Joint Birthdays

The "Pop Star" at 3 years old. 

June 3rd, so that nice coincidental date for 3 of the animals in this blog, formerly 4 but we lost Rolo in an RTA. Puppies Poppea and Towser, and cats Blue and Rolo were all born in 2012 on a busy night for animal midwifery down in Silverwood's Land. The dogs we were expecting and, in fact we were all lined up to be on call as pup midwives, but Mum (Lily) was so efficient at that stage that she slid all that litter of pups out just supervised, but not messed with at all, by Mrs Silverwood. We had our name down for a boy and had already chosen his name.

Towser at 3

The kittens we had tentatively put our names down for but did not know the expected date and, anyway, knew that some Aunt of the family was getting 'first refusal' on that litter so we didn't know for sure any of any litter would be coming our way. It was only when Mrs S phoned her friend round the corner to tell her the good news, that friend replied "Well, THERE's a coincidence! Our cat had 3 kittens too!" The 'chickens' were hatched and count-able. We were suddenly on for the pup and 2 kittens, all born in the night of June 2nd/3rd but after midnight.

Blue at 3 looking as if he doesn't actually want disturbing.

Readers who were with me in 2012 will know that, in fact, we ended up with 2 pups. There had been a bit of a silly health-scare over one of the bitches and Mrs S had held back from selling her till she was all clear, she came up to the 'farm' with the family on a week's holiday and played so well with her already-sold brother, that it seemed fairest to just re-unite them and for us to take the two pups to go with our 2 mad kittens. Poor Deefer, briefly an 'only child' didn't know which way to turn. 3 years later, that all seems a long time ago.

Buff chick at 2 weeks old.

However, with Liz not yet back from Greece and no big updates on the story of that adventure yet, and with me having only posted yesterday but wanting to mark these Birthdays, I have little to write about, so this post will be an unashamed photo album, using up some pics which I have not yet found a home for in the blog.

Tom

Huge thanks to brother Mark for continuing to use up his bank balance in coloured inks for his printer - he prints a hard copy of this blog including the pictures to put in the post to our Mum, (Pud Lady) down in Hastings, stuffing it in the envelope of his own blog. We have not yet persuaded Pud Lady to join that happy band of "grey-surfers", internet-savvy OAPs and get on line with a lap top (and some internet provision to the house, of course!) so that she can see these ramblings on screen and, anyway, I think she quite likes to have the hard copy as it feels a bit like we negligent children have actually written to her (!) - sorry Mum. Mark must rue the days when I do one of these and all his colour ink drains away. I am very very grateful.

Finally some warm weather for the bees to get cracking
pulling in pollen and nectar.

First flag iris in the pond.

Here, then, are just a few pics with captions to catch you up on extra curricular stuff.

No pictures, please! The chick flees the paparazzi

Quince blossom

Min the Hin on a high roost.

Goldie and Nugget out in their run. 

Good bud break and some fruit on the
Brown Turkey fig.

Meanwhile, back at the Ranch....

The only 'Med' pic I have so far - Methana (Greece)

With Liz currently out in "the foreign" on her rather sad mission (see last post) to square away Diane's loose ends but also concurrently suffering 'techie' problems on her Apple i-phone I am a bit short on Mediterranean updates. I have just the two pics so far from the beleaguered phone which she can only occasionally get to find the internet (e.g. while on a modern inter-island ferry with free wi-fi), this one of Methana on the southernmost mainland peninsula and one of a rather disappointing scone she was fed on a ferry. We have been in contact, though, via old fashioned voice telephone (remember those?) so I know she is having a rather emotional time of it but has worked her way round most of the people she needed to meet. More on that when she's back (Friday).

Carolyn finishes assembly on my latest jumper for the reward
of a Lizzie-bake honey, orange and polenta cake.
Thanks you knitters and bakers.

So this post is, of necessity, a "meanwhile, back at the ranch" catch up of the burbling along livestock routine and sundry contact with humans. I have been doing the rounds a bit and receiving some nice welcome visits, plus crossing paths with new friend Sue while we were both out and about, me walking dogs, she trying not to run us over in the big 4x4, with their gorgeous St Bernard in the back. I've been down to Carolyn's to pass over a cake Liz had baked, and collect a jumper.

