When Will the Caged Bird Sing?

It was the silence that got to me first of all.
Standing there, in the sudden dark of an autumn evening, chilled through from the north westerly gale, I was stopped in my tracks by the silence.


I stood and looked into the back of the horsebox, at the exhausted girl who had voluntarily driven it for 7 hours that day, at the handful of people gathered with me in the cold, dark car park.
I suppose I had expected a healthy amount of noise, once the tailgate was let down.

Katja, Ronya and Fionnghuala - still smiling at 2am after an endless day. Little Oisin had fallen asleep in the car

I hadn't expected towering stacks of cardboard boxes.
I don't know what I had expected, I hadn't really thought that one through, but when I heard the silence and saw the piles, some collapsed at angles that boded nothing but ill, I knew time was of the essence.

I think everyone felt the same, because without a word, we all set-to with grim determination to help unload as fast as possible.
The cartons, as we lifted them down, were hot in my hands. Too hot.
'I didn't know what to do,' Katja said. She was distraught. Exhausted and distraught. It was her second Great Escape run in a week, bless her. 'I wanted to stop half-way to check on them, but I couldn't have re-stacked them on my own - I thought I'd just better get here.'
'You did the right thing,' I said, but the tension in the car park had gone up a notch at the sight of so many faceless boxes, everyone silently wondering what we would find inside.


Involuntarily I thought of those desperate transports that had fled as many Jewish children out of Germany before the last war as possible. It was perhaps an inappropriate analogy - these were not children - but in animal terms, it was a similar situation.
In this case, 7000 one-year-old hens about to be slaughtered for no reason other than their age.

I was in the car park that evening because a friend of mine had posted a picture on the Internet of the birds she had adopted several days earlier. From her I learned that LittleHill Animal Rescue & Sanctuary, hearing of the hens' impending doom, had frantically rallied volunteers and support wherever possible to try and save as many as they could.
3500 had already been homed (my mind boggles at the amount of work that must have been), and now they were doing it all over again in an attempt to snatch the rest from the inevitable. They had been given a few extra days grace.

Even her wing feathers are bare

Everyone pitched in, even Katja's small children who had endured an endless day shut in the car, poor loves.

Inside the boxes, hens were crammed together, sometimes two in a box that I wouldn't have put one hen in for half an hour, let alone a day. Needs must, they say, when the devil drives, and the Sanctuary hadn't packed  the cartons, the farm had.
In the half-collapsed pile we found a sorry mass of feathers at a train-crash angle, and gently, carefully lifted them out one by one. The poor little creature at the bottom was dead. The hen the box had caved onto was dead too, another - unable to move - lay gaping silently. But sad as it was, it was only two fatalities against so many saved.

Everyone was shocked beyond words at the condition the birds were in. Not from their long, unavoidable drive to freedom, but from their brief year spent entirely in caged captivity.
No daylight. No space. No dignity.
I'd fondly thought that caged egg production was now illegal in Ireland. But it seems that's only on paper. It still exists, they've just changed the parameters. It's legal because they are now 'Enriched cages'. Enriched with what, I wonder? Extra birds?
By law, laying hens now have 750 sq cm of space each. EACH - oh joy! All that room to spend their entire lives in. It used to be 550 sq cm each, less than the size of an A4 sheet of paper.
So now it's a page and a half - nearly.
But it's not just Ireland. In much of the world - and large parts of Europe (France, Spain and Poland included) nothing has changed at all.


There was no conversation in the car park after that. It was just: 'There are two in this one,'
'Six in here,'
'I'll move these four.'

The children collected up the sad little eggs that, despite all, had been laid in some of the boxes.
Nature's unstoppable process adding an unavoidable stress to the day. Most birds like to sit quietly and calmly to lay their eggs.

Was she supposed to be an oven-ready chicken, or a laying hen?

I don't know how long it took us to unload all the hens, to distribute them as gently as possible into the various cages and pet carriers that people had brought with them, counting them out between the vehicles - 48 for this van, 25 for another.
'Please take some more,' Katja begged. She sounded close to tears. 
Nearly 300 birds had been brought up in the horsebox that day.
They were the lucky ones. It was only possible to rescue birds if people had offered them them sanctuary amongst their own small flocks, and three and a half thousand had already been homed the previous week.
I took an extra 10, anxious that the temporary pens at home wouldn't be big enough.
'Don't worry,' the In-Charge said gruffly. 'It'll be The Shelbourne after what they're used to.'

