First day of the hols

This holiday is not about the weather.  Just as well because the forecast for the next week is not promising.  The focus of the coming days is to relax, read, walk when the skies lift, and just be in this lovely place.

We have always been lucky with the weather on past trips to Colonsay.  But you don't really know a place until you experience all its moods, and to do that we needed to see leaden skies, lashing rain, whipping winds and scudding clouds.  We've seen all of those today (plus a few gleams of faint sunshine), and the rain started this morning while the dogs and I were walking through the outer gardens of Colonsay House.  One of my favourite places, and I have been looking forward to that walk since last April!  It did not disappoint. But first, cast your mind back to springtime when the giant gunnera, on the edge of the neglected water garden, looked like this.....

and now it looks like this!

Leaves so gigantic that a sense of scale is immediately checked, and I feel like a Borrower, or even as small as a ladybird.  These leaves are simply gigantic and a lot of them have been fallen by the atrocious weather which has swept through the island over the last week.

One of my favourite plants in the outer gardens of Colonsay House is the very large leaved Rhododendron macabeanum.  This rhododendron comes from India, but it seems to love these gardens and has seeded all over the place since first planted in the 1930s.  The leaves are glorious and I find them quite bewitching.  This wood is a magical place!