Thanks Apple Eaters!

I'd like to thank all the apple eaters who throw their cores out of their car windows.

There are loads of self-set apple trees all along the highways. In the spring, I get to enjoy the trees in flower. This time of year they are loaded with apples. I imagine that the wildlife will thank you too.

I think we should all throw apple cores out our car windows as often as possible. The world never has enough apple trees.

There are a whole bunch of apple trees, with green and red apples near the Ecclefechan exit (north bound) on the M74. I hope somebody can go and get all those apples safely. They look beautiful.

Away for the weekend

A change is as good as a rest. The Man of the Place and I along with our youngest boy went down south for the weekend. After dropping Polly off at the kennels first thing on Saturday morning, we motored down to Preston for the Sunderland v Preston football game. Our lads didn't do so well and Preston won 4-1. It put a damper on the rest of the afternoon as we drove further south to Birmingham.

Once in Birmingham, the mood lightened a bit as we drove to our favourite curry house, Saleem's. You may remember me writing about Saleems before. After a late dinner we retired to the cozy beds of the Premier Travel Inn in Sutton Coldfield. It's not an expensive chain of hotels, but they do have the most comfortable beds of any hotel chain I've been in.

Waking up in the morning, we had our breakfast and headed towards Birmingham again and the National Exhibition Centre or N.E.C. . The Dive Show was this weekend and we wanted to see what it was all about.

The Dive Show is the conference for the diving industry in the UK. Being held at the N.E.C. over two days it attracts divers from all over the world as well as the UK. There were manufacturers of diving gear and equipment, retailers, tourist boards, travel agents, boat manufacturers, publishers and training agencies.

We saw so many wonderful new toys. The new compressors looked so shiny, but even though this house holds three divers, it doesn't justify the expense of our own compressor. There was a stall selling new tanks. Tanks of every size and for any sort of diving gas were available. You could buy your new tanks and then leave them there, picking them up as you left to go home. We're all okay for diving equipment. My regulators are off being serviced due to a little bit of air escaping and really, Henry's BCD could do with being replaced, but all in all, we have all the gear necessary to dive.

Most of the travel agency booths had competitions where, if we filled out a card, we were put into a draw for a diving holiday. If we filled out one of those, we filled out twenty. We also filled out cards to go into draws for dive computers and courses to learn to be a rescue diver. Our name, however wasn't drawn in any of the competitions. Maybe next year, huh?

By the time we were getting ready to go, we were absolutely laden with brochures to dive tropical islands on both hemispheres. The consensus was that there wasn't a place we didn't want to dive. The glaring exception is perhaps Belfast harbour and possibly Norway. George is quite keen to dive in Norway, but his parents don't want to go.

We attended a lecture in one of the syndicate rooms during the conference. It was on diving in Norway. Going to this lecture accomplished a couple of things; 1. I got to sit in a darkened room for a little while and 2. George got to find out about diving in Norway. Before I nodded off I did find the slide show very interesting. I almost forgot that those gin clear waters in the fjords were less than 10 degrees Centigrade. There is an explosion of wildlife in the water up there, the visibility is good if you don't dive in July and August and it's not crowded. The down side is that it is way too close to the arctic circle for my liking.

The gals in the Jamaica Tourist Board stand were so friendly. They gave George a nice little travel pouch with his brochures. I liked hanging around the Caribbean Island areas. They had some steel drums and made me feel like I was in the Bahamas for a second or two.

Our fingers were quite sore too from holding all the plastic bags full of magazines, brochures, fridge magnets and pens that were thrust upon us. We walked SO much on Sunday, I even got a blister on the top of my toe! I've never had a blister there before. One of my socks had wrinkle in it and that's where my foot blistered.

We did get a couple of heavy duty hangers for diving equipment. Chunky plastic ones that won't corrode on contact with salt water. Henry also got some new dive gloves but that's it for purchases.

