Mr and Mrs D?

When I left you at the end of the previous post, our visitors D+D were just leaving us, belly-full of dippy goose egg breakfast, off on the next leg of their surprise (for lady-D) holiday tour of Ireland, bound for Galway and then Bunratty Castle via our suggested scenic tour of Connemara. The 'public' intent was to enjoy a Medieval Banquet at Bunratty. However, as well as the whole trip being a surprise for lady-D, it seems that Mr-D had one more plot twist and 'present' up his sleeve. Bunratty was just a cover story.

Year 2 of the living willow hedge

The couple drove through Connemara enjoying the scenery and (we are told) stopped at a likely lake to get out, stretch their legs and enjoy the view. Lady-D promptly took off down the 'beach' "babbling on" (she says) about how much fun it would be to get the canoes 'up here'. It took her a while to spot that it had all gone a bit quiet behind her and that Mr D was not keeping up with her, or, indeed, part of the canoe conversation. When she turned round she found that this was because he had gone down on bended knee and was clutching an engagement ring! Congratulations the pair of you, D and Mrs D to be. With the banquet now off the books, they adjourned to a fine pub also in Bunratty called 'Durty Nelly's'.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we have finally run out of the miraculous 20 days of windless and rainless weather. We just squeaked D and D in at the end of it which was very nice for their 'petting zoo' stuff. The purple wellies stayed clean and dry.

The cat 'Soldier' is pretty much over his operation and dashing about inside and out like before, eating us out of house and home.

Unsubtle hedge-bashing down our lane.

Poppea, always more of a drama queen (and also, to be fair, subject to a much more serious operation) is healing a bit more slowly. She reminds us occasionally that she has a sore place as she gets down from a chair, emiting a piercing shriek or a whimper, but she has joined in the walks again and joins the rest of us for the half hour off-lead exercise in the orchard. We have to take her back to the vet on Friday week to have her stitches removed. That is going to be a bit of a squeak-fest too, I should imagine.

Roadside hedge or a row of coppiced ash trees?

On a sadder note, we remember our great friend, Liz's closest and longest term Kent chum, frequently mentioned in this blog, 'Diamond' (Diane Loraine Walsh) who died this day last year. Diane's ashes were scattered by husband John at a favourite canal-side site in Surrey and John has driven up there today with our other friends Mazy and Anne to remember her and to scatter flower petals at the place. Thinking of you all. Sympathies at this sad time.

B'n'B for D'n'D

Make it count, Soldier. It is the last food you'll see till
tomorrow evening. 

We finally managed to nail down a vet to do the spay operations of 3 year old Westie bitch, Poppea and young tom-cat Soldier. They were booked into a practise in town for Friday morning so for them (and all other dogs and cats because it is easier that way) starvation from 6 pm on the Thursday evening. This is not a problem with the dogs who are not used to food between meals, but the hungry young cats live a life of harrassing us into feeding them at any time of day or night by just making nuisances of themselves, climbing the shelves, lying on your computer keyboard, pushing things off tables to see if gravity works, climbing all over your lap, shoulders and head purring madly. Subtle in their demands they are not and the only way to shut them up is to realise that it must be HOURS since their last feed. Days maybe. Weeks even....

Poppea, still very woozy from her operation gets sniffed
by the other two. 

Well, we held our nerve and managed to do a convincing job of being forgetful about breakfast come the morning. Come 9 o'clock, we extracted Blue from the cat basket so that we could put Soldier into it and got a collar and lead onto Poppea and her out of the door without the other two joining us, I ran Liz to work and went from there on to the vet's in Castlerea. The patients would be 'done' in the afternoon and we'd get a call to say we could come and collect them.

