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Crowditch

Gardening, At Last

by Lydia February 14, 2025

There was a healthy layer of frost this morning but, delightfully, the sun was warm enough that I made it outside this lunchtime to make a start on the front garden. Finally! I’ve been itching to for ages, but the weather hasn’t been playing ball. I couldn’t weed the rowing boat because it was still hard with frost, but I made progress on the beds.

The plans for the front are simple. I need to weed out the three skinny beds in front of the house, and I will certainly need to bolster the two at either side with more plants this spring. The one in the middle is a little different, as I am hoping last year’s peony makes a return this year, and hasn’t just given up entirely (there is new growth, so it is looking promising!). The plan for that one is to relocate the two roses in the archaic, broken wooden planters into the bed beside the peony, and hope that the reason they don’t seem to be thriving at the moment is because they need better earth that they haven’t already wrung dry of nutrients.

The tedious part will be weeding the gravel. I am not a fan of gravel, but it looks like we’re keeping it for now, at least, especially given the front of the house also acts as back-up parking. Once weeded, we’ll get another bag to layer over it, to better suppress the weeds and grasses that just can’t help themselves.

And then we have to order the hedging plants and the fruit trees. There is an ornamental cherry on the grass already, and Euan has assessed how many more healthy trees we can grow there. Auri and Euan are adamant we’re keeping the old rowing boat in the garden, so that will be planted up with wildflowers. The hedging will skirt round behind it, and I am yet to decide exactly what to do with the patch of grass in front. A bed, perhaps? Only I am hoping for something low maintenance. Bulbs in the green? We’ll see. I’m not worrying too much about that this side of summer.

The world, reflecting the afternoon sun.
February 14, 2025
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A barometer showing a drop in pressure.
Crowditch

Our First Anniversary

by Lydia January 28, 2025

It is funny how storms mean something a bit different now, living in an old house which we are slowly bringing back to life as a long-term family home. Our house has stood for coming on for 200 years as far as we can tell (a trip to the Archives to find out more is still pending), so on the one hand that is a very good thing. It has survived many, many more storms than I should see in my lifetime. On the other hand, it needs a lot of ongoing care and attention, and it is hard to know where this will next unexpectedly need to be focussed, diverting what plans and schemes we have made so far.

Fortunately, though, Storm Éowyn didn’t do any damage. She did let her feelings be known, but the winds didn’t much top 50km per hour (or at least didn’t when I was checking my phone). One of the windows in my study was rattling away all afternoon, but fortunately that didn’t come to anything. The back three rooms upstairs, part of the 1970s (as far as we have been told – research and confirmation pending) extension, are all up in the roof, with no attics. As a result, you really do hear the winds as they sweep across, especially as we’re at the top of the hill. Later in the day, we all sat together, cosy, in the sitting room (I am still very much enjoying actually having heating in there after ten months without!), listening to the noises outside. Auri’s school closed at lunchtime, so there was a general feeling of giddiness and excitement. It was great fun.

It was Auri’s birthday last week, which was also the first anniversary of getting the keys to our new home. And, on Sunday, we celebrated our first year of moving in – well, actually, we were all so exhausted from Auri’s birthday party earlier in the day, we just crashed out in the sitting room. We had put a bottle of champagne we’d been brought at Christmas in the fridge to chill, but it can wait until this weekend when we’ll raise a toast to our family home.

The drop in pressure from Thursday night to Friday morning.
January 28, 2025
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Crowditch

Our New Home

by Lydia December 16, 2024

This update has taken about ten months longer to write than I thought it might.

Life has been a tad hectic this year but, though it doesn’t promise to slow down in any way, things have at least hit a certain stride. There is a skeleton of a pattern to most days now, meaning I can start to see how I might scratch out a little more time to share a few updates here.

In January 2024, we moved into our new home in a village on the Black Isle, in the Highlands of Scotland. Though we’ve covered most of the length of the UK between us over the years (well, Kent to the Mainland of Orkney, at any rate), this time we only moved a few handfuls of miles from the other side of Inverness.

