The Prodigal Hen

So, I'm getting ready for work this morning. You know the dash around the house morning routine. Where's my handbag? Where's my phone? Have you got enough lunch money?

The Man of the Place is in the front room and looks out the window and is promptly aghast at the size and number of molehills we now have in our lawn. They are really getting bad and we're going to have to do something to get the moles to move on. I see some movement in the front hedge. We almost always have pheasants in the front garden and at first that is what I think it is. It isn't a pheasant, it is my missing hen!!!

She is in the field in front of the house and she is looking for a way to get back through into our garden.

I slipped on my rubber clogs, grabbed a slice of bread and the camera and went out to rescue her.

The new red hens are quite tame and run to me when I do my "chick chick chick" call and this one walked right up to me, having a bit of bread helped. I was able to reach through the sheep wire and get her.

She must have somehow found herself on the other side of the hedge and fence and couldn't get back. She had been out there for three days!! We had a very hard frost on Sunday night and there are always foxes around. It is one lucky hen. I'm so pleased to have her back.

Flat Tyre and Foxes

I really like this time of year. There are lots of larch (tamarack) trees here and just now all the needles are falling. There are drifts of larch needles everywhere. They get damp and stick to our shoes and get tracked into the house. On the up side, it makes everything smell like a dreamy Christmas tree farm.

Early on Saturday morning I went out to feed the chickens and collect the eggs. As the chicken run was muddy I thought the gals would enjoy a scratch about in the garden. As I was walking back to the house I discovered that my car had a flat tyre. Nuts.

I called and asked the road service man come out and swap the flat with the collapsible spare. It was not an emergency, so the sweet gal on the phone said it would be a while. They'd call when the van was on the way. When the call came, I thought I'd shoo the chickens back in and one of the new red ones was missing. I should have six red hens and I could only see five. Perhaps the missing hen was off laying an egg in tall grass or something. They'd only been out of the chicken run a short time.

The flat was removed and the mini collapsible spare tyre was put on and I drove into town and got a proper new tyre on the car.

When I got back from town, the missing hen was still missing. It must have been snatched by a a fox. I hate foxes. These hens were out for such a short time and one was nabbed in broad daylight! I'm sure if Polly had been out, the chickens would have been safe, but she was in the house with me. Why did it have to be one of the new hens. They're really good layers. The fox could have had one of the egg-shy old ones but they're probably too smart. Its the young, tender and dumb ones that are always at the greatest risk.

So, now I've got one less hen but the air here smells great.

Any Noun Can be Verbed

One of the things I do in my (ha!) spare time is watch birds. I have loads of bird feeders here at the house and supply the local birds with a variety of foods. Because I'm interested in birds, bird watching and conservation, I look in on a couple of bird watching blogs.

One disturbing trend I have discovered in US bird blogs is that the word bird is now used as an intransitive verb. "I am going to bird on the weekend." I never heard the word being used as a verb before I left the US fifteen plus years ago. Back then it was just a plain old noun. It looked odd and wrong to me and I kept seeing it happen.

It was the use of the word bird as a verb in a blog where the language and grammar are very good that led me to investigate further. I looked it up in my dictionary here at the house, the Oxford Concise Dictionary and the word bird is listed as a noun only. I was all set to flame a hole in a bird blogger when I decided had better get another source just to have all my facts. I used an American based online dictionary and lo and behold the word bird is not only a noun but a verb as well. Oh my God! That use of the word is in common use!

I will now hold my tongue and not blast the bird blogger for using the word bird as a transitive verb, however I will still hold on to my private view that using the word bird as a verb sounds uneducated, awkward and just plain wrong. As my friend David says, "Verbing wierds lanuguage." Perhaps it is living in the United Kingdom for so long that makes me bristle at people playing fast and loose, verbing nouns willy nilly.