Pretty as a picture - Vendor Anna's
new pup, Bella at 4 months.

I have today nipped over to Vendor Anna in Carrick to meet her new dog, Bella, a lovely little soft haired shih-tzu pup, 4 months old. Anna was a bit anxious about Bella's eating or lack of it but I think (I hope, Anna!) she's sorted now. Good luck with her, anyway. She is a lovely dog and we've agreed that we should meet up, 3 westies onto one tiny shih-tzu. What could POSSIBLY go wrong? Don't worry, Anna, we will keep a careful control on it; we know what we are at. Actually while we are on that subject, we have now successfully integrated the new cat, Soldier, into the indoor family and even got as far as Soldier being able to sleep, curled up on the chair with one of the Westies, Poppea.

Soldier out and about.

We are delighted. The three together can make up a fearsome attacking pack, as found out by the mink a few weeks back (as can any three dogs no matter what the owner might tell you about them being really gentle and not harming a fly). Soldier is also now able to come and go happily through doors and windows which is excellent news as he can now do his 'business' outside and we can take up the horrible, smelly, cat litter-tray (one of my pet hates). My other inbound visit today was  from the Mum and 2 daughters of the family who used to own this cat, so I was pleased to be able to show off their cat living among us and not torn to pieces.

Poppea and Soldier asleep on a chair.

The girls especially love to see round the 'petting zoo', feed apples to the pigs etc, but we were all amused (except the poor girl herself) by the middle daughter's not coping very well with her first meeting with a full grown turkey. This was Tom, of course, who decided that these intruders needed the full on, red-face, tail up, wings down display and it was all too much for Niamh (who plans to become an RSPCA inspector) who couldn't get away fast enough! We tried to persuade her that Tom was just displaying and does not attack people but she was not convinced. Hope she doesn't meet too many turkey farmers in the vet/RSPCA training!

Feste at 5 months

Our first born lamb, Feste (of the 12th Night, middle of the field, rainy night surprise birth), is now coming up on 5 months and looking splendidly chunky. He's off on his final journey on Tuesday next (9th). We were all wondering how long it is since this 'farm' last produced lambs, and the concensus seems to be "the eighties". Back in the day, most farms would have had a mixture of animals and Michael McG tells me that he can certainly remember his father keeping about 30 which they would shear by hand with those spring-steel "scissors" style shears. JD Bob thinks TK Max would have had sheep here till the eighties, and Vendor Anna (who grew up here) tells us that it was her job as a youngster (early 70's maybe?) to run round first thing before school gathering up any new-borns who needed bringing indoors. She can remember them being dried and warmed up in the bottom 'oven' of the Rayburn, the range which was still there when we moved in. Once she was in her teens, she says, she stopped all that, you couldn't be a 'cool' teenager if you went to school smelling of sheep's wool lanolin and birth-related mess.

A forest of sweet cicely, but what do you do with it?

I did my bust/length pig-weight estimate yesterday (see also the post at http://deefer-dawg.blogspot.ie/2014/07/bust-squared-x-length-x-693.html ) and came up with Isabelle and Mary at 29 and 31 kg respectively at the 15 week mark. This is a slightly slower rate of weight gain than last year's Tamworths but that is fine with us and is deliberate. I am more closely controlling the food intake because we do not want that three quarter inch layer of fat under the skin that the Tams put on, it just gets wasted (or (shhhhh) fed to the birds) and it has all cost money at yay amount per bag of pig nuts.

In safe hands. Broody-Buff steps out with the single chick

In the poultry department, Miss Broody-Buff is doing a fine job of rearing the single chick and the Hubbard poults are steaming ahead in their free range mode. They are close outside the front door, and we find that we can not appear in the front garden without an 11-bird charge towards our feet. We have to be careful if we have the dogs (on leads, obviously) as they will even sprint towards the amazed threesome, veering away only when they realise that there is a definite risk to their being fed. I have to nip out with the chick-crumb first, to focus them on eating, and then squeeze out past with the dogs on a tight rein. The turkey eggs are still just cooking in the incubator but we have good hopes because our friend Sue managed at 4/5 hatch from the batch we gave her.

