The Soaplady

I heard on the news today that Scotland has the highest levels of Multiple Sclerosis in the world.

This horrible disease of nervous tissue, which causes progressive muscle paralysis, is linked to a lack of Vitamin D. Scotland has the lowest levels of vitamin D in the world, due to a lack of sunshine and a diet low in oily fish.

Scandinavian countries have the same levels of sunshine, but have a diet higher in oily fish, which tops up their Vitamin D.

It is being recommended that the Government should add supplements to our diet, to avoid being open to legal procedures from future sufferers …

Of course, you could just add some cod-liver oil to your diet … But its said that the details available on products and in Health food shops are confusing for the public.

Full article is here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-16255962

Back to the nasty soft capsules then, though I suspect I am not the target audience, being an incomer …

Apparently Orkney gets a special mention in the MS Levels per head of population …

Tags: MS, Scotland, Vitamin D

“Serving the Community …”

“Other stores have branches … we have Roots …”

Not a very nice move shortly before christmas, is it then, to offer folk voluntary redundancies in order to fulfill the loss of 24 full-time staff members …

See full article on Hebrides news:

http://www.hebrides-news.com/stornoway-co-op-jobs-111011.html

Will be interesting to see how they manage to keep the shelves full at christmas … or does ‘extra christmas help’ come from another budget, which makes it OK …

Will also be interesting to see how they are going to manage to keep the goodwill of the staff they have left during this time, after the latest visit from the ‘Shiny Shoes’ where it was rumoured that the person who visited on behalf of the management was apparently not authorised (or simply not able) to answer many of the questions that staff had …

The following is simply my own point of view …

smells of ba-a-a-a-a-d management to me …

or perhaps the implementation of ba-a-a-a-a-d management theory from above …

Tags: bad management, co-op, redundancies

We have had a rabidly hot and humid day today, sweat forming on my forehead, and all over my skin all day, then followed by a dense, cool mist which prevented visibility down to Loch Roag, and rolled threateningly through the village …

I just shunted my whirly-chair forward, made contact with the on/off switch on an old pc on the floor, and got the three tones of death as it attempted to start up without a keyboard or mouse …

My head soapmaking apprentice gave me notice early in June, just before the summer season festivities were due to begin … I bit my lip and wished her well …

The next lady I took on did not stay …

But the next one I asked, looks like she is going to … We are still on a learning curve, but with luck, we shall be OK …

My best friend is in a lot of emotional pain, and there’s nothing I can do to help … She’s gone away to rest … There’s a great deal to be said for rest … In the old days, when something bad happened to you, it seemed that people just went to a maiden aunts house or similar, and looked  out of the window for a month or two, which was usually sufficient to mend things enough to move on … more useful than counsellors, in my opinion … I’m hoping she gets better and comes back …

I am booked on a ceramics course beginning in August … Was really enthusiastic about it … Until I learned the probable amount of electricity I would use, if it ever turned into a proper hobby afterwards, firing items in an electric kiln for two periods of five hours, just for the basic finish … Will my Yorkshire mean-ness permit me to do this …? I don’t know yet …

I am tired, tired, tired … by the end of the day, there is mostly *nothing* to stop me sleeping …

Have begun taking glucosamine and omega3 supplements, because my joints and muscles ache badly if I don’t … Especially leg muscles and hip joints … I feel like I am being forced to at least acknowledge my age … I don’t like to do that …

I seem fairly happy … I sing a lot to cds in my car, and on the radio …

I find increasingly few programs on terrestrial television that I want to watch … This is actually good news, because I really don’t have the time to watch them anyway …

I have 18 foxglove plugs and 24 free liatris bulbs to plant this weekend … The foxgloves I chose because they’re a really impressive plant, the liatris bulbs were a free gift, but were supposed to be Echinacea, and I’m just a little disappointed that they’re not because Echinacea flowers are really art deco and special … Shall have to buy Echinacea separately …

My anniversary garden will not happen this year because of bad weather during planting and preparation period early this year … We’re going for next year now, and I’m consoling myself with foxgloves …

My tadpoles are still tadpoles … How long does this take …?!

