A little natural immunity

I think we can say that mud season has begun

We finally got our first vaccination this week. I'm grateful we didn't have to wait too long after the cancellation and I'm not bothered that its Astra Zeneca either. As one video explained, the best vaccine to take is the one you are offered. I've been watching some of the chats on Facebook and thinking about the comment that I often see, that people would rather develop their own natural immunity to the virus. It suddenly occurred to me that is precisely what the vaccine does, just without the greater risks from the virus. I really do not get why people would rather play Russian roulette with a virus than take an inactive portion of it that stimulates your own natural immune response. Okay maybe there are some after effects and some people have been wiped out for about 24 hours or so, but generally that's it. If the reaction is stronger it could equally be due to fighting something else too. 

Coltsfoot, one of the first flowers to make an 
appearance every year.

Kind of a damp day.

Ian got the worst reaction, as he started a bit earlier and was feverish with it. I had achey glands mainly. We both woke around 2:30am though and were gagging for a drink. When the nurse told us to drink plenty of fluids I thought it was just the general recommendation for feverish people - plenty of fluids and take ibuprofen or paracetamol. We did get those drugs in because we weren't sure if we had any that were in date but we didn't bother using them. At least we were feeling better when we got up for a cup of tea. Both of us felt a big sluggish today and Ian went back to sleep after letting the animals out apparently. I just did fairly easy and mundane tasks for work today - nothing that demanded a lot of work or thought. 

We transferred some of these to our land last year
or the year before. We have about three that 
have come up now. It's a start.

Ian has been doing some thinning out and
chopping of trees before the end of the season, 
which finishes this week at the end of March.
This is so the birds can nest without being 
disturbed. We need some more wood for our
fire. 

Time seems to be flying by but at least I managed to get back to some database work (this is mainly written by my colleagues and I've just been uploading it, but some I've written too here and here). I even set up a blog on that too (you can see that here). The idea will be to share updates to the database but also to talk about different aspects of blue space and health and well-being, in other words little newsy items about lakes, ponds, the seaside or even fountains and spas that are good for our health and well-being in some way. It seems a timely piece of work when we are discovering the benefits of being in the great outdoors. The first blog is about cold-water swimming. It might be a bit later now for swimming in ice, but not too early to prepare to swim outdoors. With the proper preparation it can be a fun and safe activity to do. There are some links about the benefits too. 

Looking towards a soggy road.

Piles of wood

The snow has just about gone now and suddenly we are getting an uptick in requests to visit, even before we announce we are open. We ended up with three groups over the weekend and potentially there was one more but it got too late for them. We are going to be quite strict though on only allowing people to come who have booked. We want to make sure we are prepared and not have too many visitors. Although we've had one jab we won't get our second until the end of May at the earliest and we have animals that will need our care, whether we are sick or not, so it is best to ensure we stay healthy. At least we only have outside visits, so that is less risky than being inside. 

I love the colour of alder when it is freshly cut.

Yes! Valeria has been sitting outside in the mud.

Our car was in for a service this week. We were fortunate enough to be able to borrow a friend's car while it was in the garage. There was rather a lot that needed doing on it, so it was a bit on the expensive side. However, this is rural Latvia and not the UK so labour is not that expensive. It is getting closer and closer to the stage I guess where we have to think about changing it, but so far it has still been reasonably reliable and suffers mainly due to the dirt roads that Ian has to travel on daily and a newer car is not any less likely to cost us at service time and we know how this car has been looked after over the years. At least it will change soon as we will transition to caravan living, far less travel on the roads. 

More signs of spring. There is a Latvian tradition
of making a whipping branch from these and saying the following
Apaļš kā pūpols,
vesels kā rutks,
slimības laukā,
veselību iekšā!
Or in English means,
Round as a pussy willow,
healthy as a radish,
sicknesses out,
health in!!!" 

The Worm Moon - such a strange name

We did have one hiccup while the car was in for the service. I was having a meeting where I was going to show people our land and our alpacas but forgot to put my headphones in my rucksack. I had to drive back to collect them as the ones Ian had wouldn't fit my computer. As I set off, I thought the car sounded a bit noisy and by the time I got to our village, I was sure the exhaust had gone on it. When I got back to the land, Ian came striding over. He'd heard me coming and come to see what all the noise was. Sure enough the exhaust had broken. Sigh! All sorted though before it went back to our friend.

