This link works fine, Stash Haus. (I thought computers could put in http’s and www’s for themselves.) The site seems to be specifically devoted to the red squirrel in England, no bad thing, a) because it’s just as well to focus and b) because its plight there is even more precarious than in Scotland.

Kate, thanks for interesting comment. I’m sure the Easter lamb we saw yesterday -- Mel was worried – had already been slaughtered and butchered before the picture was taken. It was being weighed for the Drakes on a spring scale hung on a branch; local produce, indeed.

It was interesting what you said about topsoil, too. And green-ness. The latter, of course, accounts for the tyranny of the lawnmower around here from May until October. Earlier and later, further south. But the lack of topsoil in Australia is very interesting. My husband is fussy about it – no weed may be disposed of without a thorough cleansing of its roots. I add manure, humped over the field in a wheelbarrow. That’s getting to be pretty hard work, in old age – but the Blairgowrie “recycling center”, a.k.a. the town dump, now has a bin of compost (made, presumably, from the garden waste we deposit in the appropriate skip) free for the taking. I make ample use of that. It’s very black.

My vegetables grow on part of the old kitchen garden, and the good soil is very deep. Sandy and free-draining and in need of moisture-retaining humus, but deep.

On that subject: there will be no blog tomorrow. I plan to make a day-trip to Kirkmichael to spend a few hours hoeing and hand-weeding. (The lawnmower will remain in the shed.) Not much will have happened in five chilly days, but I left plenty of weeds behind so I won’t be under-employed. And I can also speak words of encouragement to the courgettes, if they have survived the recent frosts: June is nearly with us, I will tell them. July is in fact the only month which is pretty reliably frost-free in Strathardle, but I won’t tell them that.

As for knitting, I’m well around Cathy’s first heel and speeding down the foot. My Target for Today is to order the remaining yarns I need for my dinosaurs.