For me, I will never use the word bird as a verb. I will go bird watching because I am a bird watcher. I will not bird because I am a birder. Through my investigations I have discovered that it is a perfectly acceptable and recognized use of the word, I will not flame anybody for using bird as a verb. Be warned however, I will think to myself that you are an ignoramus and right down there with people who end their sentences with prepositions.

Cousin Mike

I had a call from my dear Aunt Joyce over the weekend. She told me that she will not be visiting me in February as planned. She has a bad back that may require surgery. She is hoping that things will improve enough for her to make the trip across the Atlantic sometime but in the meantime I am so bummed! I love my Aunt Joyce. She's a retired maternity nurse and although there are reports of her being formidable on the hospital wards, I have only ever known a kind, loving and warm woman. She was one of the first people from whom I asked for recipes. The pumpkin bars recipe is originally from Aunt Joyce. She was married to my dad's brother Jim who has sadly passed away. Uncle Jim and Aunt Joyce had three boys, Mike Paul and Steve (can be said as one word). We saw them more than any other cousins we have and we have a LOT of cousins.

A very early photo taken by Aunt Joyce herself of some of some rotten kids: Tom in the front being held up by my mother because he can't walk yet, Paul in a red jacket, my sister Katie in an adorable sailor dress. Sally in a white sweater looking off to the side, Mike looking down at something and me in the back with really great blue glasses. (Steve hasn't been born yet)

Years ago, when we lived in Bismarck, North Dakota we lived in a house in town for a short time. I can't remember the address because I was five when we left. I do remember that when we lived there, two really nice young nurses lived in the apartment above us. My Uncle Jim took a shine to one of the nurses (the pretty dark haired one) and started visiting us much more often. In time that pretty nurse became my Aunt Joyce.

So, being down that Aunt Joyce won't be visiting I was casually flipping through my tattered address book. I noticed that a while ago I wrote in my cousin Mike's address and phone number. Mike is Aunt Joyce's eldest. We saw these cousins more than any other family group. I think this may have been due to the fact that our fathers were such close brothers. There is barely a summer memory that doesn't have a chapter including that family.

My fondest memory of those cousins is merely 15 years or so ago at our wedding. Uncle Jim and Aunt Joyce had come down from Clear Lake, Iowa and Mike and his new wife Patrice, Paul and Steve were all there too. Later on in the evening we were in the bar of the Holiday Inn in the middle of Iowa City and Mike, Paul and Steve (can be said as one word) were singing karaoke. They did a version of Bad Bad Leroy Brown that had Henry and I wetting ourselves with laughter.

I decided to call Mike. I don't think I've spoken to him in years. I know that if I get a phone call from a cousin I haven't seen in a long time, I immediately assume that there is going to be bad news. It is probably a good idea to phone my cousins from time to time. This way if something awful happens and I have to ring them to tell them bad news, it won't be so odd that I'm calling.
It was great to speak to Mike and get caught up. I gave him my e-mail and blog addresses. I hope he passes them on to Paul and Steve. I also hope that Mike turns into one of my regular readers and will start to leave a comment. It's okay if you don't leave a comment Mike, just stay in touch!

Still Missing Paris

I thought that by appreciating the lovely Scottish morning, I would stop dreaming of Paris. It didn't work. I still miss it.
Later on yesterday, I went and rubbed salt into the wound by looking at this site.

It is a link that shows the actual apartment that we stayed in when we were in Paris the last time. The apartment is steps away from the Abbesses Metro stop in the lovely Montmartre area. We could see the Eiffel tower from the kitchen window and the top of Sacre Coeur out the front window.View from my bedroom - The top of Sacre Coeur in the morning light

There is a fantastic little bar/bistro down the street with very lovely and good looking waiters. and everything is so conveniently located. I don't like living in town, but if I had to live in a city, it would have to be Paris.Xtreme English on the morning of her birthday

In the meantime, over here in rural edge of the world Scotland there are wind turbines going up on a hill near us. The big pieces are being shipped across. The pieces are HUGE. One chunk went past the house on Saturday morning and another piece this morning just as I was leaving for work. I didn't have the camera for Saturday's piece which is a shame because it was one of the big blades and it was beautifully sculptured . Today's piece was a portion of the tower.