Driving home in the cold, windy darkness, rain skirling against the windscreen, we were still silent.
I - a wordsmith by trade - devoid of words to exorcise my horror.
I was grateful beyond expression that the In-Charge - without needing to be asked - had driven me there,  was driving us back, as slowly as possible through the narrow, winding roads while still trying to hurry our pathetic cargo to a safe haven.

My birds don't even look like this when they're moulting

At home, we carried the cages up into the hens' paddock. The tail-end of some far-away tropical storm was lashing gusts of 80kph at us, and the rain was horizontal, but they weren't out in it for long. Carefully we placed each bird into the freshly-strawed pens I had prepared earlier, cuddling them up together in the low stone sheds that have stood, backs braced against the north west wind for nigh on two hundred years.
31 traumatized, many featherless, sad and hopeless little creatures.
I went back an hour or two later, before falling into my own bed, to check that all was well.
They were exactly where I'd placed them, huddled together, heads under their scratchy, frayed, tattered wings. Sleep was doing it's magic, and what they didn't know was that tomorrow would be the start of a whole new life.
A life! Up until now they'd only had an existence.
I went to bed warmed by the knowledge that up and down the country, thousands of hens had been similarly welcomed into homes where they would be treated as hens, not egg-laying machines with a sell-by date.

In the days since then, I've spent a lot of time moving in slow motion.
They are easily alarmed, and aren't used to people, even people scattering food.
They aren't used to food for that matter, unless it is delivered in pellet form, under their noses. They looked at the lettuce I put into their pens as if it might attack them. Green is not a colour they recognise. How sad is that for a hen?
I've taught them how to drink out of water bowls. They have only ever pecked at a drinker to get water, never had the pleasure of dipping their wattles into a full bowl of fresh water, never gone from puddle to puddle in the rain to see which one tasted best. Jil, my lovely wwoofer, and I spent an hour that first morning, gently holding each one and dipping its beak into the bowl to show them how - to try and overcome the inevitable dehydration of the day before.
They have started to scratch about in their pens to see what lies beneath the straw - with claws that are far, far too long because they've never been worn down by normal living.
They've started to realise that there is space to move about in.
And when the rain ever stops, they will discover that there is a whole world beyond their window - a world that contains grass and small beetles, flies to chase, dogs and cats to stare at, sunshine to bask in, dust for delicious baths, morning and night to shape their days, and shelters to rush under when it rains. 

Wondering if the lettuce will attack

In the days that they've been here, I've spent a fair amount of time in tears too.

Some of the hens - none of mine by the luck of the draw - have had to be destroyed because their skeletons were so deformed from living in a cage that they couldn't stand or walk. Some because their rear ends were torn open, possibly by the hens squashed into the cage with them. 
Some because the rescue was just too late.
But the little hen that got squashed on the journey is slowly making a recovery, it seems. She doesn't plan to miss out on her new, gift-wrapped life!
There is hope everywhere.

The emergency refugee tents have a slightly Heath-Robinson appearance

For me, there are few things as upsetting as the eyes of an animal or bird that has no reason to live.  
Those were the eyes that greeted me that first morning as Jil and I set out to help them learn what are, after all, only the basics of survival. But already, just a few days later, their eyes are different - eager, anticipating, anxious sometimes too, but interested - alive.

Life begins at 15 months!

Their new lives will soon envelop them and, being hens, they will probably forget how they spent their first year. With luck they might live to be nine or ten. We don't cull our birds because they no longer produce eggs - I believe in retirement for the animals on this property at least, even if the owners haven't a hope in hell of getting there! We've had hens who'd no longer recognise an egg if it hatched in front of her and danced the hokey-cokey.

But I will not forget. I will find myself constantly wondering how it's possible to call ourselves civilized when we allow our food to be produced in this way. 
Wondering how many more battery hens there are, living their miserable existence, in this country alone? There shouldn't be a need for the LittleHill Sanctuaries, the Bryonys and Katjas of this world to spend their days and nights helping hens escape. They should be at home with their kids.
I never have to buy eggs, but if you do, next time - please question where it came from.
And inform yourself what some of the terminology means. 'Barn Eggs' for example sounds so nice - but is it? Barn eggs means industrial sized sheds in which the birds - not in cages, admittedly - are packed in 9 to the square metre. Space? Daylight? Fresh air? What are those?
Act. Do something. Vote. For God's sake, vote in the way that really counts. With your decisions, with your wallet, with your feet.

