No not physically, we are still in Gruinard but our website has moved. A simple financial decision, we were due to renew our domain and .org would have cost circa £56 for 3 years while .org.uk costs about £33 for 10 years.
If you lost us and had trouble finding us again please let us know how we might make it easier for others in future. Thanks

The start of this week was dry and sunny. With this my thoughts turned to water conservation. I believe this has been one of the driest springs on record in some areas. Scotland is rarely short of water, however one of our distilleries has had to shut down production because their water source is so low.
So we have been fixing water butts that had been leaking and are now empty, and connecting ones that had become disconnected. At the same time I started looking at our water use. I bought a four minute egg timer for the shower, but found there was no way I could manage a shower in that time. I then realised that the water only needs to be running to get wet and rinse off. By switching the water off in between times I have cut the showering time to under 2 minutes! that is a saving of 50 - 60 litres of water EACH a day, that is huge. I'm not sure how it will be in a colder bathroom in winter but we can cross that bridge when we come to it.
I have also been planting and planting out his week. The sedums are in their beds, they are good in salads and the mallows are out as well. We tried rosebay willowhrb tips in fajitas on Friday they were good, but a bit woody if the stem was too long. They are reputed to have some positive effect on the prostate. Not seen the evidence for this but it would be nice for those who have a prostate!
I have also planted seeds from some of the perenials that failed in the spring, so some more rhubarb, mahonia aquifolium, butternut squash and a final sowing of peas in gutters. Outside I ahve planted some fennel and runner beans to climb up jerusalem artichokes. I also have french beans doing the same in a separate bed. Sadly the pumpkins that should have been covering the ground have been well and trully slugged. C'est la vie!
I am also proud to announce an impending birth, hopefully that of my first queen bee. I separated the two brood boxes with 3 supers of honey 10 days ago ad when I checked the top brood box (without the queen) there was one, unsealled queen cell. So fingers crossed in 11 days time we will have a new queen. I am really chuffed. The hive this queen cell has come from is still heaving with bees, brood, pollen and honey. The bees are great. The other hive, which has black bees, is much smaller and struggling so I think I may amalgamate the new queen with the black bees to make a stronger hive for the winter.

What a fortnight. The garden is exploding. We went away for four days to Killin in the folding camper, over the Jubillee weekend. When we came back the hedge which had been see through like fine lace was an impenetrable forest full of birds, fantastic. We decided to move the chickens through to the front to enjoy the grass, however, they decided they prefered to escape and enjoy everyone elses grass and beds, so back to the design board with that one.
Talking of design I attended my second weekend on Introduction to Permaculture Design. This weekend was mainly on soil and the animals and chemicals in the soil. It also looked at how our activities with the soil change the soil's behaviour and a bit about the big picture of what do we want from a space, how does it have to function to provide that and what do we need to put in place to facitilitate that. Not alot of new information but a new way of thinking of it. I also need to put a design together for October so we, the family, are looking at that.
I also had the pleasure of teaching a hairy biker to knit. He took to it really well, I have never had such a good pupil. Talking of bikes the tandem is in full use and great fun. It is much more sociable than cycling on single bikes. It is also fairly straight forward to cycle solo. Great.