The makings of a very fine gumbo

We collected them at 5:30 pm, by which time Pops was trying to come round from the anaesthetic under a cosy heat-ray lamp in one cage, and Soldier was still sparko in his cat basket. The cat woke up that evening and was up and running, eating and wanting to go outside very quickly. Our little drama queen is a bit of a different story and is milking it over the whole weekend for all it is worth. She even went all day Saturday without eating and had her first breakfast this morning. We don't mind that. She's not going to suffer for lack of walking for a couple of days and we just have to keep the other dogs from being too boisterous around her. Poor little mite. Get well soon, Pops.

D and D in da house.

Main event this weekend, though, was a superb first-time visit from a second-cousin and her man, these two with very similar names so called, for the purposes of this blog, D and D. She is the daughter of one of Liz's very close, same age cousins from their childhoods, Cathy. Although Liz had met her a few times, she mainly remembers her as a pregnant 'bump' so this was going to be a nice chance to get to know D and her 'fella' better. D is young yet (well, compared to us!) but is madly in love with the idea of small holdering when she retires and keeping livestock. I expect there will be such a project in her future but she had read all about us on Facebook and in this blog and was really looking forward to meeting the animals.

Paté, then slow roast pork, then chocolate mousse with
raspberry coulis for supper.

D-the-man knew, obviously, that she wanted to come back to Ireland where she was born ( she left when she was only tiny) and had conspired deviously with various friends, contacts and family, including us, to organise this whole trip in secret. We had her completely fooled. She did not know till the morning that she was going on holiday and was a bit fed up with her normal friends for being all non-commital or "otherwise engaged" over what looked like being a lonely, boring weekend. D presented her with a simple map-of-Europe jigsaw  and announced that they were going on holiday to the country on the missing piece. Nice one, D!

D falls in love with the turkeys

They had a stop in Dublin to catch up on the friends and rels that end and then headed down this way to arrive about 3 pm. Liz LOVES all this kind of thing - hospitality and hosting and was ready with a menu fit for these honoured guests. They were going to have a quiche and salad stop-gap on arrival, then a superb supper of paté followed by slow roast pork with a dessert of chocolate mousse, raspberry coulis and cream. Breakfast was going to be 'dippy' goose eggs and toast soldiers and/or soda bread with smoked salmon. As many as possible ingredients were from our own produce and there was, naturally, a good but sensible amount of drink about the place.

D's "selfie" with Rambo.

They wanted a good show around the 'farm' and to meet the livestock. D thought she'd like the geese best but ended up being swept off her feet by our charming turkeys. They also seemed quite taken with her and followed her around chirruping happily and in one case even let her stroke his head. She was quite taken with Rambo too, who came loping over to see her every  time she appeared at the gate, 'asking' for her to stroke and scratch his head (Yes, now down a bit.... ooh, and just that bit behind my ear.... ). If a ram could purr, Rambo would be purring. D even took a 'selfie' picture of the two of them on her phone. D and D also asked if they could help on the first feed and release rounds. No problem, but I have to admit I doubted whether they'd get up in time. They did, and were even dressed and with wellies on. There's enthusiasm from a volunteer.

This rose bud came on a branch which had snuck in under
the shed roof so was in the dark out of the weather. 

We'll call that a successful visit, 'topp hosting' from us and perfect 'guesting' by D+D. Everything you could want from guests - they enjoyed everything we did, ate the food, fell in love with the animals and were pure pleasure to "entertain" (i.e. no bother at all to keep happy). Their next stop is Galway and then Bunratty Castle where they are booked in to a medieval banquet. We took them on a quick diversion out to the Sligo rebuild house to show them the more scary end of the "buying a place in Ireland" spectrum (serious buildering) and then set up their sat-nav for our scenic route to Galway through Clairemorris, Cong, Maam Cross and the mountains of Connemara.

Dippy goose eggs.

We went back home to a standard Sunday, dog walks and tidying up after a visit, gently recuperating the patients and sympathising with the turkeys who are behaving as if they have lost a close friend as well as enjoying all the Facebook stuff put up there by D+D. That is, I think, our last inbound visit in 2015, though we do have a couple of away-games to come. We do love these visits and the chance to do hospitality so a huge thank you to our guests and you know that you are always welcome back.