Of Pups and Patience

I had all the available family round for a kitchen supper tonight and afterwards Bonnie and I went to bed for a little rest. Three hours later and I'm still there and me with the latest episode of Homeland to watch!

It's been a hectic weekend but an enjoyable one too.

Ben was staying for the weekend. On Saturday morning we went to visit the pups. I tried to take a picture of each one individually but it was tough. I think I may have photographed some more than once and some not at all. They are wriggly and run everywhere. They live in an old shed and it did not make for the most suitable of locations for a photo shoot. Too much stuff in it. The dam is a spaniel and the sire a border collie and I think the collie look will dominate -  although that is no bad thing. I'm looking forward to having our lot back here. I'd been thinking back to other puppy times and remembering how messy they can be. Then I remembered something far worse. They chew things. Judy loved eating my shoes and must have destroyed at least a dozen pairs. We will have to be very vigilant this time as I have hardly a shoe to my foot.

We had Jazzer and Aunt Lizzie on Saturday afternoon and Ben and I baked cakes and biscuits. Jazzer did the ordinary cooking and Bert fed the old girls their wee morsels. It was a fine bright evening on Saturday. The crescent moon hung low in the sky and soon disappeared. The stars were wonderfully bright. Ben and I got sleeping bags and lay on the trampoline watching shooting stars. There were plenty to be seen. Jazzer joined us for a while but, not having a sleeping bag, she did not stay long. Bert, being 'coul rife' did not even chance it.

Despite these joyous, happy things I was a grumpy sod on Sunday. Maybe not enough sleep, maybe a glass of wine (or two) that I shouldn't have finished. Who knows? The weather was damp and horrid and I ate too much. Then I caught Ben tipping some custard into the bin.

Where are you putting that?
The bin.
The bin! (In tones as incredulous as Lady Bracknell's)

There followed a lecture about waste and recycling. Sometimes I don't know how that boy puts up with me. He's a lot like Bert. Patient.

After our visitors left Bert watched Homeland (I'd already watched it) and I polished up a part of the family tree to send to my cousin. I have all this information and have yet to make complete sense of it. I hadn't realised that my great-grandmother gave birth to fourteen children in 23 years of which two died under the age of three and one in infancy. It was nearly half past one before I got to bed.

And that was when Pearlie started to say her prayers. Out loud. I said one too. God give me patience.

My Life In A Day

I've been trying to get up one minute earlier every day. I had just got to 7:03am when British Summer Time arrived. Today I got up at 7:59am.

First things first. Charlie goes out to pee and start on the many hundreds of 'rounds' he clocks up every day. This done I returned to bed with coffee and got up again around half-eight. The other two dogs got up and we all went out to sort the pigs and hens.

Charlie has taken a great dislike to pigs and would torment them given the opportunity. However I found a way to deter him when I picked up a length of alkathene piping. The minute he saw it he shot off and watched the proceedings from a safe and respectable distance. I think his previous carer must have whacked him with alkathene piping on more than one occasion. I'll not be doing that which I'm sure he'll soon discover and then poor Lily and Rusty will have to watch out.

I attended to Pearlie then breakfasted on a new-laid egg and some home made bread after which I headed to the poly tunnel to sow cucumber, peppers and okra.

New baby

Clint came to help Bert move the new calf and her mother to the meadow. He was back and forth all morning in a variety of tractors. Don't ask - it's a Clint thing.

Bert cleared off to deliver clematis and I had a light lunch of beetroot soup and sandwiches. I think it was beetroot soup but it was from the Polish shop and all information was in Polish. Maybe it was blackcurrant soup. It was very nice anyway and I ate it sitting in the sunshine. Young Rooney called. He crawled about under my car for a wee while and his long shorts slipped down and I saw his bum but I pretended I didn't. Bert returned and Clint arrived up in another tractor and a road sign that said Men at Work. He looked over at us and said,

Youse boys'll hardly be needing this then.

I said,

Did you not see Young Rooney under my car? He was working. For about a minute anyway.

Clint and Bert had a very boring conversation about manuring the meadow and Clint was whinging about the price of manure. I asked him if he couldn't just use shite and he said you need the artificial stuff to give the shite a bit of a push. I think he just wants the excuse to get out on his tractor. Young Rooney said he could get him plenty of horse manure but Clint said sarcastically,

Aye! If I wanted my fields to grow every weed under the sun I would!

Then Rod (and his mum) arrived with the fruit and veg for the pigs and we gave him six hen eggs and a goose egg and his mum gave me a pen which she does every time I see her.

When we got the yard cleared of folk I did a bit of weeding, bit of housework, started the dinner and made scones for Bert's music night.

In among times I kept Pearlie's fire going. Pearlie likes a fire no matter what the weather is like. Today, while everyone else was in tee-shirts and her carer had the top off her sports car, my mother-in-law sat there with a fire roaring up the chimney, all her windows and doors tight closed and wearing, on top of her normal clothes, two shawls, with two blankets over her lap and a hot water bottle. I'm afraid I was cruel come mid-afternoon and opened a window a chink and let her fire go out as I believed she was at risk of heatstroke.

Boys all arrived for music night and since then I've mostly been sitting here scanning photographs. I got a HP Photosmart from one of the boys as my previous machine would not work with Ubuntu. I've been going through Matty's photographs but I think I've scanned the best of them already.

Then I tried to take a photograph of the Moon, Jupiter and Venus. Sadly I couldn't find the important part of my tripod so it wasn't much good. As you can see.

Camera shake