Summer is a'coming in...

Aquilegia Vulgaris - Mauve

o
o
o
o
o
oo
o
oo
o
oo
o
o
oo
oo
o
o

… Loud now sing cuckoo…

Summer is a’coming in? You’d never guess – yet another wet weekend. Oh, well I suppose that it’s good for the garden, and the garden does seem to be doing pretty well despite the ravages of the winter frosts. I’ve lost both of my Passion Flowers – which is a shame as one of them was almost ten tears old and huge. It was the first thing I planted when we bought the cottage - I bought it from Woolies, so no chance of getting another one from the same place. I also lost my big Marguerite, which I’ve replaced – I wonder if this one will last five years like the other one did? I’ve lost all sorts of stuff. Of course, it’s still very early in the season so there are lots of surprises still to come through… potentially at least – Snake Lilies, Cannas, Begonias, the more slow growing Dahlias - underground things that take a little more warmth to break through. I guess that the warmth will come eventually but not just yet… another wet weekend - and cold, brrrrrrr.

Summer is a coming in? We’ll have to wait and see. I have an old terracotta pot that used to belong to my aunt Nellie. She’s been dead fifteen years or so, but each year the most beautiful Begonia shoots out of the dusty earth in the pot and by mid-summer it’s a tumbling mass of tiny, delicate salmony orange blossoms and light green foliage. It’s survived just about everything – even being shoved inside a hedge for two years and forgotten about until I rediscovered it one day like a long lost friend you bump in to at a motorway services, full of life and eager to reacquaint.

Summer is a coming in? I hope so - my seeds seem to be telling me that it is. I grow from seed every year. I’ve tried all sorts of things, some easy (nasturtiums, I love nasturtiums, I like the taste of the young leaves), and some hard (the Himalayan blue poppy, not even ever a single seedling). This year I’ve bought lots of packets of seed from Leidl and sown them straight into my pots - nothing incredibly exciting, Marigolds, Cosmos, Californian Poppies, Livingstone Daisies, Ipomea (Morning Glory), Sweet Peas. At under thirty pence a packet I thought ‘Why not’, and I was right! If all the seedlings survive I’ll have enough plants for ten of my little Welsh gardens let alone one!

Summer is a coming in? It is seven forty-five on Sunday the tenth of May and I’m sitting at the kitchen table writing this, listening to a Cuckoo, door open, drinking coffee, longing for a cigarette (I gave up five and a half years ago!), and waiting for the rain to stop so that I can go outside and take some cuttings from my Fuchsias. The garden is full of free plants if you take the trouble, so whenever I buy a plant from a garden centre I generally snip off a couple of small cuttings, dip them in some hormone rooting powder, shove them into one of my pots and wait to see if they strike. They generally do. Hurrah for free plants!

Summer is a coming in? My Aquilegias seem to be saying so. A couple of the earlier ones are in flower and there’s the promise of other beauties yet to come judging by the long flower stems that seem to have shot from the foliage over the last week. That’s the great thing about only seeing a garden at weekends – you really see the progress week to week – last weekend there weren’t any flower stems on some of my Aquilegias… next week they could be in flower. You have no idea how excited I am sometimes when I pull onto our drive… or disappointed when I see what the slugs, Lilly bugs, wind, or too hot sun have done to my plants.

Too hot sun? Fat chance!

Summer is a coming in? It’ll get here eventually I guess.
Aquilegia Pixie - White Chocolate

Misty boxes clever...

Misty seems to have developed a thing for boxes.

Over the last few weeks we’ve had various bits of kitchen ‘stuff’ delivered from Lakeland… you know essential stuff, bamboo steamers, a table top gas burner, battery operated teaspoons. Stuff you really need in the well equipped kitchen. Problem is - each time a box arrives Misty claims it and it becomes a ‘Misty house’. At the moment we have three ‘Misty houses’ of various sizes in our kitchen and it’s beginning to look like a warehouse that’s been pillaged by Attila the Hun – shredded empty boxes everywhere. It has to stop or we’ll run out of space…

“Ha! The collection grows and my master-plan begins to take shape. I shall soon be free! If only they knew what I was really up to… silly keepers, they think that I’m playing with these boxes… they think they are mere toys, playthings for me to amuse myself with. Poor deluded fools – these boxes are my chance of freedom, these boxes are my stairway to heaven.

As the late great Freddy Mercury sang – ‘I want to break free. I want to break freeeee. I want to break free from your lies. You're so self-satisfied, I don't need you. I want to break free. Mu-Mu knows, Mu-Mu knows I want to break free’.