There are no photos available from this weekend. I forgot my camera. I guess I had a vacation from my blog too.

Blackpool

I've just come back from a small conference in the seaside resort town of Blackpool. I was so excited a few weeks ago when I was told that this was going to be our destination! Even though it isn't very far from us, I've never been. I've heard countless stories about Blackpool from my husband and his family, neighbours and friends but this was going to be my first visit.

Blackpool is famous in the UK as a destination for traditional British seaside holidays. Historically it was where the Lancashire mill workers and miners from the North East went on their holidays. Families and couples would join holiday clubs, paying subscriptions or save weekly for their annual seaside holiday. These people couldn't afford cars and would come by bus and train. Indeed, The Man of The Place has had numerous holidays with his mum and dad. His parents as well as his grandparents went on holidays to Blackpool.

This is an old photo of Henry's mother, taken during a wartime holiday to Blackpool. We have a picture of her mother, Henry's grandmother in the same wacky scene but I couldn't find it. During my brief stay, I looked for this "Bongo" board or anything similar so I could report back but I didn't see anything.

Here is another war time photo. Henry's uncle Harry is second on the left (dark hair and glasses) and Henry's mother, Victoria on the far right. You can see that the weather is pretty foul in this photo but The Tower is still visible in the background.

Because of there are still grand ballrooms here in beautiful condition, international ballroom dancing competitions are held here.

This is the Grand Ballroom at the bottom of Blackpool Tower. There is another one like this at The Winter Gardens.


Blackpool is the annual destination for political party conferences. With all the hotels there, its one of the few places in Britain that can accommodate such an event.
The place is falling on hard times and struggles to compete for business with the foreign bargains that are available to holiday makers. Indeed it costs the same to fly to a Greek island as a week in Blackpool with a greater chance of warm weather. Its a shame that this is happening as this town has a unique culture. Stag nights and hen parties still choose Blackpool as a destination. In fact, a few of the guesthouses I passed when I first arrived had these notices in the window: I think that the groups of women and men on a celebration weekend can get too raucous for ordinary folk. I imagine that they would disturb other guests and possibly damage things while being high spirited.

Improvements are being made all the time. I think the days when grumpy boarding house owners turf the guests out at 9 am forbidding them reentry until 4, have gone. Gone also are the polyester sheets that were included in the stories of my husband's holidays.


The Blackpool Illuminations are still going strong. The Promenade is lit up like Las Vegas every evening . I got to see the Promenade at night when it was all lit up. I also got to ride on one of the trams. This was very fun.
There were lots of things I missed during this brief stay. I missed going to The Pleasure Beach where all the rides are. I didn't get to a fish and chip shop. I didn't buy any Blackpool rock (candy) or visit an arcade. I didn't get to go dancing in one of the grand ballrooms and I didn't get on to any of the three piers. It is a little seedy and rough around the edges, but it is still a place that can be enjoyed by the whole family. I'm going to have to go back.

Glasgow Bloggers Meeting

You may or may not have noticed my little Scottish Blog badge here on my blog. I joined Scottish Blogs almost immediately after I started my first blog. There was a Bloggers Meeting scheduled for Saturday and I went along.

I drove up and despite heavy game day traffic, managed to get parked up by 1:30. The multi-level car park where I had stored my little Civic closes at 6:00. I figured I had plenty of time to meet these people and be back to release my car before the gates locked for the night. After a lovely walk in the sunshine, through the bustling streets of Glasgow, I came to the venue for the meeting. Translated that means that the streets were heaving with drunken Glaswegians as Scotland were playing against France in Glasgow in football (soccer).

When I arrived at the hotel, I started to lose my confidence. I didn't know anybody. After telling myself that if I was to lose my confidence I should have done it 95 miles ago, I went in.

After a little stumbling around, trying to locate somebody, anybody who might look like a blogger (?) I found the small group of Scottish Bloggers.