Currently there are 100kgs of castor oil winging their way to me from Devon … I am aware of its large carbon footprint …

Also on their way are 2500 x 250ml empty plastic bottles for liquid soap … another 25 x *huge* boxes to stack somewhere in the house – I know not where … This represents about a years supply at current rates …

I have had no time to re-formulate my face-cream, and am going to have to shoe-horn some strawberry lip-balm in there somehow … I need an extra head and two pairs of arms …

A man somewhere is currently carrying some long planks of wood with which to build me a 3-stack shelving unit the whole length of my little shop, at the same level as the window-sill … I’d've laughed if someone had told me fifteen years ago that this would be the height of my aspirations …!

I should wash my hair tonight, but I know I won’t because I begrudge the time … I’ll just scoop it back off my face with a couple of slides …

I have to be up early tomorrow to go to the post office, and I know I won’t manage it if I’m not careful … Mindy had better not mind a foreshortened walk, poor darling …

I have the wonderful scent of fresh air through my house, due to having dried a whole load of washing on the line outside with the good weather …

This scent is not tainted by tobacco, as I haven’t smoked the stuff since February …

I have an electronic cigarette which I use in moments of hassle – I can thoroughly recommend them, and couldn’t see how I’d do without it now … Replacing one habit with another, I know, but at least it’s a cheap non-harmful one …

I stopped drinking fizzy diet cola, replacing it with fizzy spring water and fruit squash because of what I read about aspartame messing with what food your body craves … For the first time in years, I have cooked meat, carbohydrates and vegetables, and thoroughly enjoyed them …

Appleyard duck on a mountain of eggs … a couple of weeks and I’ll have my work cut out again …

Am going to have an early night tonight so that I can get an hour in with my book, in peace, and still get up in the morning …

Night all …

Tags: allsorts, dreams, gardens, happiness, hopes, life-by-the-hour, Pets, sadness

hebridean tadpoles

I feel like I *know* these tadpoles … :- )

I watched them being produced by their mother and father early this year, before we had the cold February snap, whilst I was walking Mindy along the Pentland Road … Their parents seemed to cling to each other langourously, for a very long time, and were unphased by a humans stare or a dogs nosing …

Each time we passed there on subsequent days, we would look for the characteristic areas of ‘lumpy’-looking water, and have a nosey to see what was going on …

Luckily February and early March were nice and wet (an understatement I think), and the spawn-pools prospered, each day bearing nice healthy big bubbles on top of the gelatinous water …

We watched the black speck in the centre of each spawn becoming larger, as the tadpole grew within …

Then suddenly, the spawn-pools began to ‘teem’ and fizz over with tail-based movement …

This coincided with the hottest days of April - today is absolutely glorious, I could almost swear I saw a heat-haze on the asphalt road …

The roiling spawn-pools seem to be drying out a little, and there are now patches of spawn which are totally dry, having been laid in an unpropitious place …

Not being much of a ‘country-girl’, I started to worry about the occupants …

So now, each time Mindy and I pass, we take a 2 litre bottle of natural spring water (they don’t like chlorine), and re-hydrate a small area …

Last night I stepped through memories of jamjars with strings tied to the top, and bringing the tadpoles home … watching them grow and turn into little green frogs … Why not do that again, I thought …

Being now an adult, and not having that childlike belief that everything is bound to turn out all right, I looked up tadpole care on the net, and discovered that you should feed them occasionally, and that they like frozen lettuce and spinach, being herbivores …

Sorry boys, but you will go hungry tonight, because I don’t have any of those, but will be able to procure some tomorrow, from my friend … I don’t ever remember feeding the childhood ones though, and I’m certain they thrived and turned into frogs … Unless my parents fed them after I’d left the room of course, but I don’t think so …

When they’re bigger, they will eat blood-worm, which I’m familiar with, having had a spell of fish-keeping … just wish I could catch some of the black flies that are in clouds outside just now - the ducks are having a fine supper out there …!

The net articles suggested that they need really clean water … so much for my having preserved as much of their primordial mud and algae habitat as I could when scooping a little tablespoon of them out … !  I did top it up with clean spring water though, and replaced the liquid I’d taken from their rapidly-drying original pool …

Also, as soon as they have got legs, and hopefully before their gills change, they will need to have a little ‘platform’ of some sort in their aquarium, perhaps some flat rocks, so they can get out of the water …

I think it will be a long time yet before they’re individually-recognised and named (unless we have a defcon II disaster that is) …

Happy Oestara to all …!!  (Deleted to avoid confusion …)

Tags: amphibian, childhood, jamjar, metamorphosis, tadpoles

It is special because it does not behave as other plants behave …

• It is propagated by bird droppings upon tree branches, and therefore never touches or grows in the ground.
• It germinates only in the light and breeze, where other plants need the oppressed darkness of loam.
• Its healing properties have always been legendary, indeed in recent years, it has been found to stimulate the action of anti-cancer cells  …

The Druid network tells us that: “The mistletoe would seem to delight in proclaiming itself not of this world, for although the berries ripen during mid-winter, strangely its entire growing sequence of greenish yellow flowers, green berries and immature leaves can all be found on the same plant. The white berries are almost globular and contain a sticky flesh surrounding the seed, which has the appearance of semen and thus reflects the sperm of the sky and tree god”.

