The veg plot looks like a veg plot today.

The salad bed is overflowing with goodness, the brassicas appear to be flourishing under their bridal veil and the potatoes are hinting at underground promise.

The Everything Else plot isn't big enough. There were originally two Everything Else plots in the plan but I randomly decided to grow tatties and figured I'd figure everything else out later. For now, the EE bed is full - although it doesn't look it yet as some seedlings are tiny and some seeds only went in today.

I was going to plant more peas but I read they don't like onions and the onions needed a space. Cucumbers are friendly with everyone so I popped them in next to the onions and added a sneaky row of radishes because the peas do like them.

I didn't know that sunflowers and potatoes don't make good bedfellows but it's too late to fix it since, for now, both seem to be growing well and I don't have the heart to pull up sunflowers.

So far cats and snails have not induced blue words...

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Peas Don’t Like Onions… originally appeared on Taexalia on June 16, 2010.

If you are going to climb Ben Nevis then I highly recommend not doing it on the first heatwave day of the summer. I don't recommend doing it during any other heatwave either - but the first heatwave of the year and climbing Ben Nevis is a combination that will leave you puffin, pechin, puggled an pitifu...

Last year we didn't heed this advice. Thinking about it, we didn't really not heed it, we just didn't really think about it in real terms. The day before we just thoucht "Aye fine weather, hope it huds for the morn."

When the Paternal Unit and The GemmaDog deposited us at the side of the road it was 8:15am. Before we even said goodbye, I decided that the fleece I was wearing was already surplus to requirements - and I added it to my rucksack, before lathering my exposed wintry white flesh with sunscreen.

Scottish readers will know how alien a concept it is to be applying sunscreen at 8:15am on a Sunday morning.

We were hot before we crossed the River Nevis and left the shade of the trees. Once we left the shade of the trees we were hotter still.

And then we started to climb.

That's the wonderful thing about Ben Nevis - you start basically at sea level and climb to 4406 (or 4409 depending who you read) feet above sea level. Unlike other Munros, where the car-park might already be at 1000ft above sea level and the summit is 3300ft, you walk all the way. Up. There is no gentle initiation, there is only UP.

We decided very early on that we had the freedom to turn back at any point, given that the heat was, well, hot and given that our recent portfolio of hill-walking was limited to Stac Pollaidh.

Being vaguely experienced, if out of practise hillwalkers, we were equipped with everything one needs to venture onto the Scottish hills. Here is a list of some of the things that were in my backpack... that added to the weight I was carrying... that added to the hotness:

• Aforementioned polar fleece jacket
• Sweatshirt
• Waterproof jacket
• Waterproof trousers
• Scarf
• Fleece hat
• Gloves
• Packed lunch
• Camera
• Water

Feel free to guess how many of those items I needed...

Here is a list of things I didn't bring:

• My own personal rain cloud and wind system

We were slow, we were overtaken, we stopped a lot. We put one foot in front of the other and kept going despite feeling like we might never make it. We were buoyed by the group of guys who kept overtaking us while we were stopped, who would stop further on and banter as we overtook them. One of these darling guys was to be found around the half way point straddling the waterfall and offering to soak people's hats for them. We accepted his offer. I have to tell you that the sensation of that freezing, dripping hat returning to my bonce was one of the best non-orgasmic moments of my life. Both Mither and I are convinced that it was this singular incident that ensured our success.

Yes, despite the heat, and a mile of thigh-deep-arse-muscle-trembling-banana-skin-polluted-snow, we made it.

I didn't have the energy to be euphoric and I didn't have the sunglasses to cope with the harsh effect of sun and snow (I am not one of those people that does things with snow and graphite shoe accessories). I didn't even really have the energy to eat much. But I did climb onto the trig point and feel funny knowing that for the moments we were up there, no-one in these Isles had their feet on the ground and their heads held higher.

What goes up must come down. Much of the downward trek we were kept company by a pair of conversational Ravens. We also discovered that sweat and sunscreen soup is effective in drowning midgies. When my knees made their final creaking downward motion I was already thinking about The Next Time...

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Getting High With Mither originally appeared on Taexalia on February 25, 2010.

My Mum and Dad have been known to do the odd bit of walking in their time. Their pursuit of height has seen them conquer more than one hundred Munros, as well as many other smaller hills and winding paths. I have joined them on occasion and my own walking resume includes some long paths like the Lairig Gruh, as well as a small puckle of Munros and assorted hillage.

