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don't know if this has worked, lets see

the photo uploading worked, hooray. weather here nice today although not as good as yesterday, it seems strange to hear the rest of the country having it so bad and we have a glorious day yesterday, wonder if we'll get snow this winter, a bit is nice a lot is not, yuk, icy roads,mud and slush, although snowballs taking the dogs out in the snow is good fun, they love it. We wait and see I suppose.

The ducks are for enjoying only not eating, we couldn't do that, they are lovely, they greet us each morning for their breakfast, they spend their days rummaging about the place for slugs and bits and pieces, they have taken over the wildlife pond that we have started work on last summer, which is a nuisance but it is also nice to see them in the morning paddling about. They do have their own pond at the back of our place away from the house and their own path through the fence to the plantation of pine trees behind us. Their is also a man made pond up there which they enjoy spending their days on. Some times in the summer they go missing for a couple of days, we then go up the hill behind us with the binoculars (every island house has at least one pair, usually on a predominant windowsill) and find them happy as anything rummaging about in the fields behind us.
The bushy shrubs in the photo is montbretia also known as crocosmia, it grows really well here, almost to weed status. It seems to grow almost any where, just throw a clump where you want it and away it goes. We found this out by accident when dividing up old clumps, we had placed them ready to plant and forgot about them, now they are an established line of the most amazing orange flowers, just when you need them right at the end of the summer coming in to autumn. They make a very nice colorful arrangements for a vase but are at their best outdoors, in the spring when the leaves are brown and dead we light fire to them to clean the plants up, they seem to enjoy this as they leap into life soon after this.
Now onto the weather, today we awoke to Ward Hill (the highest hill in Orkney,just happens to be on our island) covered in snow and a few of the lower hills as well, and a slight dusting at sea level nothing to get exicited about though, no chance of a snowman yet. As a matter of interest from the top of Ward Hill you can apparently see all of the Orkney Islands except a small one called Rysa little which is just off our island. The view is spectacular, on a good day, of which we have many, contrary to many peoples opinion. We may not get tropical heat but we have lots of lovely days, both summer and winter.