Early Morning Walk

I was missing Paris yesterday morning. It was about this time last year that I was planning to go to France to celebrate my mother's 70th birthday with her.

I was dreaming about what I would do if I was in Paris on this fine late autumn morning. I thought I might take an early walk around the streets and take photos of the city waking up and then go for some fantastic coffee and a croissant. Then I mentally scolded myself for not appreciating WHERE I AM on this beautiful morning. Lots of people would love to be here in Scotland and here I am wishing I was somewhere else. So in the spirit of bloom where you are planted, I went and took photos of my own morning walk and was grateful.The sunrise as seen from my back door just as I went out the door.
It was just the sort of morning where one would find spiderwebs decorated with dew drops. Failing to find a dewy spiderweb, I saw that the sunrise as reflected off the bonnet (hood) of my car looked opalescent and took a photo of that instead.
So, it was out the drive and down the road. The road looked so beautiful.
I got about 100 yards away and I discovered that Julio, our cat thought that he was going to be walking with me and the dog. I had to scoop Julio up in my arms and carry him back to the house. I had visions of what had happened to his brother on that very bit of road.
The hedges along the road near us are almost all beech hedges. Beech trees don't loose their leaves in the autumn. The leaves turn a beautiful red brown and stay on. It is only when the new leaf buds form in the spring that the old leaves fall off. I also discovered a newly posted sign. *Sigh* It was up right at the front gate of our favourite place to walk Polly. Now we have to find a new place for her to run. This morning, I am making apple butter. The whole house smells like apples cooking and wonderful spices. Apple butter can't be found here in the UK, so years ago I decided I would just make it myself. Once a year, I buy almost a whole bunch of apples (half a bushel) and cook them up. I put the homemade apple butter into jars that I have been carefully hoarding all year. Some jars stay here for our own use and the other jars of apple butter go to the neighbours and friends who have developed a taste for it.I love this nifty little gadget. It peels and cores the apples very quickly. I love it because it saves me so much time.

Crime Scene and New Shoes

I've come home from work to get my end-of-week computer work done only to discover that there has been a murder in the house.
Our cat Julio dragged a blackbird through the cat flap and then proceeded to kill it all over the house. The bulk of the feathers seem to be in the blue bathroom and the hallway in the extension. European Blackbirds are in the thrush family (same as a US robin) and have a surprisingly large number of feathers.

Julio left the half plucked bird under the desk here in the office as a gift to me. I can do without that sort of TGIF present.

I've just finished vacuuming up the feathers and tossed the body of the poor unfortunate blackbird in the bin.

Despite the carnage that I faced coming home, it isn't the focus of this particular entry. I'd like to tell you that I have fallen in love, in love with some new shoes! I haven't been so gaga over a pair of shoes like this in a long time. Shoes that I like are rarely on sale. When they are on sale, they never have my size. I've got a big foot. (US 10, UK 8 or European 42) I wasn't really looking for new shoes but I always have a trawl through a sale rack. Who doesn't? I liked the style, the sale had just started and they had my size! I took the alignment of these three requirements as a sign from God and purchased the shoes. I haven't taken them off since.
Ok, I was exaggerating for comic effect. I took them off to have a bath and go to bed.
I have about four or five pairs of black court shoes in various heel heights and states of wear. I favour the style illustrated above with a medium heel and rounded toe. The rounded toe makes my large foot appear smaller (or at least I think it makes my foot look smaller). I wear them almost exclusively to work and they get worn until they are worn out. Even though I polish my shoes regularly to keep them nice, I think I wear out two pairs a year. Black court shoes go with just about everything but I do get a bit bored with them from time to time. That is why I was so open to temptation when the new shoes caught my eye. I think they will go well with denim jeans, so I may wear them all weekend.

Me + my new shoes = true love

Happy Halloween!

