Productive Saturday

So the weekend, and not a time for doing less work but rather for doing more it appears. I have drunk seven cups of tea (and when I say cups, I mean pints) through the day as I keep myself hydrated and now I'm sat with some one day championship cricket on the other monitor and getting ahead of the game by typing some bloggage. So, onwards.

Ralf checking out what is going on above

First of all a quick picture from last night taken while I was chatting away on the phone. Ralf was sitting under my chair dozing and being relaxed and he was waking up, looking up with his head on my knee, and then going back to sleep. I managed to get a picture of one of these times before he moved and he looked so cute that I had to share it with you.

Morning greeting crew

Last night again, before I went to bed, I went out to have a look at Julian's lights. I had parked Lucy next to him so I could try and compare them and see whether I need to get new lights to get him registered over here or not. With the basic guess work I was doing with this comparison I think I may be OK (he did have some strips on his lights that I have pulled off) and I am going to see if Lubo can come help me again get this sorted out. It would be nice to be able to use him for some trips away over the weekend. I slept like an innocent and woke up after a nice lie in about 8am with Rambo howling but Ralf being quiet. A quick trip onto the balcony to snap a picture of how gorgeous a morning it was (though that part didn't really come out well so I've made this also a picture of the boys) and it was down for a brew and the morning routine of feeding them.

The washing put on over night (it didn't disturb me at all) was ready for hanging up so I staged my loads to the side door and then put the food in bowls for the boys. They always hear me open the door to the store room and Ralf starts barking at this point. They were relatively well behaved at the gate and I was almost straight in to put the food down and this is where the calmness ended. I get Rambo sitting and waiting, and Ralf doing the same as best he does so far, then put Rambo's food down and keep him waiting while I take Ralf's bowl and put it down for them to be allowed to eat. Today, as I turned from putting Rambo's down, Ralf dashed from his corner behind my turn and the next thing I knew he had his face in Rambo's bowl and had stolen some food. I reacted immediately, dragging him away and then making him lay down under my hand while allowing Rambo to go and eat.

I decided to keep Ralf in the submission position until Rambo had finished eating and then to let him eat, but leave the gate shut so he couldn't come out. He has never done this before and I will see how he is tomorrow as his punishment was swift, targeted, and relatively severe. He was not fighting my keeping him down and this makes me think he knew he was in trouble for something serious. Anyway, after this episode I took the clothes to hang out and kept Rambo sitting next to me which is another good example of his improved obedience. I completely forgot at this stage to do the watering however.

Clearing the first pile

With the temperature set to soar today I decided that I would get a wriggle on with the task I'd set myself and go and start on it before breakfast. My chosen job was to sort through the piles of wood on the back bank thrown down by the men from taking the old roof down. There were two or three well defined sections of wood and I picked the first one and set to. Half an hour later I took myself inside, made a cup of tea, and then went back out and carried on. Another 40 minutes or so and I had cleared all the wood in this section.

And the next

I decided to rest again at this point and was a bit hungry so I put some bacon on and then accidentally fried two eggs instead of the one that I was intending. Never mind I ate them on the fresh bread and it was rather good and set me up for my next effort. While I was eating she woke up so I had a nice short chat then headed off again to clear the wood from the hole next to the back door. It took me about half an hour to shift all of this and now I am only left with the small amount by where all that mud is that I was trying to move the other day. This will be a task for first thing tomorrow morning I think, before the sun comes up and when it is cool.

Broken clouds blew in

While I was making such progress and clearing that second pile the clouds started blowing in and it was a little cooler which was really nice. I am becoming a local in that I like the heat, I can imagine sunbathing, but it's nice when the clouds take the direct sun off your back and you can work a little faster.

The Clematis is flowering again

With both these sections cleared I paused for a bit then went to get my watering round completed before it got too hot for the day. First of all I watered both the Clematis by the front door. The second I bought is now looking completely dead but the first I bought, which I got started inside (is that a top tip maybe?) is going great guns and it has decided to flower again the first of which opened over night. How pretty.

The tiny second leaf is now larger

Next it was down with the hose, and very high water pressure on the free water which even allowed me to water both sides of the entrance flower bed without having to go round down the steps, and doing the Olive trees, Melons and tomatoes then up to the pots and the few things that are still left there.

This really needs planting out

Of those "things in pots" up on the bricks one of the best is the pot from my friend which contains two vines. These were tiny when they first arrived but have really grown very fast and are now getting a little large for the size of the little plastic bottle pot they are in. I know exactly where I want them to be eventually however currently it is all dug up and will be disturbed again when the drainage is finished. While I have been typing this I have had an idea which is cunning and I will show you about it if I do it :)

All of my Zinnias

I had left Ralf in the enclosure up until this point, after his supreme naughtiness at feeding time, however when I went to do the rest of the watering, up to the Zinnias and Magnolias and then down to the Silver Birch, I decided to let him out and he walked with me, on his lead, around the whole circuit though Rambo was put in for the Silver Birch trip after he was disobedient on a "stay" command. He really is getting better, though, and I let him out when we came back and he waited in a "lie down" until I said he could move. It's all about reinforcing all the time.

