WANDERINGS

Yesterday was a National Trust day - I do volunteer conservation work and on a fortnightly basis I can choose to go off somewhere in the Scottish countryside with a group of friends (I have been doing this for almost 5 years and the people are great) to do something useful, fun and healthy. I love to learn new things - like how to build a footpath with drainage ditches, plant trees, build wooden bridges, recognise native species and remove the non-native ones and yesterday a new challenge - planting a wildflower meadow.

Hill of Tarvit is an old mansionhouse in a beautiful estate in Fife. My friends actually got married there last year which was fun, taking photos on the lawn in front of the house, with the open fields and majestic trees behind us.

Yesterday's job was not physically demanding but it was fun to think of all the tiny little seeds growing into a field of grass and flowers that will gently sway, full of colour, in the wind, making the swishing noise that all grass does, to let you walk through it trailing your hand behind you.