January was as expected cold, Sanja retreated to the cat house (!) which with its big stove, doule glazing and small size is by for the warmest room in our house. The cats unanimously approve of this situation.
There were however a few bright sunny days when the sun warmed up the walls and Nancy could be seen sitting in the sun or even stretching out and rolling around as if summer was here! We managed a couple of walks in the woods. One of which ended in my risking life and limb to save Sid.
And I finally completed a long held ambition for the kitchen!
Sid and SanjaAfter much delay, approx 4 years!, one of my long time plans finally began to be put into action this month with the cutting up of the shelving rescued from Sanji’s flat in Belgrade. Re-use and recycle!uh oh,time to get the snow shovel out and hope my back doesn’t give in!Nancy is a box fetishist and proud of it!The vine was pruned and all the brambles and creeepers that were entangled in it destroyed, much to Sid’s approval.Yes, at last the second set of mug shelves in our kitchen/pool room was under construction!Some people use filters to enhance their photographs but if you catch the sun and the sky at the right time , there is no need.Whenever the snow comes down and its a misty night I look towards our gate and the lampost battling againt the dark and I think Gateorcist! Does anyone else see it?Sid is prone to allegations of being a bit on the over curvy side, well on his way to being a fat cat some might say! But here he gracefully reveals how his form is purrfectly matched to sleep on a round table.Not often one sees a double rainbow!How about that?!! Not justa double rainbow but a full arch too! Spot the hole in the ground on the left where I started digging for the pot of gold before noticing that the damn thing had moved again!!Construction complete, just the paint and the filling to do!This tree, the Black Locust or False Acacia!, knows how to protect itself from deer etc. Not only is it covered in these vicious spikes it is also highly toxic to eat!On one of our walks da catz followed us as far as the woods and then left us to continue. We did a circular tour of the valley but instead of following the road we followed the stream, good fun for a short walk which in other seasons would be much more difficult due to the undergrowth. However on return we discovered that Sid had run up a tree for some stupid reason and was obviously stuck. His front paws on one side of a v shape split of branches and his back legs on the other. Guess which overweight and unfit old man had to climb the tree and lift the STOOPID creature on to his shoulders and then climb back down again? Yep you guessed it, Moi! The look in Sids eyes though when I arrived at his perch and he stopped wowling and started purring made it all worth while!One banana box of mugs cleared, only four more to go!Spotted a few fungi on various bits of rotting would on one of our rambles but this lot were particularly photogenic.The boys have begun to hunt together, which is bad news for their potential victims! We like the idea that if the stick together when confronted by other cats or possibly aggressive creatures but thats probably a bit optomistic of us given Nancy’s tendency to run at the slightest scare!One morning last week I was up at 7.30 and out cutting brambles away from some young trees they were smothering. I then burnt the brambles and marvelled on how much one can do early in the morning with no-one to interrupt you!Nancy and Sid pretending in typical cat fashion that they have nothing to do with each other but sharing, the parasol bench, their new favourite lookout spot for hunting field mice all the same!!My new mug shelves are complete and full, sadly there is another box of mugs yet to open, it’s been 6 years now! The adjacent bookshelves are yet to be filled. I guess the only thing to do is to build some more mugs shelves in the last empty corner of the room! Hopefully a bit quicker than it took me to do these ones!