The ice is going on the pond at least

Brencis is such a nosy alpaca,
he came up for a look.

The meeting I was attending was a virtual tour of our village, done by me and a virtual tour of a small provisional town of Latvia done by a friend of ours. It was a nice exchange, as my own students got to join in too, although they were a little shy it seems. After my main talk, I then took them on a short walk to the boys alpaca house and they met Josefs on the way as Ian was taking him out for a walk. It worked quite well and it was fun to be able to show them the alpacas. Unfortunately it was a bit windy but at least it was okay in the alpaca house itself. 

This is usually the last place for the snow to leave

Kind of dull but nice to see, as it means winter
is just about over. There maybe still some cold 
days but it's not going to last long.

We'll soon be heading out to the caravan again. Last year we went out to stay out there quite early due to a threatened lockdown. We reckoned it would be easier to be out on the land than Ian having to travel backwards and forwards and the winter was fairly mild. This time the cold season has lasted a bit longer and so the drive to get out there wasn't so urgent. The changing of the clocks this weekend though does make a difference. Ian is now only arriving back well after 7pm, which means we eat late and that's not so good for someone working with animals and outside for much of the time. We make a point of sitting down together to eat, so it is not so much of an option for him to take enough food for him to prepare his own meal. We just need to get sorted now.

When the snow goes, we can see where the pigs
have been. Sigh!

More damage here too

With the snow melt comes our lake, but it has
taken quite a while to appear. I guess the 
ground must be wet through now, which is
a good sign for the summer, as it means the
water table is high.

Just little bits of snow here and there.

Around the world in three days!

We've had some more gorgeous sunsets

In three days, I have been given insights into life in Nigeria, Ethiopia, France, Portugal, Iran, Pakistan, India, Czechia and Egypt and travelled virtually to Riga in Latvia, Germany, Italy, Poland, Belgium, Australia, UK and Sweden, all from my little rural apartment. I've discussed the affects of climate change on coastal towns and how to begin to tackle the relocation process, to identifying areas where people can get involved in planning, to strategies to harvest water in a drought prone area using landscape adaptations, amongst other things. I've talked about an application to draft a workshop for an EU wide conference, to cold-water swimming and its benefits on health. I've chatted with family by email, WhatsApp and Messenger. Now I'm not sure my brain knows quite what's happening. 

No one is swimming here, but they do in the summer

Hello, kind sir! can I trouble you for some food?

Lockdown hair cut. Looks worse from the
front.

That isn't all either. I've been sorting through articles on citizen science, policies, living values and which organisations are bottom up or grassroots or top-down and what's the difference anyway. I've used Miro boards, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Big Blue Button, Moodle, Wordpress and Blogger. I've tried to access Zoom while someone waits on Microsoft Teams, I've rapidly had to search for Zoom links for meetings I've supposed to have joined and had to wait for someone to get the right link to meet up with me. On my computer I've been working in Excel, Word, Powerpoint and with Pdfs. I'm thinking I'm getting quite dizzy with it all. As I'm writing this I now realise that my calendar is not effective enough and I need to actually use an excel sheet to keep track of meetings. At least then I can highlight which format we are using. My calendar isn't just for me but also my department so gets a bit messy. I already try to keep a record of the hours I work in excel and now my list of jobs is on there too, as it's easier to keep track, so maybe just a note about the meetings might work too.

One of the differences between Chanel and Ilvija
her daughter, besides the haircut are the black feet
on Ilvija. Other than that, there isn't much to be 
able to tell them apart.

Turbjørn looks very suave in his coat. 

Boo! Says Valeria

It's kind of exciting to be able to meet up with people from all over the world, but there is also a part of me that wants people to go back to work and leave the online alone, like it used to be, but that's not going to happen. I love it and loathe it at the same time. Once the decision was how many meetings could I go to in one year and if one meeting was too close to another with a lot of travelling in between then it was just not possible to go. Now.... I can almost go to all of them, but I still need to work too. So many exciting things to learn, so many responsibilities to meet. So many opportunities to network, so many opportunities to be sucked into more work.