These guys turned out to really great! I had such a nice time that at 5:00 when I had originally planned to excuse myself, I merely went to move my car so I could stay longer.

This is Chameleon (who is utterly charming) and one of the Richards (who does actually sound a bit Somerset after a few pints) drooling over a really beautiful camera. There were a couple of bloggers with excellent cameras. With motors and flashes, it looked like we were a pack of paparazzi waiting for the Beckhams to walk through the lobby.

I have a whole new set of blogs to add to my list of blogs to patrol. I'll put them up in due time.

Chameleon taking a photo of what can only be described as a very poor game of billiards.

In the meantime. Thanks to Gordon for organizing things. He and everyone else made me feel very welcome. They also answered some beginner type questions and gave me a bit of insight to ads on blogs.

Patrick
Neil
Will
Chameleon
Richard L
Richard B (photos)
Jo
Alf

If you didn't know, Scotland beat France 1-0! BTW, I heartily approve of wearing kilts with Timberland boots.

Barnacle Geese

We live about ten miles, as the crow flies from the Solway Firth. The Solway Firth in SW Scotland is a very important overwintering site for waterfowl. I mention this because quite often in the last few days when going out to do something, I have heard the honk of the Barnacle Goose as the birds migrate right over Whitelees. I'll hear their calls long before I see a big "V" of migrating geese. The flock sizes seem to be around thirty birds, give or take ten birds. The honk of a Barnacle Goose is similar to that of the Canada Goose but "squeakier".

The geese seemed to be flying higher in the past couple of days, like they are in a big hurry. I can always hear them long before I spot the flock. Judging by the foul wind and rain outside at the moment, I can understand why they've been flying high and fast.

When the weather is like this, I always wonder why the overwintering geese and swans aren't found in the fields around here. We're a bit more sheltered here than down by the sea.

I've put this photo of George walking home back in to point out the trees. See how they're bent from the prevailing winds from the Irish Sea? The more exposed a tree is to these ferocious winds, the more bent they are. Near the Solway, every tree is sculpted and stunted by the winter winds.

The Barnacle Goose flocks are amassing down along the shore now in mega-flocks of thousands upon thousands of birds. A large portion of the Solway has been designated as a refuge for the overwintering norther waterfowl by the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust at Caerlaverock. As well as the Barnacle Goose there are swans coming back with the cygnets that they've produced earlier. You can always tell which swans have come down from Iceland. Aside from the leg rings, their feathers that have been below the waterline all summer as well as their heads have been stained from the tannins in the water.

Last Rose of Summer

These flowers would have looked nicer if the rain hadn't been so constant during the past week. I think they're still pretty.

I was home when George got home from school. I saw him coming up the road (now that the front hedge is trimmed we can see better), so Polly and I went out to meet him.

I don't think this kid realizes what a nice childhood he's having. Isn't that a beautiful road on which to walk home from the bus stop?

Here is what else is bringing a bit of colour to the Whitelees garden this week.

Geranium

Coriopsis

There are a few waterlogged petunias, but they're too weedy to photograph and really should be pulled and thrown in the compost bin.

Marigolds are still holding out too, just never took a photo of them though. Hardy buggers are marigolds. They'll hang in there until the first hard frost.

Ellis Island

Grandma's high school graduation photo

In 1903, on a ship called the SS Rotterdam, my grandmother entered the United States.

Grandma, at six years old, was the youngest person in her large family to be passing through Ellis Island.

Ellis Island around the time they came through.

This is a small copy of the ship's manifest. As the print is too small to read from the photo, let me transcribe a bit of what it says about my family.

Redder, Josef M
55y Widowed
Germany, German
Altengeseke

Redder, Anna F
21y Single
Germany, German
Altengeseke

Redder, Josef M
19y Single
Germany, German
Altengeseke

Redder, Anton M
17y Single
Germany, German
Altengeseke

Redder, Tranasta F
15y Single
Germany, German
Altengeseke

Redder, Heinrich M
10y Single
Germany, German
Altengeseke

Redder, Adam M
8y Single
Germany, German
Altengeseke

Redder, Maria F
6y Single
Germany, German
Altengeseke

The SS Rotterdam had sailed from the port of Rotterdam and arrived on the 21st of July.

