Roaring stags, twinkly stars, skies on fire

More pictures than words these last few days, unlike me I know.

We're enjoying a last burst of summer here on Rum with t shirt weather days although we're getting hot water bottle nights thanks to the same clear skies. Clearly the way to reduce the winds on Rum is to install a wind turbine - it's barely turned in days. Fortunately the solar panel is getting a good whack of power demonstrating once again that spreading your bets is the best approach in all things, power included.

We've been busy making the most of the fine weather, getting more firewood up the hill, chopped and stacked, the raised beds weeded, a small amount of garlic planted for an autumn sowing, some general tidying up and a final bramble pick of the season.

I'm waiting on some paint to arrive to do something creative with the old freezer / new produce cupboard / smallest farm shop in Scotland and have been trawling the internet for inspiration.

We have a list of fine weather jobs for the next few days: move the pigs (well open out their enclosure to include a new patch of land, the outline of which is already strimmed, we just need to set up the fence), move the barbecue to a less exposed area next to the horsebox, put a tarp over the exposed firewood stash, make a fruit tree cage ready to plant fruit trees we're about to order. And a list of wet weather jobs: Clear out the polytunnel and do some autumn / winter sowings, get some soft fruit bushes and some fruit trees ordered (this month's investment of funds is fruit trees and bushes to stock our newly created cages ready for next year) - this is the time to order and plant them and we have an excellent book
which lists specific varieties which should do well for us so we'll refer to that to help us make our choices. We want to plan out next years planting generally including the polytunnel, the raised beds and some fodder crops for animal feed too which is an indoors with cups of coffee job for a rainy day. We have various other paperwork-based tasks to crack on with when the weather stops us from being outdoors too and the forecast tells us that will be happening later this coming week.

But for now we're enjoying the sun while it lasts, safe in the knowledge that it's only a matter of time before the wind turbine spins round and round and gales blast us and make the walls rattle once more.