What a difference a day makes

Zen and the Art of Gardening

According to my friend DodoWoman, my new model garden would make a perfect home for Madame Butterfly.

It was odd she should say that, as when I was constructing it, I spent some time wondering how to create butterflies that would sort of - well, flutter-by, but I didn't quite manage it. However, I don't think DodoWoman and I are talking about the same kind of butterfly, but then I don't share her personal acquaintance with Puccini's opera, or its tragic heroine.
(I shall have to take her word for it on the garden's suitability.)

The Temple glimpsed through the cherry blossom

Perhaps I'd have done a better job with a full orchestra on the other side of the kitchen table. They say children learn better if Mozart is playing softly in the background. Perhaps Puccini was just what I needed to bring the abandoned butterflies to fruition.

I was a little disappointed with the state of the sand after my attempts at raking it into gentle curves.
I don't think there is a career ahead of me in a Japanese garden.
When I mentioned this to my friend of Talentui fame, she said: 'You probably weren't using the right implement.'
'A kitchen fork,' I replied.
'Quite,' she said. 'I don't think they use forks in Japanese gardens.'

However the fossil pavement and the Sun and Moon Stone are truly remarkable, as is the Yin Yang stone - not, or course, that I take any credit for these items - all were found on our local shore.
The Yin Yang stone brings tears to my eyes whenever I see it. The In-Charge stooped down and picked it up just as we were leaving the beach one day at the end of November last year. He's good at spotting things, the In-Charge.
He handed it to me with rather a sad smile.
We had taken Under Dog to our favourite beach for one last walk there. Of course Top Dog and Model Dog came too. We didn't know it then, but as it turned out, it was the last time either of those inseparable twins ever walked that beach.
Sweet boys. How I miss them still.

The Yin Yang stone

But I digress.

It seems hard to believe, but it's a year ago that we were at this lark the first time round - making tray gardens with the kids at Beltra Country Market

Such fun, everyone loved having a go, and this year we had more kids than ever, not to mention a few parents 'helping' their offspring along. It's amazing what you can do with a supermarket tray full of sand and a load of found objects, or inexpensively bought things like lollipop sticks, pipe cleaners, pompoms and feathers.

Amazing fossils and the Sun and Moon Stone in the background

I decided to go for the Zen-Yogic-Buddhist-Transcendental-Japanese-Meditation-Temple-Garden this year, while DodoWoman built a Mayan jungle with an Aztec teocalli in the middle - the only thing missing (as she was the first to point out) being the whatsit containing a sacrificial human heart. However, don't be thinking that the kids were cheated here - she had featured a beach-combed-treasure that looked a bit like a dinosaur, rearing up on one side behind the trees. Six out of ten kids would probably prefer a dinosaur, anyway.
Probably.

Now I come to think of it, it looks more like a Dodo than a Dinosaur on the left

Jil, one of my lovely German wwoofers, did a rough blueprint design for the temple. She and Marco then built the walls, but it was the In-Charge who created the roof. It is constructed from card and - well, lollipop sticks; plus one or two other stabilizing bits and bobs, like glue, gold paint and such. We were very pleased with the glittery pipe cleaners creating the necessary lilting curves, and I thought my Chinese lanterns came out a treat - especially the tassels made from embroidery silk.

The string of prayer flags was a hot favourite.

And we were pretty chuffed with the stream as well, and the ponds and the waterfalls - not to mention the dinky bridges. And the water really did cascade down over the little rocks and shells, and swooshed over the koi carp (designed and created by Jil and Marco) before collecting in the bottom pool outside the temple.
Totally thrilling.

Dinky bridges

Sadly, the water then started to dissolve the play-dough from which the stream itself was constructed, but one has to rise above such small inconveniences, stiffen one's shoulders and raise one's chin. No self-destructing pond is going to take the edge off my garden, and koi carp probably like sinking slowly into the sludge at the bottom of the stream.

Anyway, if it does slowly dissolve, by the laws of Zen, surely that's meant to be - so then the pond, the water and all will be as one with the rest of the garden..

 

Shame about the butterflies, though.

