Starting to get ready for leaving

It is really not that long til we leave and this fact is coming home to us and me in many ways. Today has been a day where the good and bad aspects of this return have had a large impact.

Night vision style picture of the moon behind clouds

Last night when we went through to bed and out onto the balcony as is our habit now it was cloudy and quite chilly with a relatively strong breeze which made the temperature seem even lower. The moon was bright but behind clouds so I did me "steady hand" showing off thing with a hand held long exposure shot and though the eight second one was too shaky, this one came out pretty well and with the photoshop effects it looks great. We had left the dogs in the front porch again but with the door to the outside slightly ajar and this seemed to work as I wasn't disturbed at all by Ralf scratching - I did hear him at one point but only for a very short time.

Stages of sunrise

There was no alarm to go off apart from the one in our bladder and with the dogs not caged they weren't howling or barking at all. It was a lovely slow awakening but then A dashed off and I went onto the balcony for the first of these pictures. A was looking for Ralf and couldn't find him at first but then he appeared from down the front garden where he had been running around; it seems this was a good arrangement. We made a brew and went back onto the balcony and for the next five or ten minutes sat and watched as the sun came up. This will tell you that we were awake quite early but it was a natural time to be around. The sunrise was stunning as you can see though it was still quite cold.

Man bag in play as I harvest rose hips

I harvested all these today

While A went to feed the boys I put my man bag on and went to harvest as many of the rosehips as I could. I worked out while doing this that the lovely tea the Little Lady had given us was probably made from rosehips. I'm not sure though. Anyway I went round the top bank and found loads of lovely ripe fruit and then down behind the dog's enclosure as they had just finished their feeding. Ralf came up to the corner near me and stood staring while A was trying to get his attention which was funny. She went in and then came back out with the boys and a camera and I headed round to down near the vehicle gate. Most of those bushes had loads of fruit but it was all over ripe. I have a large bag of fruit in the freezer now so that'll be a task for the next week or two; make all the jams from all the fruit that is in there.

Garage tidied, prior to bringing packed stuff through

With all this extra fruit A did a task she had been putting off for a while which was to sort through the freezer to work out what we had that would need using, and just generally tidy. I have loads of fruit in there which I mentioned earlier, and we also found a load of meat to be eaten as well as trays of green beans bought by me when I thought they were going out of season. They didn't. After she finished we went to do the one other task assigned to today which was to tidy the garage and start the process of gathering together what we will need to take back with us. The garden stuff was straightened away onto tables and we sorted the messy wood piles in very short order. After this it was into the store room downstairs and we brought the roof box through and then found a jumper, some coats and some shoes that I will be taking. We'll start to put other things together over the next few days so nothing is forgotten. This is bringing home how soon the leaving date is.

The dog equivalent of going under the covers

The majority of the rest of the day was spent either in Room 13 or bed, as it got a bit cold and we went there to warm ourselves up. I think winter could be a "let's go to bed" time. Ralf was being really good all day which was great after the super naughty behaviour yesterday. Even while we were eating our fish finger butties for lunch he sat away and didn't beg and because of this I gave him a treat as a reward. This is a red letter day. He spent most of it laying in his bed in a variety of very cute poses but I liked this one the best as he hides his eyes so he can sleep.

This will be a bulb and bee garden

Everything was getting on top of me, including various developments in the legal saga, and I snapped mid afternoon and decided I had to get outside and do some physical work. I had bought a load of bulbs to plant for next spring and we had decided that the old tortoise enclosure should be repurposed into a flower bed for these bulbs and then the bee and butterfly flowers which A brought in seed form this year. I went out and took the second row of bricks down, making use of some of them to build out a promontary from which I can weed the whole area. It wasn't a large task, and made use of the rest of the soil from digging out the raised beds that hadn't fitted back in them, and tomorrow I will plant the bulbs and dig over the rest of it. While I was out there the Little Lady came past with some cheesy pancake type things for Bayram and offered me three "ovtsi" (or at least that is what I think she said) which I have not been able to translate to know what it was. I said no as we are leaving in a few weeks and she understood and didn't press.

Rambo striking a pose

While I was working on this task Rambo had settled himself on the grass just off the patio and was happily sat there relaxing and then went to get a stick and chew that. He is being mixed at the moment, both trying his luck and pushing boundaries with both of us, and also being really relaxed as in this case.

After finishing this we were thinking about dinner and had run out of supplies for my pork pasta so, taking Ralf with us this time, we legged it to Lidl, grabbed everything we needed (including a huge chunk of lamb for a roast dinner this weekend) and then were able to be first in line for the newly opened till. Success. Ralf was OK both ways, though he preferred being sat on a lap than in the boot obviously. We got back and I started cooking and we've just finished eating now. It was super tasty as always. The going home thing just won't leave today alone though as I've found that the flat we were going to stay in has fallen through so on top of trying to find a contract I'm now back to try to find somewhere to live and I get there in 23 days. Joy. Tomorrow is another day huh.