The black sheep and a foal

In our village there is a plot with hens running on it. Recently a new carer took over who has put 3 sheep there too.

This evening I started to walk past the plot and one of the sheep literally ran over to sniff me and say hallo. I found myself making noises to him, the sort I make to a cat. I have no idea how to talk to sheep! Then he went off and scampered to be with the others again.

Last night I walked past a paddock with a mother horse and her foal. A fierce notice said 'no feeding, petting or calling the horses' so I just stood there at a distance from the fence.

Soon enough the foal came over and spent some time looking at me and trying to eat the electric fence ribbon, which can't have been switched on!

The mare looked rather big and heavy in the belly, pregnant again maybe? Or maybe horses just are pretty big...

3 desks in one room

T is just visible as he rearranges the wires. Any IT person spends a lot of time crawling on the floor. You have to be good at squeezing into small spaces! This is H's work/fun/play station, see his lovely speakers and the general neatness. He likes to design and plan his environment carefully.
A little glimpse of H. The pool table is one of our educational/fun/HE investments for over the summer. Since taking this photo it has become a work bench for one of the computer cases and had some coke tipped over it.

T and H moved the desks over so the pool table could be that bit further from the glass window. I have had to have quite a few panes replaced over the years, but maybe those days are over.
This shows how happy I am to be back behind a desk. From my place I can peek through at H. T wants me to put up postcards etc and make myself at home! I think I will start with a bin. We have needed a place for rechargeable batteries for years, so I will be the charging champion and keep the chargers beside me.

I can't wait for the Christmas season, we can put up tinsel and a tree and have the whole office atmosphere without the boss and phone calls.

We have just decided that I will be in charge of the office fridge. T says I will have to get rid of the horrors inside it!! Oh well, I'm a mum and we are good at that sort of thing.
If I hold my camera up I can take pictures of T and H while they are busy. We don't talk that much...apart from when we do. The noise level in here is something else. 2 different games on simultaneously.

Flinging

I'm in a real mood for flinging out old stuff. 3 black bags of broken bits and pieces are now down on the ground floor.

I looked through a small portion of my book collection and decided on a good dozen books to take to our village shop to be sold alongside the bubblegum and bubblewrap.

Next up is the bag of old papers from university and letters from a very long time ago. If I don't shed this sort of thing I'll be paying a lot of money to counsellors for progress I could have done myself with a bin bag! I'd rather take more tricky issues to my future counsellors.

I have always had a dream of taking all my possessions and putting them outside my room/house, then only taking back those items I actually wanted.

What is growing?

I thought I was putting stuff in the green boxes to compost down into earth. Then it would be put on a bed and sown with seeds. Eventually new vegetables would grow. Mother Nature is far more effective...some potato chunks have simply grown into whole plants, and today I spotted what looks like a courgette plant!
Here is a closer look at the leaves and stem of the "courgette". It has tendrils, which I don't remember, and little flower buds which do look very like mini courgette flowers.

The wasps are making hay in my peelings and the fruit flies are happy as anything. Each time I plonk a new load on top of the heap there is a cloud of angry little creatures disturbed from their munching.

Probably time to turn my heaps again and see if the compostable wrappers from the supermarket have begun to do so. I put wooden lolly sticks in there too on the basis that they must rot down eventually. I put an old sock in once wanting to see if the cotton components would melt away to just leave the nylon, but no, the sock persisted in one piece. The joys of playing with my green boxes!

Disaster

T's screens went dark after H uploaded a new game. He couldn't even reboot because nothing happened.

He told us both to go away, so we fled to leave him him in peace to work out what to do. All computer problems get solved sooner or later in this house. We stayed out of range for an hour maybe.

Calm is restored, T's screens are all back in action and life goes on. They might be built on logic, but they seem very temperamental to me.

Just now I solved a simpler problem, H had an ID and password for his email which were far too complicated to ever spell correctly. So I have re-registered him with a deadly simple ID and password so at least he has a functioning email account.

Brownian motion

T and H walking around the room debating the effects of adding more RAM to a computer. Talking, walking and thinking seem to be linked.

"I have a theory..." starts another round of discussion.

Tech fun

H received his new speakers today. They are now fully installed. Now I need to prepare for loudness limiting duties each evening. The house will do a lot of shaking from now on.

From where I am sitting all I can see is a huge tangle of wires.

Heavenly summer day

Looking up right into the branches of the big tree. When there is a storm the whole trunk moves. We cross our fingers it won't crash down into our roof and then on into T's bedroom. His bed has always been well away from the corner the tree would come through...just in case.

If the tree is well over 100 years old, think of the different conversations and games which have gone on under it over the 20th century.
Hollyhocks taller than me. My favourite plants are tall ones so that the space is taken up and they form a live wall around me. This goes for vegetables too, Fennel, leeks and gone to seed spinach/greens.
This is pretty, the brilliant green against the dark, dusty spaces by the wall. It was so overcast yesterday in comparison. Life is so different when the sun is out!
The lawn is partly shaded by the big acacia. I did some shady sun bathing, lying on the very slightly damp grass, breathing in the warm air. There is a light wind, what would be called a light air at sea.