The first year we were here, I prepared for Halloween as if we still lived in town. I made a huge (8 foot) spiderweb near the door with yarn and put a big construction paper spider in it. All the boys were at home and they each had a pumpkin that they had carved. Those were lit and set on the back step. I had purchased loads of candy to hand out too and then waited for the kids to show up. None did. Our place is about half a mile outside the village. With nothing but fields between us and the village and no street lights it just isn't worth any little ghosts coming out here on the trick or treat rounds.

Our village always hosts a very nice Halloween party every year. Each child in the village is invited and they all attend, from pre-school toddlers to kids who hope that nobody asks them if they're not just a bit too old for this. They have party games, costume judging and carved pumpkin (and turnip) judging. We won the carved pumpkin contest one year with this effort. After the party, the littlest ones go home and the rest go on the trick or treat rounds.

Parents take it in turn to go with the children and see that they are safe and don't get up to mischief. In past few years I've taken George and Gordon down to the village with the candy I purchased for the house and handed it out in the village hall.

On Sunday when I was in town, I phoned the house and asked George if he wanted me to pick up a big pumpkin for him to carve. He said that he couldn't be bothered about pumpkins anymore. At 14 he is probably too old to go out trick or treating with the rest of the children so that is that.

I'll still have candy on hand to give out on the off chance that we get a stray visitor. I'll keep all the outside lights on so the place looks welcoming but that's as far as I'll go now.

Blog Light

I've been thinking about what I put on this blog. I may have mentioned once before that in real life, I am much um . . . earthier in my language. I don't put swear words into my blog because I don't want to offend my primary audience and that is my family. Now, most of my family know that I can swear like a sailor but for some reason, I never swear in front of small children, aunts and uncles or my dad. My dad doesn't have a computer so every so often, I print out each recent blog entry, bundle them up into a nice thick envelope and post them off to him. He reads the pages with his old pal Lee over coffee and pie in some nice coffee shop. I'd hate to think that what he was reading shocked him so much that his coffee goes up his nose or choked on a bite of cinnamon roll. I know that my dad knows how to swear, but he has never used bad language in front of me.

I keep away from sticky topics like religion and politics. I go to Mass most Sundays but I do not go as regularly as some. I have very left wing views on politics to the point of almost being socialist. As I know that not everybody shares these views or beliefs, I keep them to myself unless asked.

I also steer way clear of writing about relationships. Thankfully most relationships in my life are pretty smooth. For those relationships that are less than smooth, it wouldn't be fair to air their unreasonable behaviour ;-) in public if they don't have a way to respond. I don't write about my husband or my children unless they have given their specific permission. All of my boys are great guys but as most kids go, sometimes you just want to throttle them. Writing about family squabbles may prolong the squabble and more importantly, record the upset for all time. As you all know, the faster you forget that sort of stuff, the better. It is in these instances that a good memory is unforgivable.

I won't get on a soap box and talk about the loss of civil liberties, stupid politicians and overpriced health care. There are plenty of other blogs that expound on those topics. I'm just going to blog light. It is probably going to bland me out a bit but I'm okay with that.

I'll write about the positive things in my life, the things that make me smile. I will make typical middle aged posts about the loss of my youth and the dreams that passed me by. For instance, I will not now ever be in a rock band or get a PhD in marine biology. I've made an uneasy peace with those bits of wishful thinking. I will write about my garden and the wildlife in it, taking very good care not to photograph the areas where the weeds have taken over. I will document bits of family history and the rise and fall of my chickens' egg production (another egg today by the way) and baking stuff.

You guys KNOW that I'm really not bland in real life, right?

First Egg!!