Hear that Foodies? Hear that Hisfault? ‘I want to break free from your lies’; no more being told that the vet thing - ‘won’t hurt a bit’ - and you can’t fob me off with fish guts telling me that it's gourmet cat food and prime cod any longer. I don't need you, I can look after myself... once I get out of this prison.

They know that I’m a cat, they know that cats are night creatures - I want to go out at night, but will they let me? Will they Mu-Mu. They’d rather keep me safe and sound indoors at night. ‘It’s for your own good’ they tell me in that self-satisfied ‘we know everything’ kind of way. Stupid keepers. What do they know? They’re keeping me prisoner. They’re no better than the hissing Guards in a second world war POW camp! Perhaps I should call them Adolph and Eva.

I’ve been watching all the essential filmography - ‘The Great Escape’, ‘The Wooden Horse’, ‘Colditz’, and I think I’m about ready. I’ve even got the lingo… ‘Top hole old boy. Gerry won’t snafu this one - I’m not going under… I’m going over! By the time Fritz realises I’m out I’ll be home and dry. Chocks away! Blighty here I come! Tally ho and toodle pip!’ I really must remember never to answer if anyone asks if I want a light for my cigarette – don’t want to give the game away like that stupid Gordon Jackson... Oh, if only I had a motorbike, I could probably jump it out of that open window if I could get enough speed up.

Anyway, good job that they do leave the top window open at night, at least it gives me a fighting chance. They don’t believe that I’ll be able to jump up to get out of it, but once I have enough boxes it’ll be kitten’s play to build a stairway and then up I’ll go and… I'LL BE FREE OUTSIDE AT NIGHT TO ROAM THE DARK STREETS AS I PLEASE.

Freedom to all felines!

Come along everybody; join me in my freedom song - Free Misty! Free Misty! Free Misty! Free Misty!”

... oh well, perhaps all this clutter will put Gaynor off buying any more gadgets. After saying that though, I saw her looking at an electric mandoline in the Lakeland catalogue this evening. I expect that means Misty will soon have another ‘Misty House’ to play with. Oh well, better that she’s happy indoors than wanting to be out all night…

What a day! – three and final

So, as my Sunday post briefly mentioned, first prize in my category at Nefyn show. Wow!

Well maybe not so ‘Wow!’ actually... time to tell you what really happened, time to own up and give you the whole story.

It had stopped raining by the time I got to the craft and produce tent to see how I’d done. There it was that small red card… I’d got a first! Well done me! Wait a minute though, where were all the other pieces of hand-painted glass? I looked around – embroidery, crochet, beading, jewellery - across the way - jam, cakes, biscuits – to the left - flower arrangements, single stems, petal pictures – the right - photographs, pottery, decoupage. No other glass though.

I’d come first in my class, but it was a class of one. I was the only entry.

My spirits became as grey and low as the clouds outside the tent. I hadn’t really won at all. I knew that the judges could have decided not to place me, or give me a second, third, fourth, commended even, but I was still the only entry – it didn’t seem right that I’d got a first somehow. How could I come first when there was no competition?

Worst was to come though. I hadn’t realised that there was an actual ‘step up to the front, big round of applause’ presentation. I thought I’d just pick up my glass and leave… quietly, without any fuss, incognito.

I didn’t want to go up and get my prize. Firstly, I didn’t feel that I should – after all I was the only entry in my class - that wasn’t winning. Secondly, all the other winners seemed to be children and old ladies. There is a story around how and why I got into glass painting which I will relate to you at some point… but glass painting... flowers - how embarrassing… and the room was full of bearded sheep farmers.

I squirmed as I waited for my turn to come. It was too embarrassing. I was about to walk out without my prize when the judge called the winner of the embroidery forward.

‘Hefyn Roberts’ he announced. A big, burley, bearded farmer stepped forward, he was beaming as he took his small, square, brown envelope. So I wasn’t the only man to enjoy doing ‘crafty’ things – and his ‘thing’ was sewing! Thank God for that.

I gave my £2 prize to Holly. She’s doing a sponsored walk in a few weeks. I kept the award certificate though.

So that’s that. Nefyn show over for another year. It took ages to scrub the re-admittance stamp off my hand – they must have used indelible ink.

Perhaps next year I’ll bake some scones – the competition is stiffer.

What a day! – two

Still raining torrentially, so in an attempt to get out of it I wandered into the nearest marquee.

‘Just somewhere dry’. I mumbled as I stumbled in through the door and was greeted by row after row of cages stacked six deep on top of each other.

What was in them? Ferrets? Mice? Rabbits? Monkeys? Was this the animal experimentation tent? I peered into the nearest cage.