Mistletoe is also thought to be the ‘golden bough’ of Virgils Aenid, a plant that once offended the gods and was cursed to have to look on while beautiful girls were being kissed. In Rome mistletoe played a role in the Saturnalia, festivals held during the Yule season to celebrate the birth of Saturn. The tradition of kissing under the mistletoe (and removing one berry with each kiss until none remained) emerged from that fertility rite.

On the sixth day of the waxing moon closest to the Winter Solstice, druids would hold the cutting of mistletoe ceremony, symbolizing Darkness giving way to light …

They harvested it with a golden sickle, representing the sun and the sickle moon, the cut mistletoe being caught in a white cloth by attendants waiting below. never letting it touch the ground.

It has, however, a formidable reputation for being difficult to propagate … But then I am not a girl to give up before I have tried, so at the back end of January, I made my way to the Mistletoe shop:

http://www.buy.mistletoe.org.uk/growkits.htm

First of all, I checked whether I had a host tree to grow it upon - mistletoe is a hemi-parasite of tree branches and can’t grow on its own. Its favourite host trees are Apple, Poplar and Lime trees, and contrary to popular belief, mistletoe does not usually grow on oak trees, and it dislikes plums cherries and pears …

Well I only have one Apple tree, and that is not exactly vibrant, so I scoured the net for information on host trees, and eventually found Willow mentioned, and any tree in the Rosaceae genus - I have plenty of those …

I then secured a mistletoe kit for myself, cost £15 … It arrived at the end of February, and contained 45 freshly-picked mistletoe berries in a plastic petri dish, instructions, and branch labelling materials …

The labelling materials are necessary so you can remember where you grafted your seeds, because this is truly a long-term investment, growing very slowly in the first 3 or 4 years …

So first, I picked my branches … then took a mistletoe berry and squeezed it until the seed was ejected, along with some of the sticky stuff from inside … This seed has to be stuck onto the branch, so it can insert permanent suckers and germinate into the branch itself …
It’s amazing how sticky this stuff is, but I guess it has to be, to keep the seed in contact with the branch, and stop it from falling or being blown off …

Willow tree graftings - arrows point to seeds

One by one, I grafted forty mistletoe seeds onto six different trees, labelled them all, and took pictures of them …

mistletoe seeds on willow branch, arrowed and labelled

That was five days ago, and I had successfully forgotten about them, so today I took a look to see how many were still there, well aware that invertebrates and birds may feed on a lot of them …

Well seems like we have 100% success rate in this five days, though nothing is growing yet, at least they’re still present and correct, and the viscous gluey stuff now seems to be rock-hard …

In March or April this year, I can expect them to be germinating, when they will looks like this: (pictures courtesy of www.mistletoe.org.uk)

seedling up to year one

and after four years, they will look like this:

mistletoe shoot in year 4

( Makes The Soaplady wonder what she’ll look like in four years, lol …!!)

Tags: druidry, grafting, host, mistletoe, plant of the air, viscum

In my house there is a room I call the ‘Egyptian Room’ … This is because when I first moved here, I spent a good few of my weekends drawing and painting life-sized egyptian-style figures on the far wall, finished off in gold, copper, silver and pharaoh-blue enamel paints … 

This was always eventually going to be a ‘Media’ room, so I had my good Wharfedale speakers mounted upon the wall, with their professional ‘monster’ cable tucked seamlessly behind them …

It was a good sound system then, ten years ago …

Well, the years go by, and the needs of business dictate other things, and gradually this room has become storage for many things - sacks of sea-salt, epsom salt, boxes of base oils (this is where the pallets were placed on the floor-tiles), and most recently, it has been storage for the very bulky boxes of empty plastic bottles and closures for my liquid soap … I buy them by the 1000 you see, and that equates to a lot of boxes stacked from floor to ceiling …

