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Greetings from a bad blogger

So much for blogging daily!

Here is a photo for today, taken last night.

This boy doesn’t like the puppy at all, does he? And the puppy doesn’t like him either?

Snow, snow and more snow

that is what we have here.

I did take lots of photos of Dill in the snow yesterday but never managed to blog them, I kept being sidetracked.

 

This is the sight that greeted me when I looked out the front door yesterday morning.

This was the look out the back and there is a dog in the photo, can you find him?

The birds could not get to their food

Pete’s 4 wheel drive

Pete’s ‘normal’ car with Dave’s behind

No wonder the telly wasn’t receiving any signal

The robin managed to find some food below the snow

The neighbours children were building a chair and table

 

This post was written a few days ago, but abandoned when the power went.

Christmas is over

and all the decorations have come down. They haven’t been put away, that is not my job, so now the boxes are on a stool in the lounge awaiting further movement. Actually, they have just moved upstairs and will be in the loft in a few minutes.

Dill has today discovered how to come down the stairs; he discovered how to get up them a few days ago, but was very worried about getting close to the top of the stairs when upstairs. Today he managed it as he got impatient waiting for me to go downstairs again.

He adores being in the garden and after yesterdays “sorting out”, the garden is now reasonably safe to leave him in. Our plants are not safe though and I feel a bit of “fencing in” coming shortly if we are to have anything growing there.

Not sure which one is the “mucky pup”.

“Not me, Mum”.

Perhaps there is hope

for peaceful nights in the future.

 

This is the sight that greeted me a short while ago

 

He appeared to have put himself to bed. There is a first time for everything.

 

P.S. He is now asleep on the sofa next to me.

Waking early

is one of the things that happens with a young puppy. He is not too bad when put to bed, unless we don’t think and put him to bed when very excited, like we did last night = whining puppy. He didn’t whine for long, but I had to get up an hour or so later as he starting whining as he needed another trip in the garden.

This is also the reason he wakes us early. I hope he will learn to wait a bit longer with time; he is only just over 9 weeks old.

This morning, just after I came downstairs (I got Dave to go down to let Dill out as I had done the late night duty), Dill managed to pull a bottle of squash off the shelf in the kitchen where it belongs. I don’t know what was going on, but it was obviously very dangerous and needed barking at.

What I hadn’t realised, is that we have a flying dog!

The start of a new year

This year I am going to try to post every day.

With a new puppy in the house, I have decided that I will try to post a photo of him daily. It will give us a good record of his growth.

That is not to say that I wont post about other things too :o)

Here is todays photo of Dill

He had just found a very tasty clump of grass.

The newest member of the family

has arrived.

We picked him up yesterday afternoon and he spent the evening being cuddled.

He did cry when put to bed, but we slept through it until he started again at 5:50am this morning. I got up, took him outside for a wee, then feed him. As he grew up on a farm, he is used to an early start; we might need to re-educate him.

This afternoon we have been to the vet’s for the first vaccination; only 3 week until he can go out and about.

A jumper for Mum

As a birthday present for my Mum, I have knitted her a jumper (Happy 91 Birthday for Sunday Mum!). Mum has quite severe Osteoporosis and therefore a very bent back. Clothes does not sit well on here, much to her annoyance. I have asked many a time why she doesn’t knit something that fits her, but have been told that that is not possible.

 

Well, I wanted to prove her wrong, so a few weeks ago I started a jumper for her. I had finished the sleeves and most of the body when I arrived here, just had the back above the armhole to complete as I needed to try it on her to see exactly what I needed to knit.

 

Yesterday morning, before going shopping, I finished the jumper off by sewing in the sleeves. I think I can honestly say, that is is the first time I have ever knitted anything for my Mum, she has always been the one knitting for me and mine.

 

Here is Mum in her new jumper, which fits!

All in all I am very pleased with this. It is knitted in Sirdar’s Nomad in shade Elk and I used less than 4 balls! so the whole garment weighs less than 200g! It is not the easiest yarn to knit with, but I think the result justifies it.

 

What do you think?

 

PS Mum still knits, mainly blanket squares for ‘Mother Theresa’, but also garments for herself!

Where did time go?