Night time

OK, blurry in the extreme, but if you squint you can see the ETA: infinity sign at the bottom of the display. Normally it shows an ETA of anything from 1 to 7 years for whatever game they are waiting for. Crossing fingers and toes that it is relatively legal to download. Anyway T will be 21 after 7 years has passed!
I stuck my camera round the door to get this, they chat all day and the atmosphere is rather like a cheerful office. Whirling chairs and cans of coke. Leads all over the floor behind the desks. I use the bed to rest and use my laptop sometimes.

Thank you to my son T

He taught me, for the nth time, to upload photos from my mobile to my laptop.

What will I do when he decides to leave home and take his knowledge with him??

Our wireless will wilt, and no one will remember the admin passwords. We will bribe him to come and stay for a day or so to straighten us out again. He will be so fed up with us!

Within 300 yards

I like to stand by the gate and see the cattle walk over to be with me. They sniff the smells I make as a human and I sniff the smells they make as cattle. They came right over and jostled each other. I wonder why they choose to come over. We don't have much in common.
Our nearest corn field. I have an irrational wish to walk into the rows and get lost. Clearly not a good idea, even if I could find my way out by listening for the hourly church bells or looking at the sun. The plants are taller than me and the field is enormous.
Here is the top of the female part of the plant, turning into a corn cob. The red strands are called silk and are a guide to how ripe the corn is. Harvest is once they dry out.
We walked down our drive and see more of these survivors from when the wall fell down and all the old planting was dug up to make new foundations.
Arty photo of 3 sweet, then tart, blackberries. I half crushed them in my hand and got covered in "blood"...simple pleasures!
Our rowan berries. Very glossy and sturdy looking. That tree never grows any taller, just continues from year to year in that corner by the garage. A truly content tree, in the right place and at the right time. All is well in its world.

The year is turning

I went on a walk round the village after dark this evening. It was cool enough to wear a zipped up jacket. The air smelt of cut grass and had a tiny nip in it. I was buzzed by a bat. I don't hear that well, but it was remarkably still and silent, no cars, no sirens, no shouts, no-one drumming, no sheep or cattle noises at all.

1001 Nights

I have decided to simply start at the beginning and read.

This evening I was up to the Porter following his mysterious maiden through the market as she bought an eye-popping sequence of delicious things:

'she stopped at a fruiterer's shop and bought from him Shami apples and Osmani quices and Omani peaches, and cucumbers of Nile growth, and Egyptian limes and Sultani oranges and citrons; besides Aleppine jasmine, scented myrtle berries, Damascene nenuphars, flower of privet and camomile...'

'she stood before the greengrocer's, of whom she bought pickled safflower and olives, in brine and in oil; with tarragon and cream-cheese and hard Syrian cheese...'

The translator is Sir Richard Burton, who had an amazing life. The introduction says: 'He lived like one of his heroes, travelling in Goa, Equatorial Africa, Brazil, India, and the Middle East. He took part in the Crimean War. He went with J H Speke to find the source of the Nile and discovered Lake Tanganyka. He disguised himself as an Afghan dervish and doctor and went on pilgrimage to the sacred cities of Mecca and Medina - a journey where unmasking would have cost him his life.'

Rest

I think I know what is wrong with my sore hip now. Just a chronic inflammation which can be allowed to heal naturally with rest, ice, heat, massage, physio and avoidance of weightbearing and overuse.

So I have a very good reason to read great books, surf to my heart's content, watch TV, sit under a duvet with a warm hot water bottle and let my boys grow up without too much interference from me.

I can hear T and H chatting away in T's room. They each have a game they like and are playing alongside each other. Every so often they visit their grandmother next door for little bowls of sweets then come back for more playing. All I do is nag about toothbrushing and provide familiar meals.

"counting gifts is addictive"

2. So glad I'm not living under Stalin!! Just read a book on the Americans who decided to emigrate there in the 30's. Evidently he had the census takers shot when it was revealed in 1937 that the population had dropped by some staggering amount, 23,000,000.

Things I want to do in my life

Make money
Run a business
Get more contributors to my blog
Live by the sea
Live in London
Go to art school
Learn to knit, make bread...grandma stuff
Learn to cook
Have a pet cat
Collect beautiful 70's children's books
Sell board books, French, German etc
Move house to a 70's bungalow with wonderful broadband

Gentle reading

for me is The Plague by Camus. I whizzed through half of it last night. After my hip went all sore I reckoned it would take my mind off it. The plague is in China at present and my hip is right here, so much more immediate.

Anyone want a spare leg, I don't want it anymore!