Judith and Vicky

Help-X-er Judith turns out to be a nimble whizz at the tiny
Origami. Here are 3 crane-birds with normal dice for scale

Busy people. The biggest pieces of news for this post have got to be that we successfully "landed" our two latest Help-X volunteers and saw Auntie Mary (The Nun) off on her final journey. The other jobs have all been a slow chug through that "ever extending task list" detailed in my previous post, none of which are particularly blog-worthy.

Judith gets loved up by Poppea and Towser

The Help-X lasses are Judith and Vicky, 2 Berlin-born medical students just at the end of their 5 years of 'basic training', now completed (successfully, they believe) their final exams and released for a while to party, travel, enjoy themselves and find hospitals to work in where they can do a 4-part 'rotation' round possible speciality areas of medicine for their chosen careers. One fancies radiology, the other "internal medicine" (e.g. surgery).

Vicky with Towser.

They are both, currently at Lübeck University Hospital in far-north Germany. The rotation, 4 chunks of 3 months, does not have to happen in Lübeck, and Judith has plans to do one chunk on the French owned island of Reunion, just off Madagascar. As I've said before, these Help-X-ers get about. Ireland is chicken-feed!

Ah the mowing!

They are very similar in appearance, both being tall and slim, with similar hair styles and colouring, and both wearing glasses, so that I struggled for the first day to tell t'other from which, but I have now sorted them, Judith is slightly fairer of hair than Vicky. They are both delightful and also very keen and hard working. Exhausted when they arrived, they enjoyed a light supper but then retreated to their room where they managed an 11 hour sleep and still got up for my suggested 08:30 breakfast and set to work.

Hidden between the trees, Judith mows the drive banks

Popular first jobs in the dry sunshine were mowing and pulling nettles. Mowing is also a good job to make a rapid visual impact on the tidiness of the place.Even though the grass is not too long anywhere and had been well grazed off by the sheep on the front lawn, it was still looking a bit shaggy. Well, not any more! The girls, in 2 mornings have mowed almost every grass blade we own; front lawn, Primrose Path, drive banks. pond garden orchard and the paths down to the apiary plus along the lane outside (the daffodil verges). Tomorrow they have asked if they might give the dogs hair-washes and shampoos (sorry dogs!). The Lady of the House is never going to turn down an offer like that!

A tidy front lawn.

Welcome aboard, the pair of them. This is working out well and though we will still probably call them our final Help-X volunteers of 2018 (we've run out of jobs!), we will miss them and definitely be doing it again in 2019. Like all these 'travelers' they are fascinating to talk to. One, in this case, is from either side of the Berlin Wall, though they were not even born in 1989 when the wall came down (They are 24), so their 'divided' experience is all parents and grand parents.

A 'Kanzan; flowering cherry tree for the
Auntie Mary Memorial garden

Thursday, then, saw Elizabeth off up to Drogheda and Dundalk, away on the east coast of Ireland, north of Dublin, for the funeral of Auntie Mary, the (Franciscan) Nun (90). She had been asked to source a flowering cherry tree for a memorial garden. Our brilliant local small-business garden centre guy came up with a 'Kanzan' variety tree which nicely fitted the bill. Elizabeth and the various other nieces and nephews are, of course, known to the Nuns from previous visits, who LOVE to be visited by 'outsiders' and her main impression of the day was of being swallowed up by a sea of fluttering little-old-ladies all wanting to make a big welcoming fuss and feed her tea and mountains of good biscuits.

Beech in the Pig Run turning colour.

They were also all invited to stay for a good lunch after the formalities, though they got away with being asked to stay the night (as happened to Mum-in-Law, 'Steak Lady') in voluminous borrowed Nun-nighties which enveloped their bodies from chin to ankle and wrist to wrist. I mentioned 'tea' there - in fact Elizabeth tells that her day was full of cups of tea barely sipped at before she was moved on to be shown the Reading she'd have to do, or to retrieve the cherry tree from the car. She was as thirsty when she got back as if she'd been deprived of tea all day.

Enough, though for this one. In the absence of Mrs C, I must look to livestock and possible supper making. Laters.