There are various reasons why our hill-walking exploits have been curtailed in recent years, but both Mum and I have developed an itch of late to get back up on top of hills, look at bonnie scenery and enjoy that wee rush of "I made it" that always accompanies the crest of a hill.

Having set our sights on Stac Pollaidh some time ago, we simply needed to co-ordinate a mini break that allowed us to wake up fairly close to our hill so we could have ample time for pechin, bearing in mind Stac Pollaidh stands in the far North-West of Scotland and we are as far flung as Fife and Aeberdeen. Dad appears to be enjoying his new role of logistical planner, transport chief and support team (aided by the Great Gemmadog) as much as we are enjoying our new set of challenges.

So, last weekend, I faced the vagaries of the rail system and had a quick sleep under a very large ginger cat before we set off to try and escape the Rain. I was not best hopeful about the weather thing because the further North I got the more driech it seemed to get. After Inverness, tho, we started to see patches of light cloud mingled with the occasional teaser of a possible blue streak.

The problem of weather meant there were many discussions regarding Plan A, Plan B, Plan C and Plan C subsection vii... When we finally came into view of Stac Pollaidh, she was hidden behind around a hundred feet of the Cailleach's skirts and Plan B was shunted up to first place. Plan B was the nine mile round trip to Sandwood Bay.

The following day we enjoyed a good breakfast before a leisurely meandering towards Stac Pollaidh. We could see lots of blue sky, some sunshine and our hopes were high for a successful ascent. We weren't disappointed.

The paths on Stac Pollaidh are well built and offer a varied set of options - there's a circular walk that avoids the Torridonian Sandstone monoliths that form the summit(s), and there are two paths marked in the guidebook that take you up into the crags. Since we had left the guidebook in the car (yes I know, but we did have proper clothing/footwear/water/etc - unlike one numpty we saw in tennis shoes) we decided more with instinct than with educated guesswork that we'd take the left path when we came upon the first pair of options.

The left path goes UP. More UP than the UP of the path prior to the fork in the trail. UP. I had already been hearing the sound of thundering drums as my heart aerated my moist and shrinking body, (OK I had to wait three days to see the change on the scales but sometimes you just *know* you are fat-burning), now my inner workings sounded like the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards Pipes and Drums on speed. The pipes being the screech of various things including my knees.

At various points we had discussed the wording of the absent guidebook - wording that suggested hill-walkers would have difficulty getting to the top because of scrambling. The scrambling was made to sound like vertical Spiderman-like clinging over vast cliffs populated by jagged claws waiting to claim slightly out of practise vertigo afflicted women.

We clambered up the steep path, stopping as needed, with the proviso that we would both be able to tell when we needed to stop and that no matter how far from the top we were - it wasn't the end result but the doing that counted.

We soon found ourselves on a plateau complete with a view ower the ither side - top enough for us in the moments it took to get our breath back. Then I spotted an interesting outcrop that just begged for me to walk out onto it. So I did. Mum attempted to hide the fact that the sight of her eldest daughter stepping out over basically nothing was giving her a conniption, but she didn't hide it very well. I don't think I helped much by wiggling my bum and uttering things like "Are you nervous? Are your ovaries doing somersaults?"

She took photos of me whilst wishing me to step back in to safety.

This is not a photo of me, this is a photo of Mum who, almost as soon as I had returned to normal width mountain-side,  threw off her rucksack and stepped over her vertigo to pose. Feel free to send her 66th Birthday Wishes via the comments form on the 8th of June

But there's more.

You see while we were cavorting about on rocky outcrops, I was noticing the gait of people continuing up the path - and I was noticing that although there was the odd grab-the-rock-above-for-a-handhold type manoeuvre, there weren't any rope tricks or Spider-Webs or anything.

So I took off to see for myself and left Mum with the weirdest looking bee type beastie I've ever seen. Twas not long before she was clambering up behind me - and soon we stood on what is the lower of the two recognised tops of Stac Pollaidh.

Breathtaking, in more ways than one.

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Women With Altitude originally appeared on Taexalia on May 24, 2009.

I have wanted to visit Sandwood Bay for quite a while. In March 2008 we found ourselves at the top of the track in an unexpected and un-planned stop but the lateness of the hour meant we could not undertake the four and a half mile walk to the beach (and the four and a half mile walk back).When I created my Day Zero Project, it was an easy and obvious goal to add to the list - and a quite stunning goal to mark "complete". That said, I want to make the trip again and camp for a night or two and have longer to explore the dunes and walk the length of the beach. Maybe I'll combine that idea with my wild camping alone goal, we'll see.

