Sunday 21st January 2024

We’re getting Storm Isha today, although I think most of the UK is under a storm warning. It is a bit windy just now, and the rain was heavy earlier. I spent yesterday morning going around the croft and garden making sure that everything was secured. I had taken down some damaged tree branches a week or so ago and had just piled them up in a corner of the drive to deal with at some point in the future. That future was yesterday, as I got busy with the secateurs and saw. It’s all now piled up in the polycrub waiting to become a dead hedge. I don’t know if any more branches will come down tonight - or this week, as it looks like we are in for a windy spell.

The end of January is often like this - it’s why I wait until the beginning of February to collect the seaweed. The January gales pile it up on the shore in great heaps. Apparently on the night of poet Robert Burn’s birth on 25th January, a gale blew down the gable end of their cottage. I imagine that was quite a stressful situation for all concerned.

I had a load of radishes growing in the wee crub. I usually procrastinate for weeks with this sort of thing and then miss the chance as they end up going to seed. Not this time, with my new no-food-waste zeal, I harvested them and had them shredded and in a fermenting jar before you could blink. I put the process on my Instagram if you want to see how I went about it.

I had a nice day - one of those pottering about days that I like. Dinner was ribeye steak and real chips done in beef fat. I started a sourdough loaf to rise overnight, and I can’t really remember much else - TV and bed with some knitting - or more likely scrolling canning and preserving accounts on IG. I was too tired to blog.

I baked the bread early this morning. The boy said there is a noticeable improvement in quality, and I think he’s right. I had a few slices, some with butter and some with raspberry jam. I’m encouraged to keep trying.

I didn’t go to church today. I had a lot of reading to do for my theology course and for one of the projects I’m involved with. I don’t like doing that sort of thing on a Sunday, but I was feeling really stressed about it. However, I am saved by Grace and not by the Old Testament Law, and I would have been going to the church service with the wrong attitude, so I stayed home. I did do the reading, and it took up most of the day.

Dinner was roast chicken, mashed potatoes, and Brussels sprouts, with good old rice pudding as dessert. It was that kind of day.