we decided - despite both feeling a bit knackered - to go down to Loch Striven for a walk; we only go the extra few miles to reach that road on a fine day. it turned out to be remarkably interesting. First, a sister ship to the one we saw on telly the other week in the programme Warship, refuelling the Queen Elizabeth at sea, was tied up at the Loch Striven fuel pier taking on fuel - I'm sure we've seen the one in the programme here before. The second thing was that the forestry people have moved into the woodland within the perimeter fence of the fuel store and are felling almost all the trees there, opening up horizons we didn't know existed and a steeply defined raised beach that I wasn't aware of either. We had a long conversation with the man on the road who was making sure it was clear to go (ie stopping the risk of clobbering a walker with a felled tree). We knew about the disease that's ravaging larch trees here, Phytophthora ramorum, but hadn't realised there were so many larches behind the roadside conifers, which are to be felled anyway as, left exposed, might fall across the road in a gale.) We also learned how much timber we (Scotland) now export - way ahead of England or Wales. As for the huge machines at work - we saw a tree crash down, and in no time the same machine as had felled it was stripping it of branches and sawing it into neat lengths which were then pile up. And there was a boy with a chain saw doing isolated trees - the sun set while we were still chatting. 

And that was it, really. The moon and planets were still romantically arranged, though Jupiter and Venus are now much lower in the sky when they appear. (I've downloaded a star recognition app which is incredibly interesting). The sky is amazingly clear, and out at the back of the house not much affected by light pollution. I've had Himself's curry for dinner and  there are no huvtaes for tomorrow except that I've run out of bread flour. 

Collage is of various scenes along the Loch Striven road, including the ship at the fuel pier.