Bank Holiday Ireland vanishes under the coloured rainbelts
of a powerful 'Low' on this AA Weatherwatch rainfall radar map.

Finally, we are hoping that Liz will bring some 'day-cent' weather back with her from Greece. The wind and rain have battled on through the end of May and joined us for the June Bank Holiday Monday and now, the wind is sharing the Tuesday too. I have been able to get out into the garden off and on but not much is growing outside and all my new seeds seem to be sulking under ground. At least the brassicas get away well when transplanted from the polytunnel, and do not spend that familiar three days lying limply on the new ground before they spring up and get cracking.

Dog watching garb on the Bank Holiday. 

Here, they seem to be able to get vertical by that evening or never sag in the first place. Better weather is forecast, but I guess I will believe that when it arrives.

Blue smoke from a chimney round these parts generally means
a good turf fire against the winter cold.... but on 31st May?

Poros and Portmarnock

We can now reveal that Diamond has got married to the main man John W on Poros Island in Greece back a couple of Thursdays ago, on the 6th. Of course we knew this was going on but we were sworn to secrecy. We have just been up to Portmarnock, Co.Dublin to collect Mum back from her 10 days in Greece supporting Diamond as "koumbara" (a combination of Lady in Waiting, Chief Bridesmaid and Sponsor in the Greek Ceremony, even in the 'Civilian Version'.

Anyone who knows Diamond will know that she takes almost every 'foreign' holiday on this same Island and has done ever since she was a 27 year old and was taken there by her Mum. She is so regular that she seems to now know everyone on the Island and is like family to many of them. She never sits in the ordinary touristy bits of cafés, but is always gathered up and taken to where the family eat. Most of the guys who are now café owners, she has bounced on her knee in nappies when their Fathers owned the place and many of the men she knew back then are now ancient and venerable or have passed away. One old girl living up in the hills in among the lemon groves is blind and still being looked after up there by her 84 year old Brother in Law. (Please correct me on this Diamond if I have any of it howlingly wrong)

 Mum has been there for the last few years with Diamond and was introduced around as Diamond's best friend, so is now also accepted and John W more recently. It's probably true to say that Diamond has more and closer friends on Poros than she does in the UK and certainly there are more 'out there' who she'd choose to have present on such a special occasion. So it was almost a 'given' that when Diamond accepted John's proposal, that the Ceremony would take place on Poros. The happy couple had to do a load of official stuff in the UK first, to obtain permission to do the deed in Greece but, that done, they booked flights and let the locals know what was going on. Mum flew out on Tuesday 4th, with Dad driving her to the airport in Dublin. We live 20 minutes from Knock Airport but there were no cheap flights to be had to Athens, so Dublin it was and the 5 hour round trip for Dad

Since then, of course, we have been holding the fort here while all the wedding plans were coming to fruition in the Med. Amusingly we had the job here too of 'sharing' the story including the attached picture of the cake. The locals do not really do English, and their alphabet is, anyway, the Greek one which doesn't use use the ABC but rather the Alpha to Omega, "Bicameral" script, derived from Cyrillic (said this dog, quoting widely from Wikipedia) so we were amused by their use of the 'b' instead of 'd' in the cake icing. Happy Webbing, Diamond and John!

And so, home came Mum and we were off to collect her from Portmarnock. She'd got into Dublin Airport in the middle of the night, so Steak Lady had collected her and given her a bed for the rest of the night. Our job had been to collect her the following morning, driving up from here via a nice leg stretch and walk along Portmarnock Beach. Steak Lady fed Mum and Dad with a superb roast chicken dinner with salmon pasta starter and a goodly cheese board. There was loads of chicken left over so we dogs (myself and the 3 Yorkies, Rosie, Tutenkhamen and Rameses) piled in.

