Barabrith has returned to its summer slumber. Too hot to do much during the day except hide inside or in the shade and wait for a lovely big cloud to come along and offer some comfort or even better some rain! In the meantime the rabbit damaged trees get watered every two days along with the tomatos and other veg.
The Barabrith houses taken with a steady panorama shot on a bright sunny day last week. I even moved the step ladders out of the way to get a better shot of the wooden house! But eagle eyed observers will notice a slight distortion and a snippet of a finger intruding into the top right corner…. tut tut … what an amateur!One of the many things on my ‘to do list’ for some time has been the renovation of some wooden furniture that has been left outside once too often. I have moved my DIY zone to the relative shady area under the big pear tree on the east side of the house. This is the mess I made – above – which was worth it for the result below…. I think and they should last a while now!Now all I need to do is train the cats to sit down and eat from the table and youtube fame will be mine!Those following this sorry arse excuse for a blog will know that I am preparing for an all out war with the potato plant eating bug anytime soon. So, yesterday evening, it was with some surprise that I discovered this lot all over many of the plants, apparently engaged in an stinky bug orgy! The brown marmorated stink bug appears to be having a ball in my potato patch!My cabbages !? look nice and fresh after an evening watering.There aren’t a lot of raspberries yet, but these beauties make me think that there’s a future with the bushes that can produce these.I thought gooseberries were green but it seems they can be a rich red colour too!My littlest transplanted tree, a future mighty oak tree, is doing well in it’s new spot in the middle of the clover patch. Yeah, yeah, it was just an excuse for a selfie, but hey I gotta show off my plaits somehow ain’t I?For those of you fellow foodies, or just those who know my passion for ‘stuffing my face’ as Jen so eloquently puts it, wondering how I survive without a decent vegan cafe within 80km of Barabrith. Well, I indulge in homemade piggery! This mid afternoon meal last week consisted of; a double hot dog in a slanac -salty bread- with avocado and Ajvar, accompanied by a mushroom and sietan fry up and a potato, radish and various other veg salad covered in Lidl’s finest vegan salad sauce. It wasnt at all bad!Nancy was in one of his “frit” modes, jumping at everything and seemingly scared even of little ol me! I snapped this as he came nervously off the wooden house veranada giving me the “eye” as he did so!The evil beasties Sid n Nancy have reduced the local moth population considerably but as yet have not done much about their naturally assigned role of rodent control! Last week I read an article in the Guardian suggesting that cats should be kept in at night in order to protect the wild bird populations of the UK. I thought it over and decided that it was unlikely that either of them was making it across central Europe and the Channel each night and back in time for breakfast so I gave them a pass. It was with some suprise then that on two subsequent mornings in a row I found small dead furry things on the carpet in the beasts lair. On the second day there was also this little critter clinging onto the door frame for dear life and keeping very still. I realised then that the beasties have indeed been killing bats, maybe not English ones but still, very naughty! I put a heavy box around the liitle bat so the furry fiends claws could not reach him and left him to recover in his own time. When I went to tuck the feline freaks in to bed at night he had escaped their den and has hopefully learned to fly higher!Another of those sunsets that make life worth living. For Sanja
