How do they do that?

I have taken to lying on the upstairs bedroom window sill, Queen of all I survey. I can look down across the garden, its paths and its currently leafless woody bits, and across to the boundary fences and into the territory of the Home for the Bewildered beyond the fence. I can also see into the Albertine rose and the honeysuckle which scramble all up the back of the house.

This means I can squeak like a loony whenever I see a likely prey animal in any of these locations, almost losing my mind as I try to decide whether to abandon my good viewpoint and chase downstairs and out or whether to stand on the window-sill twitching and squeaking. Here are a couple of pics of the newest 'likely prey animal', a ginger cat who has started coming round and whom I have, on this occasion, cornered in a tree while I stand on the one-time chicken house and suss out how to climb the beech tree. How do cats do that?

Dad's on weekend cover this weekend, so was gone this morning and returned via a nip to the barge to see how the volunteers are getting on but has now been back and chopped up the Christmas Tree and trimmed mightily the Albertine and honeysuckle on the back of the house. That was fun because there was a squirrel in it for part of the time, gradually running out of places to hide as Dad worked his way along the back of the house with the ladder, secateurs and shears. Eventually the squirrel bravely leapt to safety on the neighbour's conservatory and away. No mean leap, even for a squirrel

Have a good weekend

Deefs

Albertine and Stag Beetles

The gang have been off work today, so they've been catching up on a few tidying jobs around the garden, which is good for us, because we get to snuffle about "helping" eaten up by curiosity at some of the human antics. First job, it seemed was to trim the enormous Albertine climbing rose adorning the back of the house. This involves Dad scurrying up and down a ladder with secateurs and lobbing prickly bits of rose down to Mum on the terrace below. Her job is to gather these up and bag them in a huge "Builder Centre" one ton bag, before we dogs can get entangled in them.

Occasionally this also involves Dad getting entangled himself, as she is a thorny old girl, but I think calling her a "vicious, spiteful demon" is a bit unwarranted. Also this is the chance to rake out the old sparrow nests from the "sparrow terrace" (all 3 compartments used this year) and the other nest boxes among the Albertine.

Mum and Dad are fascinated by the building materials the spugs seem to use - lots of dog hair as you'd expect - still identifiable hanks of Megan's wavy belly-hair -, but also loft insulation lagging, bits of a green spongey ball they can recall me ripping to bits on the paving, baler twine and so on. Even a mummified dead dried up unsuccessful fledgeling buried under a 2nd nest (we dogs have grabbed that and run off, but we are spotted by Mum who yells and chases us, saying it's "gross").

Dad also digs up the buried B+Q buckets of shredded rotting wood, buried last year up to their rims as part of a Stag-Beetle survey for the People's Trust for Endangered Species (http://www.ptes.org/greatstaghunt/) . We rummage through the old wood but no stag beetle grubs this year

Our nice long walk takes us round the boat yard and back through town, where the loud speakers are now playing Slade Christmas songs and all is festive jolliness... Hmmm. We meet a couple who live up the road opposite where my Sis' Ellie lives. They have a 5 year old westie (Jock) and a "cav" called "Twig" (Twiglet?). Jock is always immaculate - bright persil white and always looking "just groomed".

This must be a high maintenance system, which is (in my unbiassed opinion (!)) bad for dogs and should be discouraged at all costs. We don't mind looking, by comparison, grey, shaggy and scruffed, Dad, especially Haggis who, despite being shampoo'd a couple of weeks back, looks like he's not been bathed for months.

The pictures? That's Megan on the left, haggis centre and me right. Felix is far left

Enjoy the rest of the weekend

Deefs