Now we're all home and Mum says she feels like she's "First Day Back at School" going mad cleaning and blitzing. No reflection, she says, on the way Dad has looked after the place while she's been gone..... We are not so sure.

Deefs

Spoiled Rotten

Mum needs to come back quickly from her hols with Diamond in Poros, Greece, to rescue us from being spoiled rotten. Dad, on his own tends to cook as if Mum were still about, so there's generally plenty left over to get mixed in with our supper. Tonight we are having the usual 'Butcher's Tripe' dog meat with added liver, bacon and onion gravy, the gravy being made with chicken stock out of the freezer rather than water (Dad is valiantly trying to empty the freezer by completion date!). He may also be allowing us to sleep upstairs with him but I better not say that as there will probably be killin's when Mum gets back over it.

Today we play host to removal company boss, Mr Dempsey who comes to assess the load and discuss storage requirements between our move-out-of-this-house date and our actual move to Ireland. He arrives in a very smartly restored 1950's Morris. It's like a stretched Moggy Minor with a 6-cylinder engine and Dad thinks the shape was later used by Wolseley. It's in a fetching pale green and Dad, inevitably, gets to look under the bonnet (It's an old bloke, old cars thang).

Mr Dempsey strolls about, taking copious notes and chatting away in an Irish accent to die for (Wexford, maybe) accepts a shopping bag full of allotment onions and then departs, promising to phone us with a price on Monday by which time, we all note, we'd have a job finding someone else if it's a bit pricey. No fools, these removal guys, especially in a bad recession. He tells us that in the boom times, when everyone was moving back to Ireland, he was making 2-3 trips over per week with the big 'wagon and drag' pantechnicon (which would fit 2-3 houses worth of stuff inside). Now he's down to a 'rigid' lorry (not an artic, no trailer) and a trip a week if he's lucky. He'll take our stuff but wait to make the run till he has another lump of furniture to make up the load.

Ruinned Bruin
Deefs

Pictures of Lily

Meet Lily, latest addition to the Silverwoods family. Currently only 8 weeks old and fairly new. Bit of a girlie name but me and Maxwell will probably toughen her up. It's what big brothers and cousins are for!

Our lovely sunshine gives way to rain. It's just starting to very gently drizzle as we set out for our walk this morning and we decide to do the boat yard and back through town route which is, unfortunately not one with any obvious shortcuts home. Fairly soon it's drizzling very convincingly and then just plain tanking down. 3 days off his 15th birthday, Haggis is not inclined to be hurried anywhere and, anyway, his dense felty old fur sheds water like the proverbial duck, so he ain't rushin for no-one, rain or not. Dad and me end up looking like drowned rats.

Diamond, now largely through her medical dramas is exploring the idea of getting back to work (No Diamond! Lady of Leisure! Keep the Faith!) and has sought and got a job at Mum's 'firm'. Diamond is a keen Greece-ophile and annual visitor to the same village in the same island for decades, knows lots of locals, seen the current crop of café owners grow up having bounced them on her knee when they were babies, never has to sit in the 'tourist' seats, you get the idea. So she's delighted that her new boss is also Greek (well, Crete actually). Today is her first day. Mum may come back with tales of how she got on. Good luck Diamond!

Deefs

The Girls are Back

...ahhh that's better. We tried to post on here last night, and the auto-save kept killing us. Just a big red and yellow stripe, and no news!...

All is returned to normality here (well nearly). Diamond and Mum are back from their 10 days in the Greek island of Poros, and to prove it, here is a shot Mum took on her new camera, of a Greek octopus-fisherman beating 7 bells out of an octopus to tenderise it.

I say "nearly" - all is in fact not well with young Denis, Diamond's dad and Rags's owner. He's in hospital at the moment, so we are thinking of them.

Dad's bought steak and fizz to celebrate Mum's return (crawler!) so we get a small amount of that. Everybody's tired out though what with all the overnighting and whizzing to and from airports, so we all crash out at just gone 8pm, like a couple of old gits!

These old ones - no stamina!

Deefs