Not with the sound of music, no, but with the colour purple.  The heather has been glorious this year, and when you look from our house towards the hills they are shrouded in a purple haze.

Heading up towards Water Loch today I kept stopping to take photographs, trying to capture the scene for you, but it is very difficult.



There are little clusters of the heather and there are huge banks of it:



It is unsurprising that my favourite colour is purple, and this time of year is always a treat for me:

If you get up close there are a variety of shades within clumps of heather:

and you will see that some of the species are beginning to dye back now.

But the overall effect is purple:

Photographs simply don't do the scene justice, and I wish I had smellyweb so that you could smell the delightful scent of the heather too.  For us it brings back strong memories of the smell of fynbos in the Western Cape, and more especially of a honey we used to buy that smelt just like heather.  If you suffer badly with hayfever, now is perhaps not the best time to be tramping over the hills.  The pollen thrown up as you walk through the heather is staggering.  Walking behind Stevan I spent most of my time walking through a white cloud of pollen.

It doesn't last long enough, but we enjoy it while it is here.