Ouch!

Time for a cup of tea!

Not too good a week for me. My tooth or rather, where my tooth once was, started to heal nicely and the first few days were great but then it started to hurt. It was like having a mouthful of ulcers (canker for my American friends), it wasn't pleasant and kind of wearing. If I could get out and about it took my mind off it but if I sat at home feeling sorry for myself with the various noises that comes with living in our apartment then I didn't feel well at all. One activity I used to take my mind off it was to go and take photographs of the orchids on our land and catalogue where they were. A friend of ours is an avid orchid enthusiast and so I sent the photos off to him to see what kinds we have, as I wasn't sure whether we had a few different species or different variants of the same species. Our friend reckons we may have at least three species of orchids with some hybrids too, which to me is rather exciting as it confirms what a varied piece of land we have, one that is worth preserving and taking care of.

Scabious! I spent ages trying to grow these flowers in the UK
when we lived there and now they are growing wild on the land

My potting table removed to outside where it is a little
cooler and the view rather pleasant.

I was a bit down on Saturday as the time came around to the time when our youngest would have been due to land in Riga, if he hadn't got a job and decided he couldn't really come. I was sad that he wouldn't be around to see what we were doing and have some chats around the meal table about what he was doing. Ian and I had been looking forward to it as we haven't had much chance to see him since we have moved to Latvia. It wasn't meant to be obviously but at least being out on the land was restoring, it is so pretty there. A throw away comment by a friend about our overflowing pond from the heavy rain we had earlier on in the week set us thinking, I also loved the waterfall effect but it seemed such a waste just flowing away making everything below it very boggy and not useful and so we started on planning another two ponds in series below our first one.  This will vastly increase our water storage capacity and maybe we could also have some fish in there too. Well it took my mind off toothaches and mother aches.

These look like purple and yellow
flowers but the purple are bracts not
flowers. 

Our orchard surrounded by the electric fence. Hard to see
but there is a yellow warning sign on it - only its in Polish!
Hope the deer can read Polish.

Saturday Ian connected up our new electric fence to keep our orchard safe from a wandering deer that seemed to think our orchard was a new delicacy to be enjoyed. It totally changes the look of the place from an open orchard area to enclosed space - amazing what a few wires and fence posts can do. This will be a temporary option until we have a hedge that is high enough and thick enough to keep out the deer but that will be a while yet as we still have to take the cuttings for it. We half expected to arrive on Sunday with a frightened deer stuck in the middle and were quite relieved when we didn't but we were amazed to see a hare make its way delicately through the fence and so we wonder if it is working properly or not and I am not testing it, as I don't think it will cure my aches.

A stunning group of thistle like flowers. They are not thistles
wrong type of leaves - will look up the name soon!

It started so well!

Sunday we had to empty the water out from the boreholes that had filled them up after the heavy rain we had had so that the guys can get on and build our barn. We had a brilliant idea, why not start on the pond that we were going to build and empty the water from the boreholes into it, it will only take a couple of hours!!!! Hmmph! Well that was the idea and it was going quite well for a couple of hours and then Ian managed to get the tractor stuck in a really boggy area that had got churned up as he was working. We spent the rest of our Sunday digging it out. Took us about 6 hours! It was not fun, it took rocks, twigs, branches, straw and finally digging with our bare hands and a winch attached to our car to get it out. The mud was so sticky that it was like a very effective glue keeping our tractor in or rather digging itself deeper and deeper in. It is a good job the nights are light till very late here as we finished still in the light just after 10pm at night but we were pretty tired - we even slept in the next morning. Our last pond will now have a feature island in the middle, because there is no way we are going anywhere near it to move the soil as we are as likely to get bogged down in it as the tractor was. Even as we were digging the pond it was filling up with water from a spring that we uncovered and that was also one of the reasons we didn't dare leave the tractor until the morning as we had visions of it being in the middle of the pond by then. Heh ho! We know how to spend our Sundays, a day of relaxation!!!

Okay another orchid but they are
rather stunning plants

Free at last at just after 10pm

At least it all ended happily and instead of using the borehole water to fill a pond it was used to clean the off the mud that had caked the tractor. Waste not! Want not! Ian is happy with his nice shiny tractor now, as he had wanted to clean it for awhile, something our middle son and his fiancée obviously understand as Ian got a father's day present from them that arrived later in the day, a book called "That's not my tractor" and it finishes with "That's my tractor. Its headlights are so shiny." Impeccable timing especially as it is amazing he got a father's day present at all, even if it was late.

Those ruts were up to my mid-thighs,
okay I may be short but not that short,
those ruts were still deep!

Blue butterfly

Orange butterfly. If anyone knows what they are then please
let me know, saves me a job!