The hens that I bought at the end of last month have given me their first egg today! Well done gals! Lets hope that this egg is the first in a torrent of eggs! As it is the first effort for one of the new hens, it is small. I have taken a photo of the egg for everybody to see and then one next to a large egg so you can compare sizes.
Most commercial egg producers will only keep a hen for one laying season. A hen will go into a moult (dropping feathers and growing new ones) and then her next laying season will start. Hens will lay fewer eggs in the next season but they'll be larger. Commercial operations will change to fresh hens at this point. I like the larger eggs (and I'm not a commercial egg producer) and I'll keep a hen until she dies of old age. Hybrid hens will be good enough layers their entire lives for our purposes.

I've been uber-busy with work this week, coming down with some sort of stomach-hurts-fever bug on Thursday night didn't help. Why does this sort of stuff always happen towards the end of a month? Stoical me just took something to keep the fever down, and went to work. In case you're worried. It has passed.

I've been going around the house today doing those annoying jobs that I always say I'll get done "sometime", but never actually do. This included touching up paint in rooms that have been painted for some time now, changing all the light bulbs in the outside lights that went out in the summer and getting family photos put on the walls. I feel so virtuous when I do that sort of stuff. I can relax better when odd jobs have been finished and crossed off the to-do list. Next up: defrost the freezer :-(

Fun Dementor

When I fail to fulfill requests by the resident teenager, I am called The Fun Dementor. They claim that I suck fun out of any room I'm in, making them feel like they'll never have fun ever again.

After making waffles for everybody this morning and then spending the rest of the morning cleaning, I wasn't really in the mood to say yes when George and his faithful sidekick Gordon asked if they could make cookie dough.

Now, any parent with their wits about them will know that if they wanted to "make cookies" then that's what they would have asked. No, they asked if they could make cookie dough. That meant that they'd sit on the sofa, playing on the X-box and eating the raw dough, leaving the kitchen upside down. I just spent AGES getting the kitchen clean. Naturally they promised that they would clean up afterwards but I just couldn't face what would happen to my nice clean kitchen if I let them in there. I was called a Fun Dementor. Then guilt set in. . . .

I went in myself and made chocolate chip cookie dough. I can be much tidier. After the cookie dough was made, I got out the kitchen scales and weighed out 5 oz of cookie dough into two cereal bowls. I presented the bowls of dough to the boys on the sofa. I then I thought I'd use the remaining dough to actually make chocolate chip cookies. While the cookies were baking, I came into the office to write.
Because I wasn't paying attention to the time, I let all the cookies burn. There isn't a single one that is salvageable. They are all completely carbonized. Fun dementors will do that sort of thing. They will fail at doing fun things even when they try. Such is the nature of a fun dementor.

The chickens will be happy because they'll get them all.

You Missed a Bit!

Now that the bookcases are out of the hallway, we've got LOADS more space to walk. The bookcases also hid the fact that the hallway was in desperate need of a new coat of paint. Until yesterday, the hall had been a lovely dark red. Now it is becoming a light yellow. Naturally this will take two or more coats to cover the old dark colour.


After filling all the nail holes, going around everything with masking tape and covering the floor, I started painting. The stereo is too far away for anybody painting in the hallway to get any benefit from it. The radio was in use in another part of the house, so I thought I'd turn on the tv to a music station and listen to that while I painted. The channel I ended up turning to was of all things the Kerrang channel. It was excellent! Who knew I hadn't outgrown my affinity for a bit of metal. Rock!

Later on that evening, I discovered my husband playing Prince's Purple Rain album. Funky!


There is nothing like a bit of good music to help slap the paint up on the walls. I've put in a Nickleback video instead of a Prince video. Prince won't allow any of his stuff on YouTube.

It also helps if you've got a quality control cat.



(Spot the old colour in the lower left hand corner of the top picture.)

Opting Out

I was in a garden centre in September and the day I was in, they were putting out their Christmas decorations. I started to feel just a little bit smug and thought to myself, "This has nothing to do with me this year." The day before this garden centre visit, I booked a diving holiday in Egypt for the three of us.

We'll be leaving on the 18th of December and will return on the 26th. Yes, we're going to be away for Christmas. I don't want anybody to think that we're not celebrating Christmas this year, we're just celebrating in an unusual way.