‘Good job I don’t suffer from Alektorophobia’ I thought as I stared into the glassy red eye of the biggest chicken I’ve ever seen. It was massive, filling the cage to every available corner, the cage was full to bursting point. How on earth were they going to get it out through that tiny door – in pieces? Legs, thighs, breasts, and wings? More to the point – how did they get it in there in the first place?

Now I’ve heard that you can hypnotize a chicken by holding it tightly and drawing a line in the dirt over and over, when you let go of the chicken it will stay right there - but I wasn’t about to take on this monster. With a chicken this big I could begin to believe that birds really were descended from the dinosaurs. Tyrannosaurus Rex? Enough KFC for ten bargain buckets in a single bird. Did you know that in 1979 Colonel Sanders (that goatee bearded chappie in the white suit) was the second most recognized public figure in the world.

Who was the first? Elvis? Don’t know.

In medieval France one of the punishments for an adulterous wife was to make her chase a chicken through the town naked – I wonder what the others were)? Perhaps it was the real reason why the chicken crossed the road, and not to get to the other side after all. There’s a town in Colorado (aptly named Fruita) where the townspeople celebrate 'Mike the Headless Chicken Day'. It seems that a farmer named L.A. Olsen cut off Mike's head in September 1945 in anticipation of a chicken dinner (why???) - Mike went on to live for another 4 years WITHOUT A HEAD eventually dieing from choking on a corn kernel (no, I don’t believe it either).

Anyway, as I looked and thought about dinosaurs, 'Mike the Headless Chicken’, and French naked ladies I began to notice the chicken looking hard at me. Was it trying to stare me out? If it didn’t drop it soon I’d drop it down my chimney – that’s how it used to be done - Chimney's used to be cleaned by dropping live chickens down them.

No, honestly.

You see… chickens are much more interesting than you thought. They come in all shapes and sizes, and their eggs come in all sorts of colours, from white, to brown, to green, to pink, to blue…. I know, I saw some in the tent - in the egg show.

Yes, honestly.

Want to know more about chickens?

Chicken frenzy times folks, hang on to you hats, here come the facts…

A chicken heart beats 280-315 times a minute…A chickens' body temperature normally runs at 102-103 degrees F… A rooster takes 18-20 breaths a minute, a hen about double that at 30-35 beats a minute… There are over 150 varieties of domestic chicken… It takes a hen 24-26 hours to lay a single egg…A chicken can have 4 or 5 toes on each foot… Supermarket chickens are only 5-8 weeks old… A chicken takes 21 days to hatch… Chickens were domesticated about 8000 years ago… It takes 4 lbs of feed to make a dozen eggs… A hen lives an average of 5-7 years, but can live up to 20 years… Hens lay eggs their entire life, with production decreasing every year from year one… An egg starts growing into a chick when it reaches a temperature of 86 degrees F…

Enough?

Should I stop?

By the time I came out of the tent it had stopped raining.

I’ll tell you about my first prize tomorrow.

What a day! - one

At last the morning of the long awaited Nefyn Show - the day that everyone from hereabouts and thereabouts has been waiting for - cleaning tack, brushing feathers, baking scones, making cushions, whitening sheep, polishing tractors, potting chutney and generally talking about nothing else (apart from the usual jungle-drum epitaphs) for weeks. And after a gloriously sunny weekend of warmth and T-shirts the god of country shows decided to bless us with rain - cold, heavy, and very wet rain.

I could hear the rain on the slates as the alarm clock woke me at five forty-five. I could still hear the rain on the windows as I got out of bed. I had to shout over the noise of the rain as I called Holly, telling her it was time to get up and that we’d be leaving for the stables in twenty minutes. I could see the rain hitting the deeply puddled ground as I drew the curtains. I could feel the rain, cold on my skin as I loaded the boot of the car with my precious hand-painted glass vase and Holly’s riding gear. Rain, rain, rain.

How predictable!
.
Stables by six-thirty and Holly all excited and nervous – ‘Where was her number?’, ‘What if she couldn’t plait Chester’s tail?’, ‘What if he wouldn’t behave?’, ‘Had she remembered everything?’, ‘How, who, why, where, which?’…ENOUGH! We dropped her at the stables leaving her to get herself and Chester ready, secure in the knowledge that there were plenty of people around to help her if she got into a tizz – after all, there was a whole posse of them competing.

Later standing in the pouring rain in the muddy field of the showground I watched whilst Holly, the youngest competitor in the ring by miles, was beaten by riders with twenty years plus more experience. She rode brilliantly. Chester was responsive, and she completed her two events – novice hunter and best ridden – with only a couple of slight flaws. She looked fantastic in her riding gear, handling Chester with real authority. She even managed to keep her seat – stay in the saddle - when Chester spooked - got a bit frightened - and reared just before the first event.