(You can see last year's miniature garden here.)

Visits and Visitors

It's been a strange week - one of those weird time-warps when the days seem to have gone by in a flash, and yet last Sunday feels like a lifetime away.
Perhaps it's because the weather has been so strange - some perfect, still, hot summer days and others of constant, despondent mizzle or gusty winds.
Sometimes my wwoofers, Olivia and Marie Christine, have wwoofed, at others they have sat in the kitchen knitting, or curled up in their tiny sitting room watching movies, drizzle misting the window panes.
But despite all, we have taken advantage of every good moment and got a lot done. 

And in between the endless gardening, it's been a week of visits and visitors.

On Monday I went with a friend to see Elizabeth Temple's stunning garden at Salthill in Donegal.
I first went last year, and have been longing to go again, and introduce another garden-fanatic to its joys.
More of that anon, but for any garden lover visiting the north west of Ireland, it is a must-see.

Part of the beautiful gardens at Salthill

One of Salthill's many lovely roses - possibly Abram Darby?

An old friend from England came over for a couple of days. He's thinking of buying a holiday house here, so he and the In-Charge spent happy hours cruising around Donegal and Sligo, looking at possible properties.
His family come from Donegal, and he loves coming back.
It was nice to see him, and catch up, although this time he didn't bring his gorgeous wife and children.

Some German friends, on their annual holiday in Ireland, came to re-visit our garden.
It is always nice to see our garden through someone else's eyes.
It makes me appreciate how much we have achieved over the years, and how lovely it is.
On my own, I tend to fasten on the goosegrass sticking out of the astilbe, the weeds that - since yesterday - have started springing in a newly cleared bed, the shrubs that I still haven't pruned...
Despite the hours of work, the list never gets any shorter.
But the Germans claimed not to see any of those things and took a host of photos.
Here are a few of them:

 Frau Speckle

The prince of the lily pond (still un-kissed)

Our lovely sycamore tree

 And:

My beautiful Model Dog

They also invited us to supper, our German friends, and - taking the wwoofers with us - we spent a happy evening in their holiday cottage, eating, drinking, chatting and watching the sun slowly sink into Enniscrone bay.
Summer, lovely summer.

More friends - family really - came another day to look at the garden and have tea with us, which forced us, once again, to down tools.
'We gardeners don't make the most of our gardens,' Sylvia said to me as we wandered around, comparing notes on this year's flowers. 'We spend so many hours working, but not enough just sitting - soaking it up.'
How right she is.

In one of Elizabeth Goudge's books, I once read that the elderly matriarch of the family had a seat in her garden 'at every place one might possibly wish to sit down', and - as far as the budget allows - I have tried to follow suit. But despite that, I rarely drift from bench to bench.
I'm more like a hen - head down, bottom up in one of the beds - but in my case, not pecking, just weeding, weeding, weeding.

On the way to the airport to drop our friend off for his flight home, the In-Charge took the girls to Foxford Woollen Mills, and they came home with big smiles on their faces and big carrier bags of scarves and blankets - prized souvenirs of their Irish trip.
And then yesterday it was the Strandhill Show.

I think Strandhill is probably the first of the local summer Shows, and Beltra is probably the last, at the beginning of September. I don't always go to them (I'm often head down, bottom up) but Beltra Country Market had taken a few tables in the craft marquee, so, after another morning of miserable mizzle, the wwoofers and I headed off at lunchtime.
Happily the sun came out as we drove around the coast, and by the time we arrived at the grounds of the once beautiful Lisheen house, it had turned into a hot, summer afternoon, perfect for a parish show - or fete as it would be called in England.

Poor Lisheen

I don't think we sold a vast amount, but everyone enjoyed themselves enormously.

Fabulous seaside setting for a gymkhana

Prize winning cakes

Someone brought their pet birds. I've never seen a Canary before

Anxiously awaiting the results of the dog show

In the craft marquee

When we got home that evening, it was to find the In-Charge entertaining some unexpected visitors - a couple of our own age. Apparently she and her sister had lived in our house for a summer when she was 10. Their parents had gone to Sweden on a three month internship, leaving them in the care of a country Rector and his wife. It was so interesting to hear her recollections of our 'secret garden' - apparently a complete wilderness in those days; to know that the time she spent here has become an idyllic memory; and to learn that coming back after all these years hadn't been a disappointment.
We loved meeting them both. They are, in a way, another little piece of our jigsaw, another of the limitless secrets our house has been coaxed into revealing.