There are a couple of reasons why we're going to celebrate Christmas by going diving. Henry and I have come to diving later in life than most divers do. We have a limited amount of time to enjoy the sport so we like to grasp the opportunity when we can. Once you've been forced to stop diving by age and infirmity, you can't go back. If we continue to enjoy good health, Henry has about 10 years of diving left in him. After this happens, we don't want to look back with regret at not grasping each and every opportunity to dive.

The other thing is the vulgar commercialism of Christmas. If one considers how much is spent on food, drink, tree, decorations, lights for the house, Christmas cards and presents, it all adds up to the cost of a nice holiday in the sun.

Photograph of a Regal Angel fish that I took in July 2006 in the Red Sea.

We've never been able to leave the house in the winter before now. In the past we had a heating system that was run by a coal fire in the stove. The stove or range heated the boiler and that warmed six radiators and the domestic hot water. If we weren't here to keep the fire going, then the house got cold pretty quickly. If we left the house for a few days, it took AGES for the house to heat back up again and there was always the worry of burst water pipes. But since last year, we have a proper central heating system with thermostats and a nice big Belgian oil burning furnace.

Ouch!

George slammed his finger in the car door yesterday.

For those of you who are squeamish don't click on these words that are underlined.

The Dewey Decimal System Comes to Whitelees Cottage

I finished painting what will now be called the guest bedroom.

This afternoon while I was waiting for some bit of paint to dry, I thought I'd start moving the books. The first bookcase. It's looking sparse, but dust free. It will be joined by other bookcases and naturally, the books quite soon.

I was going to have to empty the bookshelves to move them and had the bright idea of finally organising the family book collection into proper order. I will probably never have this opportunity again. Once organised, finding a book later on will be SO much easier. When stacking the books in the last empty room in the house, I sorted them into distinct categories among the piles I made were the categories of Fiction, Travel & Foreign Language, Music and Field Guides. You get the picture.

Most of these books haven't been moved in a decade and were filthy! I was covered in dust. I still have about ten or so boxes of books up in the attic to be brought down and sorted. I'll get to that today after church. Then I can make a pot of tea and start sorting the fiction by author and the non-fiction into its different subjects.

This is the non-fiction pile - Future categories will be humour, politics (no they're NOT the same) biography and reference books (dictionaries and the like).

Fiction - Not yet sorted by author.

Travel and foreign language. This includes travel writing and maps.

Another pile of books that I didn't photograph is for music, which will probably take over an entire bookcase. Last but not least at all are the Rupert and The Broons and Oor Wullie annuals. They are tall books and as they have been collected off and on for over 50 years, take up a lot of space.

These guys were very helpful all day. Here Polly and Julio are ensuring that the fire in the stove stays at the optimum level.

Paint Specks

I don't like the little specks of paint that one finds on furniture after a room has been painted. The Man of the Place hates them even more. The reason for his hatred of paint specks goes deep. When he was growing up, just about every stick of furniture that his parents owned had paint specks on it. His parents were lovely but not careful about covering furniture when painting, thinking that being careful with the brush or roller would be enough.

Old paint spatters. Can you see them?

Last weekend, I had the honour of removing some ancient parental paint specks from a piece of furniture that we've pulled out of storage. This small wardrobe used to belong to my late father-in-law. It is typical of English post WWII furniture. It will go into the room I am painting just now along with all our bookshelves. I used fine steel wool and paste style wax polish and got almost all the paint specks off. There is one side left to do, and I'll get to it this weekend sometime. When I finished working on it last weekend, The Man of the Place exclaimed that he didn't even know that it had brass knobs and hinges. He thought they were always black.

This week after work and after dinner each night, I have spent an hour or two painting the room that used to be George's bedroom. It took a couple of days to get the ceiling painted. It was blue and the matt white that is a more traditional coating for ceilings needed the application of two good coats before the blue didn't peek through anymore.

