This is the bothy before I went to work on it. Or, in truth, the unfailingly enthusiastic Dave Simpson, a builder and developer of Dervaig, a village across the island, went to work on it. He made his home on Mull some years ago now, having come up as a young man to dive and his love of the island shows in his determination to make an authentic job of restoring the bothy. 

Also 'before', in case you needed telling, is the bothy inside, with its fireplace where meals would be made. The walls are over a couple of feet thick and dry, even after all these years of lack of use. The idea is to restore it, to make it suitable for 21st century living but without losing its original 'ethos' (yes, ghastly word but a worthy goal...) It will have a tiny kitchen, a tiny shower room, and a built-in bed just as would have been present in bothies in the 18th century.

Yes, the roof was rotten. Who knew. The wonderful roof 'artist' (yes, what he does is artistry) Ricky took each of the original toast-thick slates off and dressed each one by hand outside in driving rain. He stacked them in two piles - the thicker ones to face the sea and incoming gales, the thinner ones for the back where the weather is more forgiving.

The bothy 'after' - or almost. There's plenty of work still to do...And then the garden needs to be created. The rubble from the interior has created the extended terrace outside, so it isn't suitable for planting. So there'll have to be raised beds around a flagstone area that will take a table and a barbecue and wood pile, as well as a small fish fountain a friend made me.

On the right is what will be framed in to become a built-in bed, with storage below. To the left will be the small shower room. Where the cardboard box sits will be the kitchen area. Tiny but perfect!

When you live on an island, you learn that if you want something done, you'd better do it yourself. Waiting for builders, decorators, plumbers - for anyone with skills - to show up is not a matter of days. It's a matter of months. And in the case of renovating my house and the wee bothy at the top of the back garden, it's been three years and I'm only just now seeing the end in sight.

So when I needed steps down into the garden, I made them myself.

Waiting for spring, it's photos like this of yellow rhododendrons you bring out to remember it's not so long now. We're already over half way through winter. And we haven't had the snow of the mainland, though you can see it icing the tops of the mountains on the Morvern peninsular visible through my rain-streaked sitting room window.

This is this year's winter view, over Tobermory's painted houses to the mainland opposite. Not so bad, eh? Note the clear skies. We have had a good winter so far. Just as the Isle of Mull had some of the best summer in the British Isles. There was so little rain my water butt ran dry before my vegetables had taken proper hold. I feed myself quite well from my vegetable patch - plenty of salads and herbs in the summer, and reliable chard during the winter. Makes a delicious soup with borlotti beans, thick and sustaining. 

My winter vegetable plot is covered with seaweed, bagged on a beach on the way to the ferry. By the time the bed is ready for replanting, it will all have mulched down into the soil and disappeared.

That crimson is some small heads of radicchio braving the chill, giving the garden some colour and me some bitterness to add to winter salads. Push back the seaweed and parsley is growing happily underneath. In the summer, it will be joined by clumps of chives, tarragon (French, not Russian!), borage (which I like better than basil on raw tomato salad), sorrel and dill. The mint is buried in a bucket to prevent its roots from taking over.