Well now, in my quest to make my life calmer and easier, I’ve decided to no longer allow entry to the endless adverts, constant inane chatter, regionally-accented dumb-downs, repeated programmes (which weren’t good in the first place), and the recycled rubbish which passes for prime-time programming on the television these days.  I have had to think again about those speakers …

At one time I listened a lot to my music … It lifts me, and it reminds me of other times, and conjurs up some of those old feelings I used to have when I was young … <whether that latter is a good idea remains to be seen I suppose>
I realised that now I hardly listen to any of my cds *at all*, having become enslaved by the idiot-box in the corner …

About time I moved those speakers, and set up a good sound system in the living room, where I need it, I thought to myself … I was pretty sure that my dvd player would take over from the 10 year old cd player in the egyptian room set-up which was now very patchy in its responses … And the Tuner/amplifier which was wired in there still worked … So I just needed to unplug everything from the egyptian room, swap the new player in, wire it all up again correctly in the living room, and enjoy …

I started this morning, and have just finished now at what *amazingly* seems to be 6pm …!!
But I did it in a systematic and ordered way …

First, I drew little diagrams of the connections from one thing to another, because there were red plugs, black silver and gold plugs, black wires, and a plethora of orifii to fit them into … So they were all drawn and described in detail …

Then each piece of equipment was cleaned with a wet babywipe to remove 10 years worth of dust and dirt, then I began to place the boxes in optimum positions, rationalising power points and connecting wires, then we were ready to re-wire …
(When I say re-wire, I don’t mean in the electrical sense - I’d never attempt that, but for a bear of very little technological brain like me, this was a large operation to connect it all up correctly …)

I referred to my diagram unstintingly, all the way through, and it did most of the work for me …
The only problem was that I had the Tuner and the dvd wired together simply, and I had the monster cable connected to the Tuner, and to one of the speakers … I also had another big coil of Monster wire with two plugs at each end, one set of which I deducted *must* go in the other speaker, but what on earth to do with the other plugs … If they were to match the other one they would go somewhere into the Tuner … But there was no entry on the Diagram for this extra set of plugs …

You can now see how much I was relying on the Diagram, because without it, I had no clue in heaven what I was doing …
This was Disastrous …
I would have to call Ali-Baba (local repair-man) after all …

Looked at the back of the Tuner in despair … I could see where *one* of the speakers went in … Then it jumped out at me - there was another set of orifii just next to them …!  But why weren’t they on the diagram …?  A good look at the two sets told me that - the holding switches on the second set had broken off, and the plugs must’ve just been balanced in the switches, rather than gripped … They weren’t on the diagram because they had fallen out when I moved the Tuner …!!

Rejoicingly, but trying not to count my chickens yet, I placed the plugs in the switches, and used a bit of twisted plastic-covered wire to hold them snug to their neighbours …

Gingerly switched the tuner on … There was a reassuring hiss from the speakers, which I hoped I’d know how to stop, in time … Then turned the dvd on and put in Dire Straits cd to test …
Everything worked …!!  This is why I am invincible …!!

But after I got over the initial rush, I noticed that there was very little volume from tracks which were always played at top whack to get the best effect …

I twiddled with the tuner volume, which hardly moved things at all, and then twiddled with the dvd remote volume, which moved it up a tiny amount, but it wasn’t even enough to be satisfying on a school-night, let alone a relaxing night …

Right … time to push buttons seriously … On the old fashioned Tuner I mean … That’s the only thing it *could* be …
It was sitting on a setting called ‘Phono’, so I pushed the ‘Dad/Aux’ button and very nearly deafened myself, my family of pets, and the ducks outside …!!
Adjusted volume swiftly down on Tuner and dvd remote control, and now we have it …

Now only two things left to do …
First thing is to find and clean all my cds and put them in order in the cd rack … They are currently languishing all over the floor and stacked in untidy piles in the egyptian room … probably some of them will be contaminated with salt, but no matter …

Second thing is to find someone who knows about these things to instruct me how to cut and remake the ends of the monster cable, because the length of wire to each speaker is at least 30ft, perhaps even 60ft, with the left-over bit curled around in an infernal coil which does not inspire confidence, and also has the potential to gather a lot of dust …

The first shall be completed tonight, as I bask in the sweet success of Phase 1, and re-discover the sounds of my youth …
It will not hurt us to wait for a kindly visitor to help us with the second …  :- )