Antonia is looking portly, or she has a lot of fleece.
Unfortunately she isn't pregnant. Maybe this year?

Ginger Tom is just so ridiculously
cute.

Shows some of the recreational 
opportunities or not in our 
village. The ski track has been
well used, but not now of course, 
instead people play disc golf. 
I'm surprised how popular it is.

One of the jobs I had to do this week was to go for a walk around our village and take photographs for a presentation. As I was putting them into the presentation, I saw that the colours were a little subdued, mainly a palette of the browns and whites of late winter and so I had to find one or two spring and summer pictures just to show some contrast. It was refreshing to have to go for a walk as it got me out of the house. At least it wasn't icy. I found some interesting memorials I hadn't seen before, including one to a music teacher. 

A memorial for a music teacher

Creative Easter decorations

A bit cold for a song festival at the moment

Guarding the castle walls

More creative Easter decorations

Ruined manor walls

All mod-cons you know. Yes we 
do have an electric charging point
in our village.

There are a few versions of this on the internet,
but it seemed rather relevant

At least despite the busyness of online work I am now more disciplined to take the weekend off and spend one day out on the land and another day pottering around the house, mainly sewing at the moment. I'm not sure the weather knows what to do at the moment either as we've swung backwards and forwards between winter and spring. The snow just about disappears and another load is dumped. On Friday it snowed all day, but Saturday was relatively clear, if a tad cold, so I went out to the land to help Ian cut the boys toe nails and give them Vitamin A, D, E and C injections. Now all the alpacas are up-to-date. I also helped Ian shift some hay bales, although I did linger in the greenhouse a bit with a cat on my lap so only half helped.

More Easter creativity. It now has a 
candle to go with it too. I spotted this
on Facebook when looking for some pictures
for my presentation, a friend of mine has
made it and was selling them. Ian went
to pick it up from the little supermarket where
we had arranged for it to be dropped off

This came in a parcel our son and family sent
from England. It was full of goodies. A box of
broken biscuits (sounds bad but it's lots of
mis-shaped biscuits - should keep us going), a
box of tea-bags, an alpaca magazine with
pictures inside that our grandkids drew, as well
as other bits and pieces. Lots of thought went
into it and some precious gifts. 

I finally got two of the dresses washed and as I suspected the red dye from creating the purple fabrics ran. Fortunately I anticipated this and sponge washed the dresses while they were hung up so the dye did not run into the yellow of the rainbow dress. It will need a few more washes where it is hung up to drip dry and let the colour run downwards. The blue dress wasn't too bad as there were only a few patches of purple, just for a little contrast. The next job was to decide how to make the last dress. I realised the design would mean that the skirt was too short for my older granddaughter or far too much fabric for such a skinny one. I finally worked out a pattern that would work. So now I'm creating larger patches from the small ones then I will sew these together into three bands, instead of six rows. I think it will look okay, but still a work in progress. 

It I can just reach in and get those spruce needles

Oh! Hello! Didn't see you there!

Well someone's been here

We have a stream

A beautiful day but the clouds look ominous

Soon it will be covered in flowers

A walk in the forest

A lone pine tree

Soon these will be winging their way to a new
owner. Silla's fleece is a lovely colour with a
a great sheen. So soft too.

That time already?

The sun comes up further and further round
in the sky each day. 

It is amazing how quickly the days are getting longer. Ian is coming back from our land later and later. There is only Friday now that he comes back before 6pm and that is because he visits the bakery on the way back home. The owner only lives next door and so she doesn't mind if he arrives after they have technically shut, but he doesn't like to leave it too late. It is still a bit too cold to move out to the caravan, but it feels kind of close, even if the weather forecast doesn't seem to suggest it yet. The mud doesn't suggest it should be soon either. It is not much fun being out on the land and bringing mud back into the caravan, even though caravan is still in the greenhouse at the moment.