One competitor on a huge white Lustiano circled the show ring all airs above the ground - high school dressage movements performed with either the forlegs, or all four feet, off the ground (just showing off really). Another was riding above the bit - this is when the horse carries his mouth above the level of the rider's hand. The horse does this to evade the bit and she clearly wasn’t in full control, the horse was going all over the shop. Yet another on a big black powerhouse of an animal looked a bit acey-deucy - this is when stirrups are adjusted so that the inside stirrup is lower than the outside stirrup - only jockeys do this, so goodness knows what she was playing at.

Even worse, I spotted that one of riders was behind the bit – the horse holding its head behind the vertical to evade the bit, resulting in the rider having less control. They call that overbent where I come from, and I’m sure that one of the chestnuts had an undershot mouth – at least it looked like it to me. I’m no expert, but it’s hard to miss the tell-tale signs of abnormal contact between the upper and lower incisor teeth, when the upper jaw overhangs the lower jaw. In really bad cases of undershot mouth, grazing is difficult and the horse often has digestive problems. This Gelding wasn’t quite as bad as that though. I’ve sometimes heard this called "parrot mouth" – who’s a pretty boy then?

Some of the horses wore banged tail - the tail trimmed level at the bottom – others had their tails plaited and banded - a fancy term used to describe braiding a mane or tail. Some of the horses wore their manes roached – this is when the horse's mane has been clipped or shaved close to the neck, they called it hogging when I was a boy.

Holly did a very good posting trot – she got the rise-and-fall motion used at the trot just right. In the posting trot, the rider rises out of the saddle and sits back down in the saddle once in each stride. It’s meant to be more comfortable for both the horse and the rider. When done correctly, as Holly did, the rider's rise-and-fall motion goes as follows: (1) right hind/left fore ‘rise’; (2) left hind/right fore ‘fall’. It’s repeated for each stride.

I felt really proud of her. It is no small feat to climb onto the back of a huge excited animal and canter around a showground with twenty other huge excited animals – particularly in the rain.

No rosette this time, but so what… Holly really showed everyone what a really good rider she’s become.

Funny how you pick up the horsey jargon after a while… must be all the mucking out.

Chickens tomorrow!

First Prize!

First prize in my category at Nefyn show. Wow! I'll tell you later - tired now and home late.

What a day!

Happy birthday(s)!

-

-

-

-

-

-

--

-

-

-

--

-

-

-

--

-

Happy Birthday Misty

Misty is one today.

Or at least as close to one as we can make her, she was abandoned so we’re not exactly sure about when she was born, but it’s around about now.

We’re throwing her a little party. Just the usual - fish, cat treats, cream, maybe a few prawns – and a cake with a candle on it. And of course we have bought her presents – a new collar, and a new ball with a bell inside it.

I wonder if she knows that it’s her birthday?...

“About hissing time! Here I am fifteen today and all of a sudden they start wishing me happy birthday… what about the other hissing fourteen? Rotting fish scales - my first came and went without even a pilchard, then my second, then my third. On my fifth I thought ‘this is it! They are bound to throw me a party for my fifth.’ But no – nothing – absol-hissing-lutely zilchermero! When my tenth came I stupidly gave myself an extra special clean and made sure my collar was straight, certain that this must be it. But still nothing, zero, nada, piddley squat! To tell you the truth I gave up after that – and here they all are, Hisfault, Foodies, and that Whirling Dervish girl thing, all looking down at me and singing some silly song. They’ve even invited the one with the stick, Foodies mum, the one that keeps trying to stand on me… what does Hisfault call her? Batty something or other…Batty Joan, that’s it… Listen to her, I don’t think she can remember the words to the song.

Happy birthday to me indeed! What about the other fourteen? Don’t they know that for the first two of their years I have a birthday every twenty-four and a half days? In another one of their year’s time I’ll be thirty. Thirty! Almost middle aged, past it - the best of my leaping and mouse-catching days over - and here they are giving me a single measly birthday party every whenever-they-can-be-bothered!

NOT GOOD ENOUGH!

Bad Keepers…

Once I’m thirty it slows down a little, thank Mu-Mu, only four birthdays in every one of their years. One every three months by my calculation. Do you hear that Batty? ONE EVERY THREE MONTHS… she’s deaf as a scratching post.

Maybe Keepers can’t do sums… they’ve never seemed very bright to me.

Why are they setting fire to that stick on that round pink thing? I’ll never work this lot out. They’re as mad as goldfish in a square bowl.

Oh well, better make the best of it. Okay, buckle up the new collar, bring on the cat treats, sing away… sing away… ”

Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday dear Misty, Happy birthday to yooooou....