The house is going to be a work in progress for some time. A “many-year project”, as I describe it to friends. But it already feels like home.

The first month was a challenge, moving into our house in the middle of winter, only to find the central heating didn’t work. We lived out of a single room, heated by electric radiators. When we needed to dash to the kitchen to get something to eat, we could see our breath in front of us by the time we got there. We picked up the keys on Auri’s fifth birthday, and Elfi had only turned one year old the month before.

There were (and continue to be) other less than great surprises. I’m sure I’ll mention them over the months that follow. But at no point – and perhaps this reflects more my underlying optimism than the reality of the move – did we regret moving. We love our new home, and we are enjoying bringing her back to life after a few years of being unloved.

I’m hoping to share some updates here a couple of times a month. After taking a step back from social media and whatnot in recent years and archiving a lot, I have now decided where and when I want to be (digitally, and for now at least). The easiest way of finding me elsewhere is by checking out my Inventory or signing up for my newsletter ((re)launching later this month.

A wintery landscape, with snow-covered fields, a strip of water, and hills and mountains beyond.
A view from our village, early February 2024.
December 16, 2024
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A notebook, filled with pictures of bats drawn in black ink by a child.
Crowditch

A Book of Bats

by Lydia September 21, 2023

I am slowly resurfacing after being knocked for six by a particularly vicious bout of flu. Excepting childbirth, that’s the worse I’ve felt since I had Covid.

Here’s a book of bats – I opened my work notebook on Monday morning to find it full of these little creatures, courtesy of Auri.

September 21, 2023
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A man, a baby, and a little girl stand in the woods with their dog and a basket full of mushrooms, smiling for the camera.
#TheMistySolitudesCrowditch

Mushroom Haul

by Lydia September 2, 2023

Quite the haul of chanterelles!

September 2, 2023
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A child's drawing of a family, with three stick people (one of whom is holding a stick baby) and a stick dog.
Crowditch

Family Portrait

by Lydia August 30, 2023

Family portraits don’t come much cuter than this.

August 30, 2023
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A child's Playmobil stable with some pink slime hanging off it.
Crowditch

Unicorn Slime

by Lydia August 24, 2023

Euan is back from a few days undertaking fieldwork for his elm work in Skye, so I am fortunately no longer the only person at home to do things like clear up half a tube of toothpaste smeared all over the sink and the bath, and wipe down toys which have been attacked with unicorn slime. Oh, the glamour of my life.

August 24, 2023
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A margarita sits on a table in a restaurant in the foreground, with a glass of cranberry juice behind.
Crowditch

First Day of School

by Lydia August 15, 2023

Somehow, today was Auri’s first day at school. Already.

As I did when Elfi started nursery earlier this month, I spent half the day flinching, thinking I’d misplaced a child somewhere.

Euan and I dropped Auri off in the morning, then went for a very civilised coffee and breakfast pastry in a mildly shell-shocked daze. Later, there was lunch.

August 15, 2023
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A woman wears pink-mirrored aviators and a headband with a big pink flower at the front. Her long hair is either tousled or disheveled, depending on which way you look at it.
Crowditch

As Styled by Auri

by Lydia August 14, 2023
August 14, 2023
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A little girl looks out to sea, watching for dolphins, on a gorgeous summer's evening. The long shadows of her unseen companions stretch out in front of her from behind the camera.
Crowditch

Sea-Fever

by Lydia August 12, 2023

Last night, Euan and Auri nipped along to Chanonry Point to meet some friends and watch the dolphins as the tide and the weather were both perfect. It was Elfi’s bedtime so we couldn’t join them, but it was a magical evening, and listening to Auri chattering away excitedly as she got ready for bed when she got back (waaaaaaaaay past her bedtime!) will be something that will stay with me forever.

August 12, 2023
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Elosa

Take one Southern and one Northern. Throw in two determined (very) young women and their four-legged guardian and partner in crime. Immerse in the Highlands.

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