As Clear as Gin, Reverend?

I run an embedded software application in this blog called 'SiteMeter' which lets me know how many followers I have, how many people have visited and from what part of the world they are from. By no means a 'Best Seller', this blog is read by about 20-30 people, mainly friends and relatives, so it chugs away gently racking up the 'hits' in its 6th year, creeping slowly up past 40,000 visits. I was amused though, that all normal posts with normal headings get that 20-30 hits but my recent post entitled "Attacking the Bank with a Pick-Axe" got, all of a sudden, 66 hits! Were I of paranoid persuasion or given to believing conspiracy theories I might start worrying about all this GCHQ and the National Security Agency stuff about Big Brother watching me, but I expect it's just that more people google expressions like 'attacking the bank' than would google baby bunnies and red algal blooms!

Which leads me neatly on to an update about said bloom which, I am happy to report at last, seems to be fading fast. We can now see almost clear to the bottom and to the planters in which the new aquatics have been set, as this black pot shows here. The water is still just a little bit cloudy and has a bit of red colour from the sediment but nothing like as bad as it was when we were in the tomato soup phase (or as someone more dramatically noted, it 'looks like you have bled an ox into it'). Not quite as clear as gin, but getting there.

We can see every stone of the beach now rather than just the shallower ones and we are delighted to note that we have a massive population of tiny, presumably newly hatched, water boatmen. If baby water boatmen eat red algae then we should be in business! What I suspect will happen is that the algae will simply die, settle to the bottom and then become part of the sediment, soon buried under blown in dust, spruce needles and any other debris which falls in.

In a lovely whiff of glories to come, our Rambling Rector rose is covered in flower buds and has opened three of these. This rose and three of increasingly dark pink in sequence are going to turn the side of our hay barn into a sheet of glorious colour at some point in the future, but that's a work in progress.

We had thought that our cat Blue, hooking that swallow out of the air a couple of months back, might put the pair off nesting in our Tígín even though we rescued the bird and think we restored him to happy full health. For a month or so we saw swallows nipping about but nobody seemed to be going into the building. Well, they are back and showing every sign of nest building again, just a bit more wary of where Blue is snoozing. This gave us a new problem as we have now had the window frame repaired by K-Dub, and glazed by me, so that the swallows had started flying in through the doorway but were trying to escape through the window. They were going to get a head ache or worse, Blue might be waiting on the inside window sill. I have therefore blocked the daylight temporarily with a couple of old coal sacks. Not beautiful, but effective.

At 2 weeks and 6 days, Goldie's babies have got active enough to start climbing over the nest box retaining-wall and exploring the grass outside. We are amused by how tiny they look against the huge bulk of meat-breed doe, Goldie. We have 5 whites, one the colour of Goldie and a darker 'rabbit-brown' one. They grow very fast and will soon start to look a bit 'cosy' in that run even though the grass area is 90 cm by 250 cm, so we are mentally designing extension runs.

Kindergarten at 3 Months.

On 3rd September the pups and kittens all make it to 3 months so this is an un-ashamed excuse to publish a few cute pup and kitten pictures. I can also include Buck Rogers in this group as he is nearly as young. He is developing bizarre tufts of fur on his cheeks and his head. We have heard of a type of rabbit called a 'lion' variety, so we wonder whether this is maybe what that is all about. Buck is a bit small yet to be looking after his ladies, so Dad is taking Anne and Simon up on an offer to allow their bigger, meat-breed buck, Peter to do the deed first time round. Peter is a Californian White, a breed commonly used in rabbits-for-meat enterprises.


Also 'we' successfully fledged a family of three baby swallows from the nest in the Tígín. They flew around an returned a couple of nights but now seem to have left the nest for good and may be among the birds wheeling around and gathering in our telegraph wires preparatory to the long migration to Africa.

In the two pup pictures, Poppy has the sticky-up ears, Towser's are still a bit floppy. Nobody minds this. They may stand up eventually (His Father's (Maxwell's) apparently took and age) but Dad thinks he looks quite cute anyway and we can easily tell the bu**ers apart, anyway! Mrs Silverwood is rather meanly calling them Poppy and "Floppy" on Facebook. Poor devil will probably end up with a complex.

The tabby kitten, Blue has grown some rather fetching ear tufts and has in the past also had nice long whiskers but these are currently a bit short due, we think, to his keenness to get onto the dining table and wander close to the candles. This is a battle Mum and Dad are determined to win (they won eventually with a previous cat 'Utsire'). He climbs onto the table and is ejected by the scruff. He climbs back on and gets ejected again. After a couple more warnings he is scruffed into the living room and gets to spend the meal behind that closed door. He'll learn. In the lower picture he fails to notice that a robin has landed on the wall beside him. Dad only sees this as it flies off but it's there in the shot when we go back to look.

Next up is the tortoiseshell kitten Rolo who may not have the fancy ear tufts of his brother but at least he has intact whiskers. And finally let us not forget William the Conqueror, now a magnificent, manly, brave and fearless Rooster with the start of a tail. When he arrived he was fresh out of a large pen in which he lived with 150 'hins' all of whom must have been taking a peck out of his tail as he passed. No respect some hens. He had a rather sore, pink parsons nose from which sprouted two broken feather bases sticking straight up. Now he is a bit meaner and ruffty tuffty and doesn't take any such nonsense from his new ladies, it has started to grow back in a gorgeous iridescent dark green, almost black. It is about 3 inches long now but should form a proud arching 'rooster tail' like on the Cornflakes packet. He hopes. He is doing a good job now marshaling and protecting his ladies and utters low growls at any threat and charges with ruff expanded, chest spread and wings out to make him look as big as possible. He even tries it on Dad but kinda goes off the idea as Dad looks him in the eye!

Homeless

1) The 2CV and trailer after we'd driven the two cars down to Silverwoods on Friday afternoon with a plan to collect two pieces of furniture for the new house which have been living temporarily at Silverwoods. These 2CV runs always feel a bit like an adventure in their own right, at 2 and a half hours, maybe not as exciting as the 510 mile hike from Kent to the new house or the 8 hour, 2005 run to Kelso castle for a 2CV World Meeting, but still up there among the longest runs we've done in the 2CV. Both pieces are chest of drawers which used to belong to Mum's Auntie May who passed away aged 86 in 1976. Auntie May was always a favourite with Mum when she was tiny, as she used to spoil the infant Mum, buying her special clothes when the real family were actually vary poor, and calling her Princess, trying to teach her about class, sophistication, etiquette and stuff. Mum remembers her always being very upright and poised and given to wearing stiff corsets which Mum was allowed help her dress into. She was scandalised by the new-fangled television equipment and insisted that it be turned off while she powdered her nose in case News-reader Charles Mitchell might see her by looking back down the tube at her! 2)Mum and Dad on Friday morning enjoying a breakfast 'indoors' beside the range, cooked on the newly installed gas hob. 3)Mum goes to work on that fiddly job, painting varnish onto the spindles of the upstairs handrail. 4)The floor of the main bedroom gleaming with new varnish after Dad had sanded and sanded and sanded and sanded it then varnished it twice. Beautiful! 5) A mob of swallows arrived all on the same day and hung around mopping up insects which were flying above our fields. For a while they sat on our wires and we imagined that they might be the same ones who have nested in our bathroom and on the spare room door for the last 15 years, now looking balefully at the new back (swallow-proof) windows and wondering whether to put in an official complaint. Homeless! Sorry, swallows Deefs