Freddie our gently timid soul

I love the golden glow of the early morning
sun on the snow

It's another meeting kind of a week for me, as I have quite a few short meetings arranged individually with my students to see where they are at. I only had two of them today, but I really enjoyed chatting to them. It was just a pain that my internet was a bit slow at one point. These are the kinds of students who give me hope for the future. I know life might be tough after graduating but with their care and creativity, the world stands a chance and it is a privilege to be their tutor, if only for a short time.

The snow has come and gone several times this
last week. Only now the snow is wetter and
less powdery.

It was still deep on the 9th March

But today's scene is not so pleasant with mud
and puddles everywhere.

One rainbow dress as requested.

I managed to finish off another of the patchwork dresses for my granddaughters this weekend, now only one left to do. It's a good job as it's not so easy to finish off things like this when we are back out on the land. I haven't really got somewhere to put a sewing machine and a bit noisy anyway for an evening cooped up in a caravan. Looking forwards to being out in the caravan does make me wonder if this summer I will be coming back to our apartment to clean it ready for a guest, or will it be another quiet summer where I only come back to do the washing, shopping and visit the bakery.

It's not spring yet and no grass, so we are not
coming out!

Vanessa has ventured out

I managed to get out to our land this weekend. Our alpacas were in need of toe nail cutting and Vitamin D injections. Brencis was the only one up-to-date because we had to have help for him, so we took advantage of friends bringing some alpaca food. This time we prioritised the girls because some of them are expecting in summer and doing all of the alpacas in one day is a bit hard on my arms if they don't behave. Vanessa's crew were relatively good, except for Valeria who has quite a kick on her, but I think she may have stunned herself by kicking the shed and not us. Ian also checked to see if he could feel any progress from the two babies we are expecting in that group. They are still a little way off and most of the growth is in the last two month's so not too much activity yet but he could feel something was there anyway, so that's good news.

Someone's else has ventured out too

But did I tell you it is muddy

Aggie with her, "I'm not talking to you face!"

Aggie's crew were rather more problematic. Aggie was definitely not pleased to see me. She knows it means that we are going to do something. Still we managed. Ian had been able to separate little Ilvija from her Mum so that we weren't covered in spit. Chanel sure knows how to express her displeasure at messing around with her baby. That didn't mean it wasn't spit fest though when it came to doing Chanel's toe nails later. I got caught twice and so need to clean my coat. Sigh! We also ended up cutting her toe nails with her laid on the floor - not as easy for Ian but easier than trying to wrestle with her when she's up and down. Mari was her usual feisty self, not too bad but not exactly very cooperative either. After that we were ready for a cup of tea.

Yep! Definitely muddy

Such a crisp clear shot. He does well does Ian

Later on I managed to dig up some Jerusalem artichokes for the chickens. Ian feeds a handful of them to the chickens in the middle of the day and he'd nearly run out. The ground wasn't too hard underneath the snow, and it's easy to see where they are as I didn't cut back the stalks in autumn. The cats have taken a liking to the Jerusalem artichokes too if they can get hold of them - strange cats. They've been eating manky potatoes as well that they found, however they do look surprisingly well nourished on it. I have now deposited the manky potatoes far enough away for them not to find them. It's not as if they don't have enough to eat, they do, along with any mice they catch. The only other job I got done was to sieve some rotted wood chips for some compost for planting seeds in. Now I just have to get myself organised to do it, along with learning more Latvian, which is still ongoing. 

Aggie looks tired, bless her. Only another few 
more months Aggie.

Only another few more months before we try to
get this sweet-looking alpaca pregnant again! 
Vanessa is really good at standing still for toe-nail
cutting but put a male alpaca near to her- sheesh!

Have I mentioned the mud?

Snowdrops poking through at last

We had the last of the Brussel Sprouts out of
the garden. Some survived the weather better
than others. I think the ones that were under the
snow lasted the best, or maybe it was just the variety?
Hopefully find out next year.

The start of a new strawberry bed, the easy way.
No digging, just dumping the alpaca manure 
directly on the ground, well snow and then this
will be planted with squash in the summer and 
strawberry plants in the autumn.

The red elder is starting to bud

Amazing how disappearing snow looks like a 
very white beach after the tide's gone out.

The pond looking like an agate again.

Doors open but still not coming out.

Yes that really is water in the buckets and not just
ice.

Cool look Jakobs.