A week of visitors.
And only one has been unwelcome.
The fox has called - twice. He must steal in like a shadow over the garden fence.
We have lost two of our hens this week, a sad waste of feathers at the bottom of the orchard our only clue as to their fate.

There are some visitors you can do without.

Summer Time, But The Living Ain't Easy

It's dry, it's sunny, it's hot.
It's unbelievable.
June - for once - is doing what is says on the tin.
We must have brought a little bit of Paris back in our bags.


I'm even getting a bit of a tan - a farmer's tan, that is, which ends where the clothes begin.
I've been working non-stop in the garden, along with our lovely French Canadian wwoofers, Olivia and Marie Christine.
They've been slaving away, as you can see.

Knit, knit, knit...

In fact, they're practically on their knees.

But then, wwoofing is exhausting work.

However, it only takes a quick look round the garden to see just how hard they really have been working, bless their cotton socks.
They've weeded, edged grass, dug beds, pruned, cleared paths and carted endless barrow-loads of garden rubbish away .

See how hard we've all been working.

The dogs, on the other hand, have played tag with the girls, chased each other, chewed bones and tried to chew each other's teeth.
TeenQueen has done a good deal of walking about in the flower beds.
Admonishment runs off her like water off a duck's back.
But they haven't done a whole lot of sleeping in the garden.

Perhaps that's because it's extremely noisy. And I don't mean the digger rumbling in the field outside.
Every bird in the west seems to be nesting somewhere in our patch, and the orchard is full of young rooks. Half of them are learning how to take off and land , the others are being initiated into the joys of digging for leather-jackets. Its a raucous business.
But the swallows outdo them easily. They have got their young ones out on the bean arches, and in between loud singing and flying lessons, there are noisy feeding sessions.
It's a sound, I have to say, that makes my summer.

Me! Me! Me!

We sit around the table at supper almost too tired to talk.
Well, Olivia's never too tired to talk.
And Marie Christine enjoys a good natter.
Come to that, I'm not often too tired to talk myself.
In fact, now I think about it, there are only two family members who are so fast asleep they don't talk at supper.
The ones who didn't do any work in the garden at all - unless you count burying bones in the compost heap as work, that is. 

Model Dog and the TeenQueen hard at work as usual, chewing each other's teeth

Lights Out!

Years ago, our first ever Wwoofer, Bill, sent us a letter after he'd gone back home.
It said how much he'd liked staying with us, and it enclosed a piece of paper that puzzled us for some time.
There was nothing written on it, just a black, photocopied - well, blackness, relieved by lots of white sploshes and dots, some running into each other, where the original document was obviously getting a bit past it.
Or so I thought.
But after a long time - several hours or days, I don't recall sixteen years on - the light suddenly came on behind the In-Charge's eyes. He didn't exactly shout 'Eureka!' but it was something along those lines.
'It's Europe,' he said. 'At night.'
And then it all made sense.
The sploshes were the huge centres of population, the connecting white areas the busiest parts of each country.
Needless to say, our own wild west coast of Ireland was unrelieved black.

I wonder if it would still be black on a similar image today?
I think, compared with most of Europe, it wouldn't be too bad.

One of the benefits of living in - basically - the middle of nowhere, is that our night sky is choc-a-bloc with stars. They don't have to fight to be seen here. They are overwhelmingly bright and fantastically numerous. The Milky Way is a pale, gauzy scarf stirred through the heavens, Orion marches all around us, sword at the ready, the Plough looks permanently on the boil (it appears to my unscientific gaze more like the porridge pan than anything else) and the morning and evening stars are as bright as the moon. From the hills - even from the sea - you can, if you're lucky, see the Aurora Borealis at certain times of the year. You can watch the satellite stations Big Brothering us. You could lie in the garden and identify every constellation in the Northern Hemisphere, if you felt so inclined.

But drive a few miles along the coast and there is an orange haze in the sky over Sligo Town - just a reminder that in the real world total darkness is a thing of the past, and Sligo is just a village compared with most of the world's cities.

As I am writing this, the lights have just gone out! How ironic.

