To every season...

Sure I've had that title before on this blog. But the turning of the seasons and the pages of the calendar continue apace and we are now just days away from our first anniversary. What a year!! But I'll save that for a specific anniversary post.

Since last I blogged we've enjoyed our first two sets of visitors of the year, had the summer ferry timetable begin with the new Sunday service introduced, celebrated Easter, had a Spring Fayre, seen the Craft Shop and the Teashop open for the season along with the newly opened Bluebell Cafe and had the first of the day tripping tourists visiting and spending money.

Our first visitors of the year were my parents - lovely as always to see them, it's been a long time since October. Infact my Mum tells me it is the longest she has ever gone without seeing me in my whole life! Missing family and friends was something we knew would be a fact of this new life and something we are mentally prepared for and the trade off is worth it most of the time although there are times when it is hard not to be able to just spend time together or pop in for a brief visit rather than trek 600 miles  and a ferry trip to be together. It's always a squash and a squeeze fitting extra people into the static and finding enough crockery and cutlery to feed everyone with not to mention enough fridge space to fit in the extra food but we managed it and a lovely week was had by all.

We also enjoyed a lovely day trip visit from friends on Saturday (the summer timetable gives the chance of a 10 hour trip to Rum which is perfect for people to come and visit us) - lovely for Dragon and Star to have kid friends over to explore, adventure and free range with for the day.

We've got some honesty tables set up at the top and bottom gates of our croft to start selling eggs and other produce. In just four days we have already sold a fair few eggs and a couple of jars of jam. I know I'd love to buy free range duck, chicken or goose eggs from the gate of a croft I can see the birds wandering around on or next to the river where they are swimming about.

And although it's been a lovely, productive, sociable week I am utterly exhausted at this end of it, particularly as our Sunday has been spent working with fellow islanders and a couple of helpful additions to finally get the plastic on the community polytunnel!!!

A classic Rum project - in turns frustrating and unnecessarily complicated, taking way longer than it should have done. But in equal measures inspiring for the level of help from unexpected quarters, the feeling of camaraderie and being something bigger than the sum of its parts and as always against the magical backdrop that is the scenery of Rum and makes you sigh with pleasure and remind yourself 'ah yes, that's why' whenever you have a moment of wondering just what on earth you are doing this all for! It's up, it works (as in we all had to strip off a layer of clothes and come outside once the polythene was on it was that warm inside) and we're really looking forward to getting our little corner of it productive with some seeds in over the next week or so.