The manifest says that the final destination of this family was Cherokee, Iowa to meet my great-grandfather's brother, Anton Redder. Josef Redder, my great-grandfather and the father of these seven children had $1,000. They were to list the amount of cash they were bringing into the country.

I am told that Josef Redder was a baker by trade. From a photo that my cousin Susan has, you can see that he had piercing blue eyes, even though the photo is in black and white. You can just tell. His wife, my great-grandmother Anna died when my grandmother was four years old of tuberculosis. I don't know if they were planning this move to the America before she died but I imagine it would have been heartbreaking to leave her grave in Westphalia.

One of the interesting things about looking at the ship's manifest is looking to see who else was on that ship. The other passengers were predominantly Russian, Polish and Romanian Jews (or as stated on the manifest, Hebrews).

I've done some searching and the small town or village of Altengeseke was incorporated into the town of Anrochte in 1975.

I wish with all my might that I could have talked to grandmother about this. Imagine being a small girl of six arriving by ship to that massive place! From what I understand about Grandma, she never spoke of it and she didn't have a hint of a German accent, not even when she was mad.

All the information I discovered about Grandma's crossing was found at The Ellis Island web site. Darn good it is too. I recommend having a look. If you've got somebody in your past who may have been through Ellis Island, do a search! Let me know what you find!

RIP Jasper

I was going to go to the movies tonight. I got half way there and discovered that my wallet wasn't in my handbag. I turned toward home, feeling like a twit.

When I got to the drive here at Whitelees, there was a small brown shape in the way. I stopped the car and got out to see what this was. It was Jasper our rabbit. He was still just barely alive when I picked him up. Jasper had escaped from his run and I think a fox had him. The fox must have dropped Jasper when I turned into the drive. As I walked to the house with the still warm rabbit, I could hear a couple of foxes barking very close to the house. Jasper died while I was holding him.

Poor George has lost his other pet. Man, we're not doing too good with pets recently, are we? George is pretty upset again.

Jasper was about seven years old and a lovely gentle rabbit. He didn't' scratch or bite when picked up and was quite tolerant of people making a fuss over him. We're going to miss that nice lop-eared boy.

GO HAWKS!

No, this isn't a blog entry about all the Buzzards that circle Whitelees on fine days like today.

Today, The Iowa Hawkeyes football team go up against the Ohio Buckeyes. This is American football not to be confused with soccer (or as Joe puts it, metric football).

Ohio are a top ranked Big Ten football team, but Iowa are looking good this year. It will be a close fought game. Ohio shouldn't be overly confident about their ranking because they're going into an arena filled to capacity with well-fed and screaming Iowans. Kinnick Stadium is a mighty fortress and when the Hawkeyes are on their game, very few visiting teams walk away with a victory.

This football helmet was a gift to George from his eldest brother Ian who works for the company who makes professional football helmets.

I have a couple of friends who live near Kinnick Stadium. They can make a bit extra by allowing football fans to park on their property. D & R - I hope all the folks you have today pay double what they should and drink half of what they might.

Zones of Hardiness

When I was living in the US, zones of hardiness as set out by the United States Department of Agriculture or USDA were quite important when figuring out what would live or die in your garden. These zones were so important in the northern states where I'm originally from that other things like acidity levels in the soil weren't discussed much. I didn't realize until I moved to the UK that some plants just didn't like living on chalky soil.



