The Family Gossip

Honey bee, Picture by Katherine Austin

'Tell it to the Bees' they say. Apparently, in times past, the bee hive and the bees were always considered part of the family and therefore had to be included in the gossip and news or they would feel excluded and might take offence. You would visit them each day and talk to them - catch them up on all the hatches, matches and dispatches. Well, be that as it may I do it, but I suspect that has more to do with getting the colony, for whom vibration and transmitted noise are such a huge part of life, used to our voices and our comings and goings so that they do not all pour out of the hive in alarm and in defence mode whenever we pass by or talk near it. The colony, left to its own devices seems very calm, hard working and healthy now. I can creep in on my hands and knees weeding as I go up and down the ridges really close to the hive without the bees even noticing. I am quite glad about this as I did not want the bottom of the veg patch to be effectively out of bounds, or (more ridiculously) have to start weeding wearing the bee keeping suit!

I'm sure these funny looking ginger dogs
were smaller than us when they first
arrived!

Talking of gossip, Liz has been on a mission to Dublin to touch base with all the family and to catch up on the gossip with our good friends, Therese and Owen. She'd not actually seen T+O for a long time, but said that (as is often the way with really good friends) she slotted in immediately as if she'd just nipped out to the shops. They were amused and delighted by Liz's tales of country living and taking up knitting.

Mutual suspicion? Towser eyes up a Tamworth.

Steak Lady (and Mr SL) have lived for as long as I have known them in a big house chopped up into a gazillion B+B rooms and they have always had this well populated with language students. As a result, they never really retired, and have been working hard, continuously and pretty much all round the year for decades. They have now decided that enough is enough, so the house is up for sale and proper retirement to a single-storey place, possibly somewhere down near the Silverwoods, beckons. Liz was able to catch up on the latest on this while she was there for lunch

A huge supper under her belt, Lucia needs a lie-down in the
sunshine

Meanwhile, Sparks has also moved to a new place nearer to his work and Liz nipped up to admire this place and to catch up on brother/sister news. At all three places she was plied with gifts and as well, called in at IKEA on the way home in search of standard-lamps, so she came home with quite a car full. We have some unusual foodstuffs including red caviar and a jar of baked-bean type beans but not in tomato sauce, these are 'au naturel' in the French style, floating in a clear brine.

Haricot (Navy) beans 'au naturel' and red caviar

The red caviar (we looked it up) is actually salt-cured eggs but not of the sturgeon, these are from Pacific river-salmon. Somehow they are still in a small jar which only has (Russian?) Cyrillic script on it and a Moscow address. Liz made a tapas-style meal tonight so that we might taste these delights; it was my first ever taste of any kind of caviar. The caviar was, as you'd expect, very salty and had the texture of tiny 'bags' of jelly (the fish-eggs) - interesting and OK. We toned the salt down a bit with creme fraiche but we were fresh out of ice-cold vodka (!) Good fun but I don't think either of us will be rushing out to buy more.

Caviar comes from the virgin sturgeon
The virgin sturgeon is a very fine fish.
The virgin sturgeon needs no urgin'
That's why caviar is my dish! (boom tish!)

Inch long young quinces looking very promising.

Also in the car was a sewing machine, a generous gift from T+O. Liz has been looking for one of these for a while now, and a chance misunderstanding raised the subject. Owen was asking what we had sowed (meaning fruit and veg), Liz heard this as 'sewed' as in needlework. This machine had been gathering dust in a cupboard, so T was delighted to give it to someone who would be likely to use it.

Crab apples coming on nicely

Meanwhile, back here, the 'waif and stray' white cat, Pirate, is now getting well used to us and Liz was able to handle him today (a first). He (for he is definitely a 'he') is now a regular at supper time, yowling around when he sees the dogs walked back indoors from their orchard exercise session and also, for the last 2 mornings, coming over for breakfast when he hears the bowls being filled for our own cats. Yesterday for most of the day he slept curled up on the 2CV roof in the car port, so I put the cat basket up there with a 'vet-bed' blanket folded into it.

The dogs watch the rabbits, the rabbits watch the bee hive?

He didn't use it that day, but I noticed that this morning, he was asleep in there first thing and it was from there that he emerged to come across for breakfast. This is good news - we will need to get him into that to take him to the vet, so if he is already in, then we should be able to just flip the door shut before he realises what's happening. The poor little mite will definitely need to see the vet, he is not at all well. His eyes are bad; his right eye is completely 'gone' and the left seems very cloudy to us. His ears are scabby and dirty looking, and he is eating so much we suspect he may have worms. On the plus side we can see no sign of fleas or other parasites among his white fur and he is a lot less skinny than when we started feeding him 3 weeks ago. We will let vet Aoife advise us, but we think we may be able to get him well again.

Farewell to Owen

We are sad to relate the passing away of one of Meg's pups from the first litter, little Owen, who went to Mum and Dad's very good friend Bob-the-Plumber. He was named by their youngest, who was a mad keen Michael Owen fan, because he loved playing footie with the boy.

This was 2 weeks ago but we only just heard, Bob bringing his family down to see the SB Cambria, not knowing that Dad was on the volunteer rota this weekend.

This pic dates from May 99 and is pre-digital. Owen (left here) would have been less than a year old, and came back to spend a weekend with Megan and Haggis when Bob and Co went away for the weekend. He would have been 10 this year, and we know what a happy, loving family life he's had.

We hear that Owen had a perfectly happy and healthy final day, nipping out in the evening to bark at the moon as usual, just before bed time, drink from the pond and generally sniff about (his normal last-thing activities), but then keeled over on his way back into the kitchen, passing away quickly and painlessly of an apparent heart-attack. He had a "lovely funeral" apparently, buried at the top of the garden, and 11 friends were there to see him off.

Our sypathies are with Bob and Lynn and their family at this time. He has left a big hole in their family and they miss him a great deal.

Rest in Peace, Owen. We'll miss you too.

Deefer

Owen

A real scorcher! Hot sun, blue skies and not a breath of wind! A treat for all of us. Mum and Dad take us to visit friends of theirs in the village of Dunkirk who, 9 years ago, bought one of Meggie's own pups, a very handsome fella called Owen (named after the footballer, Michael Owen). Meg and Haggis are always delighted to see their son again, so they were all romping around happily and I liked him too.

I mean REALLY liked him. Came over quite un-necessary in fact, so that the humans were making sideways comments about tarts and flirting and holding my tail in an unusual way and never leaving him alone. He didn't mind. There were rueful looks too. I gather that Owen is the last in Meg and H's "line" and Mum and Dad were harbouring low level dreams about my future and possible continuation of that line, but a recent medical issue has led to him being "done". Bad timing, I guess. Never mind - I love him anyway.

But what a day we had. We had lots of time to race around the garden (see pics of Owen and I on the sun deck, and the two of us romping on the lawn), and then we were all taken on a gorgeous, rabbit-filled walk all through the orchards to the Red Lion pub in Herne Hill, so that Dad and his mate could try out the extra cold Genius. The we walked all the way back. That was hot. We all cooled off by either lying in the shade (Haggis, Owen, moi) or jumping into the pond! (Go Meggie!)

Hope you had a great weekend

Deefs