Fortunately the candles are never far away

Well, our powercut lasted for an hour, but it was about 26 hours too soon.
Tomorrow is Earth Hour, and - as in years gone by - we will turn everything off for an hour, starting at 8.30pm local time, lighting our numerous candles instead.

In the six years since it started, Earth Hour has grown and grown, and now involves 'hundreds of millions of people across 7001 cities and towns in 152 countries and territories'. (Taken from the official website.)

Which is fantastic.
But it's all well and good turning the lights off for an hour, welcoming, for once, the darkness - but what about after the hour? Do we just go back and flick it all on again?
Will anything have changed?
Hopefully. But only if we all join in, talk about it, and maybe turn off the lights an hour every month, every week, every day. Changes start with small things, after all.

Have a look at the challenges on the website. Maybe you can commit to taking up one or two, or starting your own.
I don't know what I will do for mine, I'll have to think about it while the lights are off.

One thing is certain, if we don't face up to some of the real challenges facing this planet that we call home, there won't be any need for an annual moment called Earth Hour, because the earth won't be here anymore.

For some reason I can't upload the YouTube Earth Hour video, but you can find it by clicking on this link:

And here is another link:

Earth Hour

The Year of the French

While I was in Suffolk at Christmas, I received an email from one of the gorgeous French boys who wwoofed with us last May. He asked if he could come back and spend ten days with us, to 'talk, talk, talk English', as he's in the middle of his finals at college. He's an engineer.

We loved having them to stay last year. Not only were they fantastically hard workers, they were also utterly charming, great company and marvellous cooks. And it did  my heart good to have two drop-dead gorgeous boys around the house again! Especially as they made me laugh all the time.

When they left I told them that they were welcome to return whenever they wanted.
I am so glad Hugo took  me at my word.

The return of the Frenchman

He's gone back to France again now, but we had a really lovely time with him.
He brought - bless him - champagne and wine and delicious Pralines de Lyon, which he used to concoct a tart so divine that I could happily tuck into it on a regular basis.
(Fortunately for my health and waistline, you can't buy Pralines de Lyon in Sligo.)

Whenever I was in the kitchen, he would come in and say 'What can I do to help you?'
How well trained is that? What a dream of a man!
I told them both back in May that their mothers really deserved to be proud of them, and nothing has changed. I hope Hugo's mother is preening herself even now.
I am not the most willing of cooks, but it was fun being in the kitchen with Hugo, and I shall be making his cauliflower and Gorgonzola soup for many years to come. We even made marmalade with a bagful of Seville oranges that my friend DodoWoman found surplus to requirements. It took us all day, but it was well worth it. The results are dark and delicious,the way we like marmalade in this house. I hope Hugo's enjoying the pots he took back to France.
And just in case we weren't getting the most out of our joint culinary experience, we spent an evening watching that marvellous film, 'Julie & Julia'. 
Wonderful.

Dark and delicious

He went running every day, he did stuff on his computer, he came shopping with me and he even came to the Market and made St Bridgid's Crosses to mark the beginning of February.
But he did loads of jobs for me too, bless his cotton socks.

DodoWoman's photo of Hugo with his perfect St Bridgid's Cross

When they were here last year, the boys built some fantastic steps for us. It is not an exaggeration to say that I think of them both every morning of life as I take the dogs for a pre-breakfast run around the orchard.
The steps had been Job No 4582 on our never ending list, and would not have been built to this day without the French lads. We'd still be clambering up a pile of wobbly concrete blocks.

The hens use the steps all day long. Even the stray bullock who wandered in yesterday afternoon used the steps!

They moved a vast pile of stone and built a shed for the In-Charge to keep the mower in. He thinks of them every time he tucks it into bed.

And they also weeded and dug and sorted out all kinds of stuff in the garden.
Hugo did the same for me this time too. He chopped wood and brought it in to dry, he cleaned out the hen house, he translated some French documents for me and we spent several days - rain, wind or shine - doing all sorts of garden chores, including digging up, splitting and replanting not only a vast rhubarb crown, but all the horticultural thugs in my herbaceous border - jobs I would never have managed on my own.

And, just as on his last visit, there was a new dog in the house.
Model Dog arrived in the middle of their stay last May, and this time SuperModel had barely settled in before Hugo's visit. She barked at him constantly to start with, but after a day or two, and lots of walks in the woods, and on the headland and our favourite beach - she realised that actually, it's ok.
He's just part of the family.