I was too little when we lived in North Dakota to take notice of what was in people's gardens. In Minnesota, I watched as each autumn, our neighbour wrapped up her roses, then covered the wrapped plants in straw and finally put a big Styrofoam cone over the whole thing. Other people buried the roses in a shallow grave, unearthing them in the spring. I don't know if I would go to all that trouble, as much as I like roses. I watched my mom and dad plant lovely perennials in the back garden hoping that in the spring these plants will have made it through. Some did, some didn't. If the plant lived through a Minnesota winter then it had earned its place in the back yard. In Iowa, I just had a few pots of flowers and annuals. The deer ate the tulips, so I gave up on perennials.


Years later, after a move to the UK, I belonged to a UK gardening newsgroup. One of the things that really annoyed the UK gardeners were Americans coming in to the newsgroup and asking questions about hardiness zones. The US based gardening newsgroups were so busy and full that it was hard to get a question answered. Americans then turned to the smaller and knowlegable UK newsgroup. The UK gardeners were also annoyed when asked about how to deal with raccoons. Questions about racoons and zones usually resulted in the friendly gardening American being sent rude, flaming responses. It was a shame because the gardening newsgroup was a nice group. They just got tired of saying that racoons and hardiness zones weren't something they could talk about. Most UK gardeners have had no experience with a system that was set up by the US government.



Anyway, back to zones. The higher the number, the warmer the winter temperature. That's about it.

Please have a look at the official site.



In the US, the zones can be quite specific. Des Moines has a higher zone that the areas surrounding it. That makes sense as cities usually have a warmer micro-climate thing going on. Your local gardening centre in the US will always know exactly what the local zone will be.

You can see on this map of the UK that we only have a few zones to deal with. Here at Whitelees we are in Zone 8. If we were a few miles downhill towards the coast and we'd be in 7. However, as far north as we are (about 55 N) we don't enjoy the same light levels that somebody in Georgia or Texas has, even though we share the same zone of hardiness. We also get a whole heck of a lot more rain.

Winters are not that cold but the flip side is that summers aren't that hot. Not hot enough to grow things like corn and tomatoes without a little help. Folks in Texas don't have to grow tomatoes in a greenhouse to keep them warm. Imagine not being able to grow corn in Georgia! When thinking of growing something here in the UK, I don't really worry about hardiness. I worry more about the length of my growing season and the low light levels during the growing season. I think that this is one of the big reasons why the US system just isn't appropriate for us over here in the UK.

Having a short growing season is where greenhouses come into their own. A very large proportion of UK gardeners have one. I need mine to get things started in the spring. I germinate most of the vegetables in there before I transfer them to the outside on the first of June. I also use them to protect some things that have difficulty in the dark wet winters. My big pot of rosemary goes back into the greenhouse in the autumn. The fuchsias go in there too.

If the rain stays off today, I might be able to get out there and tidy up a few things. If the rain stays off until Saturday, I may even get the lawn mowed!

Travel Bug

I am REALLY ready to go on another trip.

We sometimes take a week away somewhere in October. I don't think we'll be able to swing it this year. We've got a lot of expenses coming up with the extension. It's almost finished.

In any case, we've got a voucher for three days diving in Egypt. That would be a day of diving for the three of us. . . . It has to be used before July of next year though.

I know when it is time to go on another trip. I start watching those programmes on the telly where people stop making that daily commute through soul destroying traffic, sell up and move to France to make cheese for a living or move to Italy and squeeze oil out of olives instead of working as a sales manager.

Grow tomatoes year round without the aid of a greenhouse . . . . (sigh)

Sally and George

Thirteen years ago George was born. It also happened to be the same day that my sister Sally was having her birthday! So, happy birthday to two of my favourite blondes.

These photos were taken when we lived in Bismarck. I'm sure my mother will remember the address of the place we had in town before we moved out to the big place just out town. The desk behind us was later painted orange. I think that Katie has that desk now and has stripped the orange paint back off.

Whose birthday cake is this? Mine? Sally's ? Sally is on the left, I am on the right.