As someone who lived in Edinburgh for seven years, it is quite special to travel to one of the most stunning places in the country and to feel solitary and isolated. Of course I wasn't actually solitary since my companions were Mither and Gemmadog, but we barely saw another soul. The vastness of the beach itself plasy a part in this, but also the nine mile round trip means that less people drop by for a wee wander.

The walk itself isn't exceptional, just necessary - although if you are lucky you may catch sight of some wildlife.... frogspawn, butterflies, moths, dunlins, and ubiquitous sheep are things I have seen, there is probably more to spot. You can enjoy the weather and movement of light across the mountains to the north and the lochs and lochans scattered around. When you come to a pair of big old weathered sleepers marking a long gone gate you can relax to the idea that you have arrived.

Don't relax for too long though - if you want to get to the sea you need to walk through the dunes and that's a workout in itself.

There's some interesting lore about Sandwood Bay too - a now roofless cottage was said to be haunted by a mariner who knocked on the windows, shipwrecks and buried treasure are said to lie amongst the dunes and one person I spoke to the following day had heard "the whole place has a haunted atmosphere".

To me, Sandwood Bay feels immense as I'm standing on the sand looking out at the Atlantic Ocean. To the south there is the impressive sea stack, Am Buachaille, and to the north a series of cliffs step out into the sea. To my mind they appeared as dragons holding the boundary between land and water and I could almost imagine them sliding in and out, back and forth as their fancy took them. There is an elemental otherworldly feel to this place, a vastness.

Sand and water and a million years gone by, to quote Beth Nielsen Chapman, and I sang it too since there was so little by way of an audience

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Sandwood Bay originally appeared on Taexalia on May 21, 2009.

Movement is the word I chose as my theme for 2009, and movement is what I have been up to for the last couple of weeks - moving house involves nothing but movement from place to place and from dawn til dusk... and beyond.

I will miss the foxes, Crow and the mannie doonstairs, but apart from that - I am not sure words can express how in love with our new home I am. I have views, I have peace and quiet, I have the sight (and sometimes the sound) of Buzzards discussing territory high above the wooded hill I can see from this very spot. I have a bigger garden than I remembered from the viewing, but today I finally broke free from boxes of stuff and got out there and tamed some weeds. It was the most satisfying way to spend the late afternoon I can imagine.

We have a bed the size of a small country. It is the most comfortable bed in the universe. My sleep patterns are healing and I am even remembering my dreaming - and they are good dreams with warm and fuzzy awakenings.

They say that moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do. I have to say that compared to what we left behind, the actual moving was a piece of cake.

Our stress came in the form of corporate fuck-ups that are still boggling my mind. Corporate fuck-ups courtesy of Royal Mail and Virgin Media.

Obviously, when you move house you need to set up a mail redirect. We were advised by Royal Mail to do it online "because it's easier". Quite who it is easier for is anyone's guess.

After a week with no mail, we contacted them to enquire as to when they might be sending us our junk mail - we were pointedly informed that no mail redirect was in place for us. We were told that "just because you get a confirmation screen and email doesn't actually mean it has been set up."

Excuse me?

The other corporate fuck-up leaves me wondering how Richard Branson ever gets an income - because the people who work for him appear to be incompetent.

Having promised to have our internet connection set up and functional on the 7th April, we later found out that a combination of misinformation and ineptitude means that we are really going to be connected tomorrow. Maybe.

This is why I am resorting to a dinosaur dial-up service because there is only so long I can go without any internet connection at all. This is also why there are no pictures of movement or views or anything because I don't have the patience to try and upload them on a dial-up. How did we survive in the old days?

But the best bit about the Virgin Media debacle is the fact that one of their number addressed our final bill for the old flat to our new address but somehow managed to re-name the town we now live in to "Burnttoast".

1. I have had many mishaps over the past couple of weeks but none of them involve singed bread.

2. Royal Fail did manage to deliver that letter.

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Movement originally appeared on Taexalia on April 16, 2009.

Diets don't work. If they did then millions of women around the world would not be constantly on them, repeatedly. Diets are a way to sell books, charge membership fees and a leg trap that keep women constantly feeling bad about themselves as they strive to achieve the perfect weight and body shape.

I have only once gone on an actual diet. I amazed myself by diligently following the meal plan without cheating. I lost weight. In fact I lost quite a lot of weight and did, in fact, fit into those purple PVC trousers I love.

The problem with the diet was that once the weight was off there wasn't much of a follow through - nowhere for my eating self to go other than back to the patterns she knew before. And what happened then was that more weight piled on as if my body was making sure it would never have to go there again. An added factor in this was a big lifestyle change going from a very active job to easily inactive self-employment.