Sweetie time: 'Please, Hugo dearest'

Model Dog knew that all along, because she remembered him from last time.

Thanks Hugo.
It was really lovely to see you.
And please come back whenever you want to!

Teen Queen and the Frenchman

It's been a long time since I had a teenager in the house.
I'd forgotten what it was like.
But I'm remembering with a vengeance.

It's a state of never really knowing where you stand.
Of grinning and bearing whatever is thrown at you.
Of smiling even when you want to yell.
Of yelling and instantly wishing you hadn't.
Of coaxing and cajoling - sometimes with amazing results, sometimes with no results at all.

You know what they're like.
It's kisses and cuddles and flavour of the week one minute - which leaves you feeling absurdly privileged.
Then rudely ignoring you the next - so you wonder if your voice is accidentally on 'mute'.
Looking straight through you when you're speaking, 'Whatever' writ large upon bored faces.
It's rarely doing what they're told, and never coming when you call.
Treating your friends with disrespect, just when you want them to be their charming best.
Foul language and gutter manners amongst their peer group.
Going off without leave and coming back if and when they feel like, invariably losing some item you will have to replace in the process.
It's raiding the larder the moment your back is turned, devouring all the good bits and leaving everything in a mess.
It's a trashed bed like a a fleapit you can only be thankful you never have to sleep in.
Filthy feet traipsed through the house.
Any liquid refreshment sloshed everywhere.
Your accessories 'borrowed' and never returned...

Recognise any of these symptoms?

Fortunately, it's only a phase.

And fortunately we love them, so we just repeat ourselves when ignored, coax even harder, are simply relieved when they finally turn up, write off the borrowed items, and - in between - mop, hoover and clean up as necessary.

Fortunately I've been there, done that and - as they say - bought the t-shirt.

I must say, I wasn't expecting to have to do it all over again, but there you go.
I keep telling myself she can't help it. It's just her age and stage.
Look how affectionate she can be.
Look how beautiful she is.
Look how sweet she can be when she feels like.
One day it will all be worth it.
And in the meantime, I'll just keep loving her and hoping for the best.
After all, she is very special.
She's a SuperModel.

Teen Queen

And in the meantime, joy of joys, one of my gorgeous French boys has returned for a visit!
Hurray, hurray!

Midsummer Madness

I don't know quite where the days have gone.
Just odd moments linger.
There are memories or rain and, happily, quite a few of sunshine.
I picked a hat full of flowers to press for the children's workshop at the market.
They are currently residing in a phone book under a handy 56lb weight that was sitting around.

And I picked raspberries.
Model Dog likes raspberries. She is very good at picking but not so good at sharing. She assures me that she always means to, but then swallows by accident.
Now that the strawberry patch has yielded up the last of its joys, she is delighted to have discovered a new source of delight.
She is not, however, impressed by blackcurrants.

(By the way, that's Frank, Wilbur, Hal, Stan and Alf sitting next to the the raspberries. They have names, the peas in our garden - there are so few of them. Stan was particularly delicious but Alf was a bit past it I thought.)

We had a marvellous pottery workshop at the Market which was great fun. I even made a little bowl.
And we also had a barbecue to celebrate the market's second birthday.
The sun shone, the ribs, bangers and burgers were scrumptious and the birthday cake has taken up permanent residence around my person.

Some friends came for the weekend.
It was lovely to see them - we hadn't seen them for years and years and I'd never even met Kitty, the youngest of the family, but I'm very glad I have now.

Mrs Smith laid a perfect little egg for her breakfast and then we all went for a lovely walk on our favourite beach.

Moreover, Hollywood has come to town. John McDonagh's new film is to be shot in and around the village, and the In-Charge has taken his locations manager hither, thither and yon, looking at possible sites. Even the man himself and his Producer dropped by one morning and cast a beady eye over the house and garden, had a coffee and then beetled off to do important things elsewhere.

And in betwixt and between, we have done a bit of tidying up and passed a few boxes of books and clutter on to the animal charity shop. A few friends came for supper and our new wwoofers have arrived - a lovely couple from Northern California, who have pitched into my current project in the garden with such verve and willingness that I am starting to think of them as the Cavalry - thundering over the horizon just when you need them most.

They are just in time.
It is midsummer madness in the garden and everything is growing like Topsy.
Except my vegetables.
We won't discuss my vegetables.