This is Easter Sunday in North Dakota. From our ages and the fact that Katie hasn't put in an appearance yet, it must be 1965. I am on the left and little blonde Sally is on the right. My mother is almost out of shot on the far left. Dressing up for Easter Sunday. We wore little white gloves to Mass quite a bit. I remember if a t-shirt wasn't worn underneath these dresses, the net that held out our skirts would itch terribly.

Sally and I are 14 months apart in age so I don't ever remember not having her as a sister. As far as sisters go, she's one of the good ones.

Sal on the left and me on the right.

Love you Sal!

Hedge trimming and apple butter

When I first moved to the UK about 14 years ago I knew that there would be things that would no longer be available to me. One of those things was apple butter.




Not being satisfied with this, I dug out all my American cook books and found a recipe for apple butter. You know what? I like my own homemade version better than any that I've ever tasted.



Recently I was given about a bushel of cooking apples. Half of them have already been turned into apple butter.



Later on in the week, I'll get the other half bushel peeled - peeler pictured above with the newly brewed apple butter - and cooked down. I'm out of cinnamon at the moment and will need to get some when I'm in town.



Yesterday saw the return of hedge trimming guy. He has promised to get to the other hedges before he leaves the area, but the front hedge has been trimmed. It looks better doesn't it?

Before



After - So straight too!!


Note: This is how our hedges are usually trimmed. Tractor with attachment. The tractor guy can get it done a lot faster than we can.

Party Party Party!!

It is George's 13th birthday on Monday. As everybody has to go to school or work on Monday, we thought we'd bring the festivities forward a couple of days and celebrate George's birthday on Saturday.

You will notice that the birthday cake is decorated with lots of pink decorations. There is a reason for this. I make a chocolate layer cake for everybody's birthday. As everybody I make a cake for is a boy, the "boy" cake decorations get used up. As I was making George's cake, I noticed that all I had were really feminine birthday cake decorations e.g. pink fairy castles, flowers, stars and pink sugar paste bears. George then stated that he really didn't mind if I used up all the girly decorations on this year's birthday cake. So that's what I did. George had a lovely chocolate layer cake with loads of girly pink birthday decorations on it. He thought it was cool. You know what? All the friends that George invited over thought it was cool too.


George made a request to take some of his friends to Laser Quest in Carlisle. This is great! I love Laser Quest.

Here we are signing in for our game and choosing the names under which we will fight. I usually fight under the name of Xena. I came in 2nd. I rule! You wouldn't believe how much fun you can have shooting your own children with a laser. "Mom! Stop shooting me!"

We then made our way to The Golden Arches. Not the healthiest food on the planet, but it is cheap and I don't have to prepare anything. The mess stays there.

Back at Whitelees, the boys had a football (soccer) game in the front garden.
Johnny, Adam, Scott, George, Gordon, Laura and Sean.


George, Sean and Laura on the sofa this morning.

The nice thing about this weekend is that Sean, my middle boy has come home for a visit. We don't see him nearly as much as I'd like. University life in Glasgow, soon to be moving to Edinburgh keeps him very busy.

Things that were in the house this morning

A very dead computer screen. Turns out it was just the screen that had died. It has been replaced by the huge ass old screen from the former computer in the attic. (please notice the official Cubs baseball - sent in by my son Ian)

The computer screen is lying in state on the sofa in the back sitting room. It will be there all afternoon if people want to come by and pay their last respects to a handsome computer screen that has passed away much too soon.

When I got up this morning, first thing I do is let Polly out for a pee. Then I go into the bathroom to do the same myself. This is what I noticed upon turning on the light. I'm glad I didn't go stumbling in without turning on the lights as I sometimes do.

I transferred this little frog outside where things will be a bit better for him. How did it get in the bathroom?

While straightening up the kitchen and moving a dishtowel. THIS came falling out of the dish towel. This huge orange and black beetle! It is inside a teaspoon so that you can get the right sense of scale. It wasn't moving much so I didn't feel the need to be startled, just rather surprised. I've never seen this bug before. Does anybody know what it is?