As I sit writing this, conscious of Nics admonition to write more blogs, I am chuffing away on my new electronic cigarette … (a really bad chest infection prevented me from smoking for a couple of days, so I thought I’d see how many days I could last without starting again) …

lovely pink e-cigarette

It provides nicotine replacement therapy you see, in the form of a smoke-like vapour which is inhaled much as from a cigarette, and can be blown out to form the identical white cloud you get from a cigarette … Finally this last piece is in place in electronic cigarettes … The exhalation is as important as the rest …

When you no longer require the nicotine, you can purchase a simple menthol refill for it, if like me, it’s the habit you miss, not the chemicals … I heartily recommend it to all prospective givers-up … :- )

Tags: diagrams, e-cigarettes, logic, music, no more tv, setting-up, sound-system, wires

I have never liked adverts on telly … half the time they’re made by idiots, advocating products which are of no interest to me … Some adverts were interesting, for their time - the Guinness adverts, and those gothic adverts for that german bier …

The advert break is approximately 3-4 minutes long - time enough for 5 adverts, with a sponsorship advert shown immediately at the beginning and end of the advert break … Sponsorship adverts are (am I alone) undeniably mundane, stupid, and borderline irritating, I cite the 118 series of adverts as the very worst of these - if I was in need of a phone number I would gnaw my own hands off before using the 118 series, just on principle …

When I was a small child, we had adverts every half hour, during an hour-long program … Thus it was possible to go make a cup of tea, or take care of bodily needs … Then somehow, they went to 20 minute intervals … People used to say ‘adverts are every 10 minutes in America’, and I’d think how do they ever manage to watch anything on telly when it’s broken up every ten minutes …? Surely that could never happen here …? People would not tolerate it … Would they …?

Well now, especially on ITV2, whenever there’s a film, advert breaks are every 13-14 minutes, so somehow, without ever being given a choice, we’ve almost made it to the american madness … I find it impossible to watch good films in this way - why don’t you just turn the sound down, or go and do something, you might say … Well, it’s just too ‘disconnected’ for me to be able to enjoy films that way …

So, in view of this new aberration, I’ve decided that I’m going to take a break from both terrestrial and freeview channels … I’m not going to watch tv any more … I’ve got a subscription to lovefilm.com, which sends me dvds to watch, in my own time …

The problem is that I’ve had a bit of a problem with television in the past few years … I’ve become more or less addicted to it … I put it on just for some sound in the background when I’m in a room … sometimes I watch rubbish (Friends re-runs, everything is always repeats on freeview) all night … It’s taken me a while to admit this even to myself, but the annoyance factor of the advert break is pushing me close to breaking point, and I get the feeling that there’s much better things that I could be doing with my time … Like watching good films with no advert breaks …

I have 40 titles on my lovefilm list … I’m going to make them last for a good long time, and learn how to do other things in my ‘free’ time, rather than watch rubbish on the television … This is doubtless going to be harder than it sounds … old habits are hard to break … Judge Judy at 5.30pm till 7 … StarTrek Voyager at 7 (they axed that) … Larkrise to Candleford on Sunday night (they axed that too …). Troy … ah Troy … with Brad Pitt … That’s on now, as it happens … with breaks every 14 minutes … which is why I can’t watch any of it …

However, even on LoveFilm.com, the dvds they send have two or three advertising trailers on the front, which I always fast-forward through, but which nonetheless grate …

Perhaps I shouldn’t've blogged tonight … I’m well along the way of trying to anaesthetise a painful chest infection with a warm mixture of whisky, sugar and lemon juice, which does not make for unbiased judgement or cutting wit …

And I’m sorry this blog is not along an ‘island matters’ line …
But what do others think of adverts …? does it spoil your enjoyment of whats on telly …?
has anyone else taken the dvd-only route in order to get away from it …?

hioping for a good nights sleep …

Linda xx

Tags: 118, advertising, death of television, dumbing-down

In the absence of customers at my little shop this morning, I decided I would clear some space in my house for the soap-baskets, because we’ll be bringing excess bars in from the cold workshop into the centrally-heated house soon, being closed from 23rd December to 1st February next year …

I have shelves in this room dedicated to that, but over a period of months, they’ve become full of **STUFF**, as everything does … I think the Clutter-faeries come out each night, and encourage the *STUFF* to multiply and burgeon …

So here I am, along with a hyper-active Mindy, trying to bring some order to this room … I have organic and non-organic rubbish piles in the room, and am sending a lot of the stuff wheelie-bin-ways, but it’s the stolid, un-categorisable, year-in, year-out **STUFF** that is giving me a headache …

Where exactly do you store those useful samples of materials from the Sign Workshop, and his business cards …??

