Only two weeks now to the biggest event of the year on Loch Ness - Rockness. For three days the population of the whole of the Loch Ness area will increase 20 fold! Fiona tells me that today when she went in to Inverness, they have started on putting up all the barriers, arenas etc that goes with staging such an event. I hope that they get a weekend like they did two years ago when the sun shone from start to finish and a good time was had by all....well lets be honest some will have had such a good time they can't remember anything about it! I went along with a friend on the Saturday afternoon in 2008 and really enjoyed the atmosphere and even some of the music. However, being just about the oldest people there, we left before the real partying began! Then again I did say in an earlier blog that Blondie are playing this year...

A new ring shaped device has been installed recently on Loch Ness to harness wave power for the generation of electricity. Developed by Inverness based AWS Ocean Energy it is smaller scale than the 'real thing' which they hope to have ready for testing in 2012.
But what a perfect place to test it.. - safe ( for such a device) and secure waters but at the same time waters which, as all local people know,can generate sizeable waves. When the wind blows from the west up the length of the Great Glen, by the time it gets to Loch Ness the resultant waves can be big! We often tell guests that sometimes looking out on Loch Ness can be like looking out to sea in a severe gale. Here's a couple of photos which show this I think!

It always happens at this time of year but it never ceases to succeed in stressing me out. Just when I think I've got Evergreen and Hazelgrove gardens under control for the season, bang, within the space of a week all hell breaks loose. The grass starts to grow as if its been fed growth hormones, the weeds spring up everywhere - big, ugly and determined not to be removed. And just to really annoy me midgees are beginning to appear so that when you are making progress of an evening and the garden is beginning to look ok for a further few days, you get bitten to blazes for your troubles. I would get a gardener to help me out if I could but they are few and far between around Loch Ness! Perhaps I should consider just 'minimal maintenance gardening', allow everything to just grow and just have completely wild gardens in keeping with the environment that surrounds us... sounds good but unfortunately not really realistic. Ah well, I guess I will just have to get by with moaning!

Two miles along the road from us here at Evergreen we have Boleskine graveyard. Sitting directly across the road from the infamous Boleskine House ( home last century of Aleister Crowley for 15 years, self proclaimed 'most wicked man in the world!)this is a wonderful small graveyard and final resting place for many of the main families who have lived in the area over the centuries - the Frasers, Shaws, McGillivrays. Over the years I have discovered many of the stories linked to some of the graves and come to also understand that infact under the lovely mowed grass that we see today when we look at the graveyard, are the graves of many more buried here. It was therefore with great interest that I discovered last week that four new graves had been revealed (the result of someone's research in to their family history)and what ornate gravestones they are ! One stone has an 'angel of death' spreading it's wings around a skull & crossbones (common on graves from the past)and symbols indicating what perhaps the person had done for a living...

What would we do if we didn't have the weather to talk about ! Mind you, there has certainly been plenty to talk about this year and now.. well unless it starts to rain for a month we are in for a very dry summer. I was down the west coast at our Fairhaven cottage for a couple of days this week and on the way down I couldn't help but notice how little growth and colour there is in the hillsides. Not only that, the rivers and resevoirs are already very low. Doubt we will ever reach hosepipe bans as like elsewhere in the UK or have to start pumping water from Loch Ness but who knows.
Until relatively recently the water supply for Inverfarigaig came from a small, beautiful little loch half a mile from us here at Evergreen. We call it the 'Secret Loch' because unless you know where to look it is not the easiest to find. Use of it stopped because it kept drying up ! Attached is a photo of it taken in February!

Fiona and I take the woods that almost surround us here at Evergreen for granted. They are simply part of our everyday life. We walk in them almost every day, we hear the birds and wildlife in them every day and we can't look out a window without looking to some extent in to the woods. Yesterday I went out for an early morning run with a few friends and for a change we chose simply to run some of the tracks through the woods. The sun was shining as we chatted and jogged along enjoying each others company. We didn't pass another person and then close to the end of our jaunt, we reached a viewpoint looking down across the woods to a serene flat calm Loch Ness. We all stopped and gazed - it really was absolutely beautiful. One of these moments when you think this is it, this is what life should be about, experiencing the natural environment at it's very best..

Loch Ness is about to have it's first Whisky Festival ! ( see http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1727158/?UserKey= ) What a great idea and I'm surprised it has not happened before now. Whisky is after all one of Scotland's most iconic products known and drunk the world over. Within Scotland it is, I think, a product more associated with the Highlands than anywhere else, so good on Fiddler's Restaurant at Drumnadrochit for organising the festival.
Over the years here at Evergreen I have spent a number of evenings downing whisky ( on one occasion very very expensive whisky!!) with guests. In particular, I will never forget, probably because they were amongst our first guests to Evergreen, spending a very convivial time with four Americans drinking 10 year old Macallan. I seem also to remember that serving breakfast the following morning was shall we say 'challenging' due to a 'slight headache'.....

Interesting article in our local newspaper today. A pod of upto 100 pilot whales were seen off Cromarty yesterday.( http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1721053?UserKey= )Cromarty is only 15 miles or so north on Inverness. Dolphins are very common in the Cromarty Firth and Moray Firth but pilot whales ?