Sorry the frog and beetle photos are a bit blurry. My bifocals aren't' ready yet. I'm getting the varifocal style without the tell tale "lines" in them.

Dishwasher and computer are both running again. Thanks Paddy!!

Rotten Luck

I've broken a tooth, the dishwasher is broken (faulty intake valve) and my work laptop was behaving badly. My dog chewed a seat belt in the back seat of the company car to bits. That repair has to be paid for by yours truly. Then the cat died and yesterday screen on the home computer went dark and won't display anything. Now it makes a soft clicking sound while remaining dark. To top it all off, I had an eye exam today and discovered that I need bifocals. (insert foul word here)

Now the work laptop is back from head office where they had a good look at my e-mail outbox and checked to see how many non-work websites I visited. The laptop seems to be okay again.

I now have a temporary patch on my tooth while I wait for my appointment at the dentist to come around.

My friend (and electrician) Patrick a/k/a Paddy will be here tomorrow at 9 to see about the dishwasher and the computer.

Polly can no longer be left in the car without a muzzle. I hate that, but I hate chewing damage more.

I don't smoke anymore, but some days I really miss it. I don't really drink that much anymore either. It is my hatred of hangovers that stopped that. Perhaps I just need some time off. I'd love to run away and walk the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. I'd get right with Jesus, and lose some weight.

Forgive the grumble. I get over this stuff pretty quickly.

Mid-September and all is well.

There was a small window of opportunity yesterday to get the grass in the back garden cut. It does look a whole lot better out there. Naturally the window has closed. It is raining again.

I've washed and put away the cat dish. Any reminder just makes George sad. He's slowly getting over it and has mentioned getting a new cat. Perhaps in the spring . . .

It has been hinted that we will have some fine weather on the weekend. If this is the case, the lawn in the front garden could really do with another cut. Now that the days are getting shorter up here in the north, the growth rate of the grass has slowed waaaay down.

If we do get some nice weather, I will try to get the vegetable plot cleared a bit. The area where the peas, cabbages and sweet peas grew can be dug over and covered. If I am truthful, the corn stalks can come out and I can lift that one potato plant that has carried over from last year or even from the year before. It's a pink fir apple potato. Oddly shaped and bumpy potatoes that are at their best cold in potato salads. Pink fir apple potatoes are "waxy" potatoes rather than the floury variety.

I also need to trim the spurs on the rooster's feet and give the chickens some fresh bedding. I like to make sure they have nice fresh bedding as the cold, wet weather rolls in. The hens were ever so slow with eggs this year. I really do miss Old Meany's eggs. Don't say anything to the chickens, but they could be getting replaced very soon with better laying stock.

Lots of stuff to do in the garden. I just need to get out there and get it done.

Sad Day

Yesterday afternoon, our cat Flossie was struck by a car. The person driving the car was somebody we know. He stopped and asked if we had a dark coloured cat as he had just hit one with his car.

After a short hunt, we found Flossie hiding under one of our parked cars. At first glance we knew that her back had been broken. She was already in shock (breathing through her mouth). We needed to get her some quick help.

I have the vet's number on my mobile (cell) phone and I was dialing them as Henry and I got into the car with our wounded cat. The vet said that she would meet us at the surgery. Leaving George with a visiting friend, I drove and Henry held the cat.

When we got to the surgery, it was evident that there was nothing we could do for our cat except end her pain. That's what happened.

George is very upset as it was his cat. Flossie slept next to George most nights as George's loft bed is well out of the way of pesky dogs. The mice, birds and field voles can now rest easy in their beds.

This is the service being held under the cedar tree. Flossie rests there with her brother Jim and our other ex-cat Dora.

We are comforted to know that she had a good life. She was a fit and very healthy 10 year old cat until the very end. Good bye Flossie dear. You were a good pet.