The calm before the storm

After a very wet and windy night, there are moments of calm and a break in the rain. I'm looking out from the kitchen window at about eighteen greylag geese feeding - and swimming - in the meadow, a couple of oyster catchers and a curlew.

The molehills seem to be increasing at an alarming rate. Whilst they provide ready sifted soil for my raised beds, they are not good later in the year when the hay is cut. I'm told that if they get mixed in with the cut grass they can cause abortions in cows, and it's difficult to spot and flatten them in the longer grass.

Kirsty tells me there is evidence of badgers towards the bottom of the front meadow but I haven't been to explore.

We noticed the first primroses yesterday - just in time for my grandchildren Rosa and Nina to have fun crystallising them when they visit next weekend - and Christine optimistically picked some fat daffodil buds, hoping the warmth indoors will bring them out.

I'm enjoying a bowl of white hyacinths on the kitchen table and I have propped up the stems with short twigs of pussy willow.

There is still a litttle snow on An Stac, but it's receding in the rain and the wind.