S.O.S

Better late than never, I reckon, and this update is late being started as I've had a virus (I think I have at least) for the past couple of days.Today I'm feeling a lot better which is good though a day too late as we were planning a trip down to Greece to the beach today but didn't want to risk me not being well and spoiling the day. Never mind, we can go next week and then will be again when my parents are here.

A beautiful clear morning

Thelma thinks it is play time

The girls playing together

Sassy eating her treat and exploring

Anyway, onwards. The weather has, barring a few hours here and there, finally changed over to warm and clear every day which is a huge relief for us both. It's so much nicer to wake to the sun streaming in and go and sit on the patio (or balcony) with our brews in the morning than to shiver in Room 13 watching rain fall. The girls have been enjoying the weather finally settling down as well, getting outside every day for hours chasing lizards and baby sparrows, then sitting panting on the kitchen step waiting to be let in the cool. We've continued to let Sassy have her door open but she hasn't yet explored much past the top step, and on the black plastic box. I'm sure she'll get there eventually. She is actually pulling hair at the moment to make a nest, which is a sign of a ghost pregnancy I think; we'll have to keep an eye on that I think.

Two bees on one poppy flower at once

Beetles also do pollination duties, on a thistle head

I do not think of thistles as weeds at all

A riot of colour, with a pear tree sapling thriving, in the chicken run

One of the few plums in the orchard

A beautiful flower, I think it's an orchid

Sparrow nests are very messy indeed

A beautiful butterfly on my flipflop

Proud mum Kit with "her" babies

A naked necked chick

In the garden the flowers have continued to bloom, attracting swarms of bees and giving us something very lovely to look at as we do our outdoor chores. The noise from these big plants with the quantity of bees is pretty amazing. The tea trees are still in blossom as well, though not as much as previous years; we still get lovely wafts of that amazing scent which makes this my favourite time of the year. The sparrows, the chicks of whom are being chased by the puppies, have made nests all along the eaves of the house, messy ones, and they keep dropping dry grass on our heads while we're having our morning brews. There's also been some interesting wildlife around, loads of butterflies of all shapes and colours. The one pictured was sunning itself on my flipflop, flew off when the ducks walked past, then went back and settled there again. Our chicks are growing up fast; this picture is from a week ago, last Tuesday, and today A is talking about letting them out of their enclosure into the main chicken run for a short time. Very exciting indeed.

Beautiful burgers, out on the balcony

The lovely chicken and rice dish, on the balcony

View last night, after eating fajitas on the balcony

A storm blows past on Wednesday

Thursday and this storm hit, and hit hard

Puppies helping attach the hanging chair

A relaxing with a book and a brew on the hanging chair

A very lovely relaxing time was had by all

A band we had seen live before; very good music indeed

The main singer busting moves with his crutch

Three young girl singers; great voices, not great choice of tunes

We've been able to eat outside a few times in the last week which is always a bonus; last night we ate fajitas, superb, and the high winds dropped just as we were sitting down. I think today we'll be sat out again as well - it really is a glorious day. As I've said, though, we've had some bad weather, even been cold at times, in the past week. Storms have blown past and a small amount of rain has fallen, but only heavily once. We're still out watering the garden every day. Having said that on Saturday morning we hung one of the swinging chairs up in one of the walnut trees down by the front fence and then spent a lovely couple of hours, A sat on that chair and me in the hanging chair, relaxing in the sun and reading. We were unable to stay out there all day, much as we would have done, as we'd arranged to meet our friend to go to see Jazz Fest in town. This was a lovely thing and we really enjoyed sitting in the central park listening to cool music. We also bumped into various people we know which was lovely. It's a good place, our local town, so friendly and everyone is so lovely to us. After watching a number of groups we took ourselves over to a restaurant for dinner, the one that Lyubo had taken us when John and Magda visited, and we really enjoyed that also. Our friend had driven so we didn't even have to drive ourselves home. A lovely day all round, Saturday was.

Louise with a big grin, to be printed for our wall

A random tomato plant in a flower pot

A taking the random tomato for repotting

Another raised bed of tomato plants

Our existing tomato plants growing wildly

I hope we have Saved Our Spuds

This week two pictures arrived for hanging on the walls, one of them the "family picture" taken last year by SandS and the other a photograph of Thelma in the snow. This prompted us to take a picture of Louise, so she wasn't left out, and this is the photograph we have chosen. As I type this A is looking through pictures of Rambo so we can have a wall with all three of them, and also the photo of Ralf with Sally. Our "dog" wall. Back out into the garden and we've had some rogue tomato plants appearing in other plant pots, like this one which grew in the pot we put one of the flowering willows into. A has collected all these seedlings together and now we have five more tomato plants in a raised bed, to go with the overwhelming growth in the two raised beds (the biggest growth from the plants we started from seed) and the huge quantity growing in the fenced garden as well. And so we come to the meaning of the title of this blog post; S.O.S stands for Save Our Spuds and we were doing just that at the weekend when we found that the reason the plants were all collapsing over and falling down was because of strangling ground ivy. We spent a good hour or two carefully untangling it all and then shovelling more soil on to earth them up. The picture is from the day after and they appear to be recovering a bit. We did accidentally uncover quite a few potatoes in the ground so it looks like right now the yield is good. Here's hoping!

The (very nearly) finished miniatures

One full display cabinet

Final wardrobe up and ready to be filled

I've managed to get some paid work in which has really taken a lot of my time (when I've not been suffering from this virus) but I have managed to complete the final display board to go int the first of the cabinets I have filled. I'm really pleased with how all of them have come out. I also managed to get the miniatures I began weeks ago completed; this picture is taken before some of the final stages were done but I was already so happy with them. At the weekend I put together the final wardrobe, to go in the twin room, as part of our reaction to realising it's only three weeks until my parents arrive and we really need to tidy up that guest suite. It took me very little time and was very satisfying indeed. I have yet to go back into the men's room / gym to finish my electrical work in there however. I really need to get that done this week.

Kit leads her chicks out to explore

Loads of daisies in the chicken enclosure

We checked and this weed isn't.

A's excellent fixing upper work

And so to the final paragraph of this update, written in the gaps while I work on this very sunny (though with high clouds currently drifting over, occluding the sun every now and then) Tuesday morning. As I mentioned earlier the chicks have been let out into the main enclosure and I was there to take a video as they explored. It's a bit dark at the beginning but it clears up. They were very excited to see the door open; every time we go in to feed them they try to escape. I also got some pictures of more flowers in that area; it's lovely in there! A has been busy, despite not feeling well herself, and she has attached the ribbons to the cushion on the swinging chair so now it won't slip down as you're sitting on it. She's also just walked in having taken better pictures of my miniatures but I'll edit those and maybe put them in the next update. I want this done now.

So there you go; it's back to work for me (after a quick check on the chicks). Thanks for reading.