I've figured out, with the help of some reading, that finding health isn't just about losing weight and that losing weight isn't just about eating less. Unfortunately I've also discovered that stress is a major toxic factor and I have no idea when I will be able to eliminate my specific stressor from my life... so I'm working on all the other things I can do for now. Aside from stress, the five major toxins seem to be:

• cigarettes
• alcohol
• caffeine
• salt
• sugar

So for the last wee while I have been looking at cutting them out. I had a head start because it is several years since I smoked a cigarette I don't add salt to my food and I don't usually eat a lot of processed food or crisps, so I don't think salt is a biggie. I cut sugar out of my coffee weeks ago. I am not even sure why I started putting it in there again - probably as some sort of feel-good treat in a very dark year.

Moving into the new year I have now chopped caffeine out. I haven't had a cup of coffee in 2009. I Googled "quitting coffee" and found some really interesting theories not at all related to weight loss - quitting caffeine actually increases productivity and decreases procrastination. We shall see. Right now I am right on track with the withdrawal symptoms - a minor headachey yuk and a cup of cold herbal tea.

As for alcohol, well the last wee tipple was taken as the bells rang in the new year, but I am not going to lie to you - I like a glass of red wine. I am planning to have one tonight with dinner actually. I figure the wine goes last

So I'm not on a diet and I'm not seeking the perfect body - because if you spend five minutes critically reading the tripe that the media feeds women every day you will discover that there is no such thing as a perfect body. There is simply a constant hounding of women not to look the way they look today, a constant comparison of one woman (body type) with another woman (body type) that simply attacks self-esteem and puts pounds in the pockets of the diet industry. And the chocolate industry.

Of course the biggest challenge is deciding what to do with the small mountain of nutritionally challenged foodstuffs that Santa left behind. Luckily @ is famous for having two mouths.

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I am not on a diet originally appeared on Taexalia on January 3, 2009.

You may have noticed my Day Zero linky in the top bar - the page that lists my 101 in 1001. This is an experiment in goal setting, and also a bypass of New Year's Resolutions - instead giving myself 1001 days to complete the list and, quite probably, also embrace failure I found writing the list an interesting challenge - despite all the To Do lists floating around in my brain I had to really get creative to make it to 101.

On Sunday I was taken on a surprise trip to Poolewe and Gairloch. The original idea had been to revisit the Caledonian Pine Forest in Glen Affric, but when we stopped in Inverness for coffee we decided that it might be somewhat cold wandering around under the freezing fog that was blanketing everything. We decided that scenery from a warm vehicle was a better option, with the possibility of better weather further North and West. We were not disappointed.

Thankfully I will be spending a whole week in Poolewe in March so I was able to cope with the fleeting glimpse of the area in the short time we had, however the best surprise was the last minute otter sighting in the harbour at Gairloch.

I have only maybe spotted a wild otter once before during a walk along the Gannochy at Edzell. This was something like fifteen years ago but I still remember the shape that moved across a large slab of rock. It was dusk and we couldn't identify exactly what we were seeing, but we thought it must have been an otter. Since then I have never seemed to be in the right place at the right time - which is why I put an otter sighting on my 101 list. I really didn't think I'd be able to score it off so soon!

We were basically out of time and needing to turn back towards Aberdeen, but Male Parental Unit decided to give us a quick peek at the Gairloch Harbour a. As MPU drove along by the water I exclaimed "there's something in the water" and continued whining until car was u-turned and parked. I was informed that GemmaDog and I had "three minutes by the water" and I scrambled out of the car all afankle.

The something in the water was still bobbing and I realised it was not a seal and exclaimed "there's an otter in the water" as I saw the black creature playing and diving and unmistakably ottery.

My camera decided to play fuckwittage due to the rather low temperatures, and I was unable to get anything more than the following otter water art. But I will be back!

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A Goal in Gairloch originally appeared on Taexalia on December 30, 2008.

That's lb for £.

Yes, look to the left sidebar and you will see two new widgets... One is the pounds off progress bar, and the other is the pounds on widget.

That'll be pounds off me and pounds onto the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society bank balance.

I need all the motivation I can get, and the whales and dolphins need all the support they can get. It's a marriage made in blubber.

You can sponsor me for as little as £1, or as much as you like - and if you are a UK tax payer the government will Gift Aid on your behalf

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Pound for pound originally appeared on Taexalia on December 19, 2008.