Where exactly do you put the circles of sanding-paper which you will eventually need to finish off the soap-dishes …??

What about the bags and piles of one p’s and two p’s that you never seem to get the time to count and bank …??

Where do you put the little trays of all-purpose coloured ribbons …??

The two packets of little plastic doilies that you used for topping off the bathsalts …??

The digital camera and the card-reader you use for unloading it …??

The washing-up liquid sized PVA glue …??

The last little nub-ends of cling-film that you know will be useful one day …??

I opened up a pretty silver-textured box which contained, wrapped in tissue paper, a silver bracelet, with eleven charms on it, all shaped like feet … I have not the foggiest idea where it came from, or via whom … What shall I do with that …? I don;t like to throw it out, but can’t think of anybody who would like it …!

I also have two small bags of hair ties, pretty pastel pink and cool lilac, which I’d bought for my own hair when it was long, but on opening the packet, I realised it was more for smaller girls than me - for little ballerinas perhaps - there are little chiffon floaty bits all over the round hair tie, which looks to be more suited to a bun than a ponytail, and I thought I would look a bit silly wearing it …!

Hey look, if anybody knows two pretty cute little ballet-dancing angels who might like this item, just send me a (UK) snail-mail address, and I shall post them to you …!

~**Seriously** you’d be doing me a favour - they’ve sat there for around two years now, and at least it would be one useful item which would find a good home …

I’ll even throw in the happy-feet silver charm bracelet …!!  In its way, it’s quite pretty …!!

Back to it …

Linda  :- )

Tags: **STUFF**, Clutter-faeries, de-cluttering, tidying, unable to let things go

I am trapped in my house … Unable to get out …

The reason …?!

bloody slippery ice, that’s why …!

am just hoping that if any customers come out to the shop today (and presumably for the next week until the rest of the ice dissolves), they will not stare too hard at the 51 year old lady who still feels 27 in her head, who is wiggling unsteadily down the drive, at the pace of a drunken snail, clutching wire fence for stability, going right around the edges of the garden, avoiding the perfectly-smooth skating rink down the middle …!

Even the ducks are skating around …!

A week ago, when we had the broken water main in Carloway, and subsequently no water coming out of the taps, word was that the bottled water was stacked at Breasclete Community Centre … I drove down there to get some, and got out of my car …

That is the last thing I remember, before being flat on my back on a cold surface, feeling very dazed …

For some reason, I didn’t move for a while … It felt comfortable there, even though I didn’t quite know where I was … Then, a kind man came over to pick me up and take me back to my car …

There must have been a bout of community ‘feeding-frenzy’, because there was no water left, and I drove very carefully home, suddenly noticing the parts of me which were hurting …

A big duck-egg on the back of my head, a pain in my neck and shoulders, and in my lumbar vertebrae … over the course of the next few days, I would discover, through the pain, exactly how I had hit the deck …

I still had deliveries to make in town that day, so had to go to town, so thought I would go and get myself checked out in Casualty, as I was sure I must’ve been out for a couple of minutes, on that icy pavement …

I walked into the waiting room, and enquired of the other people there what the waiting-time was … They had been told at least three hours …

I chattered to the lady closest to me, telling her that I’d just come to get a head-injury checked out, and she smiled knowingly, and showed me the back of her own head, matted with blood, and clearly requiring stitches …

I’m not as bad as that, I thought, and decided to wait my three hours at home, rather than here …

A week of observation for sight and sense disturbances revealed nothing, and regular Co-codamol and Ibuprofen seemed to relieve the headaches I’ve had, and muscular pains …

Then this morning, following the Post Office run, I attempted to get back to my house … Most of the snow has thawed, but there’s a layer of slippery ice left … without the all-over white effect, it is disarmingly dangerous …

I got to the gate, and opened it, finding sheer hard ice in front of me, stepped on a straight looking bit, and went face-first ungracefully onto my front … at least my head didn’t hit the ground this way, but I remember, in every graunching detail, the cracking in the joints at my waist, and the sharp click in my neck, which I think I shall start to pay for later …

Covered in wet duck-poo, I came indoors, and stripped off my outer layer of clothes, and put them straight into the washer, donning my only spare pair of torn jeans which my friend Jane had told me, in Tesco’s once, made me look a little ‘come and chase me …’, vowing to just make a point of *facing* anybody who came to the door today, and not turning around for fear of giving out the wrong messages …

I have only half a cup of salt to make my drive safe …

could do with hosing all the duck-poo away, but given my luck, it would just freeze again overnight …

I *must* go over to the shop at some point, but, (and this is *not* humourous), I am starting to get a feel for what elderly people all over the UK must feel, from time to time, I am *frightened* to go outside …!!

