Thrifty, recycling or good common sense?

I think my blogs are going to be like men and buses - none for ages then 3 at once.  For the next few blogs I am going to tell you how we use, reuse and recycle to put what we do at Roslin Cottage and in our garden into modern jargon.  I call it common sense but then I am 'off the croft'.

 This comes as a request from some of our visitors who have enjoyed a walk around our garden and commented on what we have done in it over the past 8 years - can it be that long? 

The coldframe was one of the first things Sid made.  If you look closely you will see the top is made from a shower door which otherwise would have been crushed when the chalets next door to the cottage were being demolished to make way for the new Bellway housing estate Forest Walk.  The seedlings are coming on nicely in a selection of vegeware coffee cups and kitchen roll tubes.  Mushroom trays from the market are ideal to keep the pots together especially when the whole lot can be immersed in the old tin bath for a good soak.  To be continued...

Where does time go?

We often hear our guests around the breakfast table discussing how fast their holiday is going, it must be something to do with being busy, as we certainly have been here at Roslin Cottage B&B.  Over the past weeks between guests and garden it has been all go but mustn't grumble.

Many of our guests have come by pedal power using Route 7 sometimes assisted by using www.saddleskeddadle.co.uk  to bring on their luggage to us which I must admit would be the way I would do it if I was cycling from Glasgow to Inverness.  It is a beautiful route by car and until the A9 is dual carriage way all the way probably a lot safer too.

But British Rail don't make it easy for folks wanting to bring their own bikes as it seems there is only space for 2 or 3 bikes on each train and even then you cannot book online when you do your ticket.  To book your bike on at the same time means phoning to their call centre in India which does not seem the most time or cost effective way to go about things. The days of the guard's van and bikes loaded on are long gone - but perhaps an  enterprising person could arrange with the railway companies to get something similar set up.  As they say we have managed to put men on the moon so maybe we can get bikes back on the trains.

Recycled teenager

Well now it is official and I have the pass to prove it - bus pass that is :)
Last time I had one of those I was a teenager at Thurso High School travelling in from Buldoo Downreay so I think that makes me a recycled teenager.  Don't worry I won't be a typical teenager (if there is such a thing - I think they get a bad press as most of the teenagers I know work hard and play hard too) I still intend to get up in time in the mornings to do my turn, bed and breakfast,  would not be the same without me 'helping' Sid.
I have started my 'bucket list' of places to go on the bus so all suggestions welcome!

The Tulach

I scribble a bit when I make time and someone has suggested I put some in my blog.  This little poem comes from a childhood memory of rolling our eggs down the Tulach, that  being the Gaelic name for the little hill on the old airdrome in the north, Caithness, where we gathered on Easter morning.
  This site now rings to the blasts of drills and warning sirens as enormous pits are being dug into the slate  rocks below to take the radioactive waste from nearby Dounreay and probably many other places world wide.

The Tulach

The Tulach is a place of death

In Stone Age times bodies at the end of life

Curled back into foetal size and hid

Throughout aeons of time, until one day

An accidental kick uncovered a bone.

Then learned men from the South took

Hold of pick and trowel and dug away

Discovering the pit where the seashells

Of meals long eaten and discarded lay.

Now shells of chocolate and tea stained eggs

Lie scattered at the base of this ancient mound

A childhood place on Easter morn where bairns gathered

To roll their eggs of birth and celebration, fun.

Another time; this time, a place for life, begun.

What's on in and around Callander

Easter and an egg hunt with a difference - join in this April for Loch Katrine's daily Easter Egg Hunt - free with Cruise Tickets for the Steamship Sir Walter Scott or the Lady of the Lake visit www.lochkatrine.com  for details.  Sid and I were a little early for this when we took our trip on Loch Katrine last week but how lucky are we to be able to enjoy the fantastic scenery all around us and even some sunshine.  Definitely recommend this trip to our visitors and especially now that it has achieved 4* Visit Scotland status.
A little more home grown is the Callander Sport and Adventure Project where plans are in place to run various events over the coming months.  If you enjoy running then their next event, Callander 10k on 29 April might suit you - this dynamic tour of Callander and its spectacular surroundings is one of Britain's most stunning 10k races.  Aprox. 60% trail / 40% tarmac. Enter at www.entrycentral.com
 If I was more sporty I would try it myself but friends will tell you that even when I had my gym membership it was the coffee shop which was the favourite place.  To be fair though we do a lot of walking and enjoyed our spring walk up to the Bracklinn Falls - the long way round via the Keltie Caravan park.

Spring is the best time

I'm with Monty Don when it comes to the best time of the year - for us, spring wins every time. He loves the greenness and I love the spring flower colours. The forsythia buds just beginning to burst and the yellow sunbursts of crocus and daffodils cheer up the grayest of days.  Tatties chitting and some even planted up in the bags we tried last year - a great way to crop if space is short. Still a wee bit too cold to sow the beans in the ground but planting them up in pots ready to go in is the next job on the garden list.  I did read that old gardeners dropped their trousers to test if the earth was warm enough but we don't go that far at Roslin Cottage. Neighbours and all that...
Across the road from the cottage purple crocus have been planted along side the daffodils and with the blue sky and sunshine what a lovely picture they make. We watched as the 'snow horse' melted off the top of 'the ben', or at least that is the shape we see from our side of Callander but it depends on where you are and how the imagination works, what you see as Ben Ledi loses her winter coat.  Yes, spring is round the corner, the best time in the Trossachs.

A new lease of life

The last coat of paint has dried, a beautiful mellow copper colour to bring out the earthy colours of the stones, carpet cleaned, furniture all back in place and our Kirtle room is now ready to receive the first guests due in this weekend.  Well, there was a slight panic as I hunted through the various duvets stored in the loft, yes, we have summer weight and winter quilts in single, double and somewhere in between, but could I find the superking needed, no, but that was because it had been put to the laundrette while we were doing the redecorating. Duh!   Retrieved and resplendent it now sets off the new colour scheme beautifully.  We hope you agree when we get the new photos taken for the website. Meantime here is one I took earlier.....
 Our new 'pet' is now in residence too, no worries, no allergies to fear, for this pet burns wood very efficiently.  We are converts to the warm delights of the wood burning stove - I am almost disappointed the summer is coming around so soon.  Well, almost....
Just as one job finishes, the next starts here at Roslin Cottage- over the last couple of days we have had really lovely spring weather so we got out in the garden.  We have had to make a few changes there as the winter storms tore off a branch from our old, very large and much loved cherry tree.  It was in danger of more branches coming down so we reluctantly had to have the whole tree cut leaving a stump of about four feet.  We talked over many ideas of what to do with it to keep it as a feature.  It was while we were on our own wee holiday to Madeira last November that we saw an idea to copy in the Botanical Gardens there (an island worth a visit).
There they had taken palm leaves, filled them with soil, planted them up with different plants and wired them round old tree stumps.  Very simple, very effective. Back home we have made our own version with old hanging baskets (never enough time to water them in the summer now anyway), moss and spring bulbs all now spiralling round our old cherry - a new lease of life!