Yesterday was meant to be a day with lots of photos of landscape to show, but plans easily gets changed when you are with my Mum. As soon as we got up, she told me that she was not going on any drive as she would be too tired. To say I was disappointed was an understatement! I had really looked forward to seeing areas that I hadn’t seen in years. I really should have known not to make any plans as any plans I have made the last few years when with Mum, have always been changed. Instead we went shopping, which is, of course, much less tiring than sitting in a car looking out the window!

 

 

In the afternoon, I went out on my own.

This is one of the two environmental protection ships recently stationed in the port where Mum lives (Frederikshavn). They are here because there are large numbers of vessels transferring cargo at sea in the bay north of here (between Frederikshavn and Skagen, the very northern tip of Denmark) and there is much fear that there will be an escape of oil during one of these transfers.

 

 

 

I drove south as I had to go to the very large hypermarket in Aalborg for my Mum.

 

 

 

 

I also had something else to do.

 

 

 

 

I had to deliver some English Bluebell bulbs from my garden to a fellow blogger Liselotte.

 

 

 

 

This is where time disappeared! I arrived at Liselotte’s to find her just like I had expected, in fact I think I can say we got on ‘like a house on fire’, we certainly did some talking. Suddenly, 3 hours had passed, and it was time for me to head to the shop and back to Mum. Thank you Liselotte (and Oline and Kenneth, not to forget Oscar) for a very enjoyable afternoon, hope you enjoyed it too and that we can do it again when I am back in the country next time.

 

Having done my shopping, I headed back north again.

 

 

 

 

 

Written 6:40am GMT+2 25/09/2009

Going to Denmark

Not the most interesting trip, but I thought I should show you the few photos I took on the way.

The point in France nearest England, just outside Calais

The ferry was very empty

Sailing into Calais

Lots of campervans

Windmills in Germany

My overnight stop in Germany. Nice, but I wont use this site again. Very noisy all night due to proximity of motorway with lorries all night.

Sunset in Germany, different windmills this time, very far from the first ones.

I am now in Denmark, but have yet to take a photo, but am sure I will today as we are going for a drive.

 

Written 24/09/2009, 7:43am GMT+1

Found in the greenhouse

Today we cleared out the cucumbers from the greenhouse. They were all past their best and we have some chilli plants that could do with the space.

 

This was one of the cucumbers we found in the greenhouse.

The Totally Tomato Show

Yesterday we decided to visit the Totally Tomato Show held in the grounds of West Dean College in West Sussex. The weather was sunny and though some rather dark clouds came over, it stayed dry for us. I was a little disappointed with the number of stalls and was told by another visitor that the better show is the Chilli Festival earlier in the year. Must go to that next year.

First thing we saw was a cooking demonstration by Rosemary Moon of MoonBites. She was making a Totally Tomato Sausage Butty and Greek style Sausage and Tomato Salad. It looked really good and free recipes were available. We lost interest when the talk turned to what wine to drink with it!

Next was the tomato tasting by the Tomato Growers Association. The best by far was a beef tomato from France, name forgotten of course, apart from the fact that it starts with ‘de’.

It was not exactly heaving with people, so just as we like it. Dave hates crowds and soon wants to go home if there are too many people, so this was just right.

There were also stalls within the walled garden.

This one just had to have it’s photo taken.

There were a few catering stands too, but queues were quite long for this one.

Next stall was organic teas and coffees, then a stand with smoothies. Next came an organic burger stall which is where Dave went to get himself a bacon butty and me a lamb and mint burger. Lovely! The last tent in this row had bread and other baked items plus a variety of rural craft items.

On the other side were stalls selling various ‘homemade/grown’ items.

Garlic, chillies, cheese, jam, jelly , curd etc.

So what did I come home with?

Some sweet yellow cherry tomatoes

A piece of ‘Stinking Bishop’ cheese (of Wallace and Gromit fame)

A tub of the greatest tasting preserved tomatoes

another nice cheese

A furry tomato (for Ben, this way he couldn’t complain that we didn’t get him anything)

Garlic bulbs for planting in the garden, from left to right the varieties are (as far as I remember) Purple Early, Provance and Iberian White.

a freebie magnetic shopping list holder, with pad

another freebie, this time basil seeds

and lastly, but by no means least,

some tomato seeds for next year. Unfortunately, we could not get seeds of the variety we really wanted, ‘Tangidel’ as they did not have enough seeds this year, but it should be available next year.

So all in all a nice day out.