And the pain in my back, knees and muscles is making it highly unlikely that I shall be getting out a shovel or spreading sand and grit today …

take care, people …

Tags: clumsy old woman, ice-captive, slippery, thaw, winter

The 21st September was the Autumn Equinox, or Madron - when both day and night are equal - from now the days start getting shorter, the nights getting longer and the weather starts getting colder.

A time to evaluate how well you’ve done in the year, whether you’ve done enough to get you through the winter …

A time to let go of the old, and embrace the new …

A time of thanksgiving …

Happily, we at the Hebridean Soap Company have had an excellent year this year …

And having completed the official accounts for last year, we also found out, officially, that we had done well in 2009 too …

As a sort of marker of this fact, and a little celebration of our ten years now, in business as purveyors of one of the finest handmade soaps in Scotland, the MD has decided to splurge a large chunk of this well-doing on a Plan for planting shrubs, flowers and trees, in the bare patch of land around the Company Workshops … and the opening of an old-fashioned well on the grounds too, with its own old-fashioned well-pump handle …

The well is being handled by a colleague and friend of mine from Carloway, who is even now studying the old maps of the area to judge where is the best place to begin digging …

The Plantings are being handled for me by the lady who does my gardening for me - Suzanne Harris. This winter she will begin preparing the beds where we will plant the new shrubs and trees, by digging, mulching, and fertilising with seaweed …

We are working on a plan together of where everything will go, trying to shelter that which needs sheltering, and plant everything in the best possible place for successful burgeoning …

The Planting will start at the Spring Equinox, early next year, as is only fitting …

For those who may be interested - here’s a list of what I plan to plant:-

• Hydrangeas - I am especially fond of blue and mauve hydrangeas …
• Eucalyptus Gunnii, which grow so well in our acid soil, producing ethereal silver-blue leaves …
• Holly Blue Angel - we may have to work a little on this Holly, but for me, it is the essence of the winter …
• Fragrant Dwarf Lavender Munstead - to be grown in large pots - no soap establishment ought to be without a sweep of lavender, don’t you think …?
• Hardy red-stemmed bamboo  to add an exotic feel to our gardens …
• Oriental Black Bamboo - a real exhibition piece - let’s hope it will tolerate the terrain and weather here …
• Ornamental Grasses - lots of different colours - reds, blues and purples …
• Echinacea Twilight - blood-red blooms which attract butterflies
• Jasmine Clotted Cream, for its marvellous fragrance, and the pretty pillow-shaped cream blooms …
• Bluebells so that the green grass looks like it has been very lightly blue-pastelled …
• Snowdrops Galanthus - the essence of almost-entry into spring …
• Rhododendron Praecox - a rose-purple bloom which flowers early, and loves the acid soil …
• Muscari Armeniacum - a new discovery - included unapologetically purely for its electric blue blooms …
• English Yew - Taxus Baccata - Yew is a druid-sacred wood which is much-loved by the MD, and will be used to form rough ‘hedges’, and allowed to grow as tall as it likes …
• Common Laurel - a figment from childhood - the MD’s school was surrounded by this plant, and she’d rather like to bring some to her planting here too …
• Euonymus Alatus Hedge - another new discovery - this hedge will surprise all neighbours and customers by turning bright, bright red in autumn …    
• Mistletoe and Ivy - what druid grove would be complete without these …
• Caledonian Pine - well a girls got to have aspirations … If I can get ‘em, I’ll plant ‘em …
• Clematis & Honeysuckle, to join the jasmine in a stream of unearthly fragrance
• Edible nasturtiums - prettily variegated, and completely edible leaves to be mixed in with salads, to enjoy their sharp, spicy flavour …

Rest assured that pictures of the various stages will inevitably follow …

Tags: 10th anniversary, A Planting Plan, equinox, Hebridean Soap Company, madron, New Gardens, thanksgiving, well