Naturally before a single tin of paint is opened, the room must be prepared. I removed all but the heavy sofa bed and then started in with the masking tape. All the skirting boards (in the US they are base boards) needed to be topped off with masking tape and the window sills covered with newspaper and tape. I didn't remove the light and plug plates, but I did loosen all the screws and used lots of masking tape to protect them all from the dreaded paint spatters.

The entire floor has been covered in two huge plastic sheets. I know that if I didn't do this, I'd step in a paint drip and then track it unknowingly all over the house.

The colour is called Pebble Beach. It is a nice neutral stone colour. You can see that when I've painted the walls, I've left a two inch gap all the way around the top. This is so the edges can be done by somebody else who is much more skilled and careful (NOT fussy) than I am about edges.

After this blog entry is finished, I will be removing the radiator and painting behind that as well. While the radiator is off, it will be getting some much needed maintenance and a new coat or two of paint.

That's my life. Work. Clean the house. Paint stuff.

We are the Champions!

Our friends Kevin and Pam are visiting us. They, George and The Man of the Place are going to the Darvel Music Festival tonight. As Kevin and Pam live all the way down in Cirencester they have come up early to visit us.

Last night there was a Quiz Night being held in our village hall so we all walked down to the village hall to participate. We live about half a mile from our village hall. As we had all had wine with our dinner, walking was the only legal option.

It was a mild night and the walk down was very pleasant. Kevin and Pam, were quite stalwart and didn't ask us why we weren't bringing torches (flashlights). Frankly, you really don't need the extra light. There aren't any streetlights and after about thirty seconds, your eyes get used to things and you can see the road just fine.

I've made the walk to and from our house at night to the village many times and I've never been afraid. Aside from tales of "large cats" on the loose, there isn't anything out there that might want to eat an adult human. Nobody walks that way, so robbery isn't going to take place. On top of that, most of the potholes have been filled in, so the tripping hazards have been minimised.

So, long story made short. Village quiz night. Team of five - Me, Henry, Kevin, Pam and Michael (stray villager looking for a team). We won. Convincingly.

We can barely move here this morning for the smugness that has filled the place.

Autumn Days

I drove out to Lanark today in the Clyde valley. It was a glorious sunny autumn day. On one of the far hills, somebody was burning off some old thick heather. The smoke rose straight skyward on this windless day. It gave a lovely smokey smell to the afternoon.
(The above photo of the red deer stag is not my photograph.)

One of the places I drive past are some holiday cottages and visitor centre for Clan Carmichael. They keep red deer in huge pens next to the road. This time of year the bucks are in their glory. Big antlers and thickened necks these boys are making lots of noise because they're in the mood for love. One big lad was right next to the road. I slowed down to admire him better. What a beauty!

Sometimes the beauty of this place is astounding! I try not to take it for granted, but when one is late for an appointment or thinking about stupid things like sales targets it can all go by unappreciated. It is days like today when I can be stopped short by the sight of a magnificent animal in his prime as he suns himself in the low October sun and be thankful that I was here to see it.

Damn it!

One of our lovely cats, Jack has died this morning. He was hit by one of those horrible trucks that lumbers past our place WAY TOO FAST. I didn't even know that something had gone wrong until I went into the bedroom to change for work to discover my bed was covered in blood. Jack had jumped up there to find a comfortable spot and bled everywhere.

In stead of getting work clothes on, I flung on any old clothes (there was going to be more blood) and got the cat carrier. After placing the very blood soaked cat into the carrier, off we went to the vet, phoning the vet and husband en-route.

When I got to the veterinarian's surgery, it was evident that Jack would not survive these horrific injuries. Both his front legs had been crushed beyond use. How he managed to get on our bed, I'll never know.

Jack was put down immediately. I didn't want our lovely cat suffering a minute more than he had to.

We used to call him Gravy Nose from time to time. He was terrible at keeping his nose free of gravy.

Later on today he'll be buried in the special spot underneath the cedar tree in the front garden.