The final access point closed

I had another brew and then chilled for a bit what with it being early still and I had achieved so much already. I love that feeling when you get stuff done and then you are ahead for the whole day. It was getting near to lunch (though I wasn't hungry at all) so I went out to get the washing in and Rambo was well behaved staying at the "lie down" and only needing telling three times to not walk off - I'm sure he just forgets and gets bored. When I got back in I was almost flown into by one of the swallows which has been coming in through the gap made when the window fitters started off by attacking the wrong window for my back door. I got some nails, a hammer and a desk top from the pile in the workshop room and bashed and bashed until the gap was no more. Success.

A slightly more substantial cloud. It dissipated quickly though

Lunch was nothing really, some cookies eaten with another couple of brews, and some rugby was on from the southern hemisphere so I set that on streaming and waited for the real heat of the middle of the day to pass. Once the second game finished (I only caught the last five minutes of the first game) I went outside to achieve something else on this day of over-achievement. The clouds were coming in a little bit and it was slightly cooler now so that was a very good thing for the job in hand.

The weeds had grown very high

Said job was to go and clear the overgrown fenced garden, which I have been ignoring up til now, as we have decided that we will give it a go to grow some stuff in there, and maybe even some things which can be left in the ground over winter and looked at in the spring when we come back. I took Ralf out, set some water within the range of his lead (he knocked it over, obviously, then went and licked the ground) then got my new sharpening stone and used it to hone the edge of the scythe. It took just over half an hour to cut all the weeds down that I could get to (I will need help to move the dog kennel and table out of the way) and I had to get the hammer and re-wedge the blade a couple of times as up the top end there were some super sized plants nearly as tall as me with really thick stems - you could almost call them trunks.

What kind of bird laid these eggs please?

As I was half way through the scything I came across a ground-nest with a number of tiny eggs in it. Now I have no idea what could have made this and laid these eggs but sadly I was completely destroying the habitat and disturbing the nest so I took a picture in situ then moved it out of the garden so they weren't crushed. It is now sat in one of the big buckets full of soil. I feel a bit sad at having disturbed this nature but that is life.

And so I collected the cut grass and piled it up

I took a moment of rest after finishing the scything, taking Ralf inside but off his lead and he walked closely behind me all the time, being very obedient indeed. It was a nice rest, cuppa, and chat with her, and sweat profusely as I had been all day with the heat. I had had two cold showers already after being outside which did seem to limit the sweating but wow it was hot. After this rest I went out again, taking Ralf once more off his lead and being rewarded by minimal trouble getting him back attached to it, and then I used my hay fork to remove all the cut grass and weeds and pile it up to dry. This will be good hay I think and I'll move it into the green building when it is ready.

Garlic from the garden

While I was dragging the fork to collect the grass into piles I noticed something a little different in with all the grass and weeds. It was a garlic plant, with two roots tangled together. This must have reseeded from some that the Little Lady had grown in here last year. I stuffed it into my pocket and have brought it in; I am undecided whether to eat it or save it for planting.

Roughly laid out veg beds

It didn't take that long really to do this so I got a jump on a job I had mentally decided to leave until tomorrow; I roughly laid out where I want the first beds to be dug in. Now, unlike the locals who just dig over the entire patch and then plant in rows and walk on mud, my plan was to have proper beds with paths between them and I was going to use the larger beams from the roof to edge the plots. I pulled most of this wood from the final pile on the back bank that I haven't sorted yet so got another head start there, and I'm really happy with the layout and so is she so that is all good. Tomorrow I will dig these over, set the edging in so it doesn't move (and pull some of those nails out for safety) and then I'll be ready to plant whatever it is we are going to plant.

Ralf waiting to eat

I have been giving Ralf extra food during the day (one of the reasons I was so upset at him this morning for being greedy as he is fed very well) mostly the ends off the bread. This is a sacrifice in itself as I love a crust but he does too so he gets them when they are slightly stale or soggy. Both times today I got him to wait until I was ready for him to take it and the second time I remembered to grab my camera for some photographic evidence. This is proof (along with the walking to heel) that the regime I am putting him through is working.

Super amazing dinner

I made homemade chips today for the first time since Ralf stuck his snout in and drank half the oil from the saucepan, butter fried some chunky mushrooms, and put a chopped up chili on top of the not-very-good chicken thighs I got ages ago from Lidl that I have now finally finished. After a couple of false starts, mainly caused by not putting the chicken in early enough, I served up and wow it was stunning. I finished my meal with a choc ice but only because I was digging through the freezer looking for the chicken-bits-box that someone had hidden and I found the choc ices first.

Reading from 10pm

So this blog is probably the one which has taken the longest for me to write ever but I am quite happy about that. I have been slowly sipping beer and enjoying the heat; it is nearly 10pm now and my thermometer is saying about 27 degrees still. You can see that the pressure (while still crazily low) is not as low as it was before. I am a bit confused by this as my other barometer has consistently had the pressure down around this point ever since I arrived and this has been through gorgeous blue skies and horrendous torrential downpours. I can only presume that the weather here is less influenced by the air pressure than in the UK.

I'm going to sign this off now. Tomorrow is another day of no people (I hid from the neighbours today, the farmer cousin with about five women with him was by the front gate, and Rambo barked and ran down and prevented him climbing over while I was on the roof getting the men's cups and I made sure to not be seen) and hopefully lots of progress.