Escapades

A contrite cat? Not!

Our cats are working animals with jobs to do and to a great extent they do their job well, they are often seen with mice, voles and even moles sometimes. They also manage not to bring too many live ones into the greenhouse and never into the caravan. However, they have not had such a good hunting season around my garlic. It would seem that over three quarters of it have simply disappeared and I wonder about the carrots, as there were times that water would just run away down a hole. The voles must have also had some of broad beans, as one patch seems to have only a few that seem to have germinated.

Brencis is getting big now. It is hard to think that he is one today.

A nuzzle from Mum

I don't make matters easy for the cats in some ways I guess because there are times they follow me into the garden and I am not entirely pleased with them when they wander across my seed beds or worse use them as a toilet. Not helpful, so maybe my vegetable plot is not their most favourite place to be. Sometimes when Eyre, our youngest cat, follows us it does not lead to a good outcome in other ways too. From the swallows that dive bombed her causing her to crawl along the ground to avoid them, to the time that she decided that near us was the perfect place to pee (sounds familiar) and so she scraped away at a convenient scrap of soil amongst the grasses. The next thing we saw was one cat hairing up a tree at a rate of knots, because of course there are only two sources for convenient soil patches in amongst the grass, mole hills and ant hills - she chose the latter. We laughed!

Resting under the trees under Mum's
watchful eye.

Eyre seems to have a special sense of where not to sleep and she has been shooed off my pepper plants, she got too close to tomato plants that were under fleece that she loves to sleep on. I have found her on top of the chick heater - fortunately they are safe under wire that they cannot pop their heads through. I also found her recently sat on my squash seedling tray. I wish cats had a sense of what to sleep on and what NOT to sleep on. It would be useful. It is one of the reasons for having catmint under a basket to keep it safe from cats until it has established itself properly to handle an invasion from them.

These little fellas have been safe and sound in the
boys alpaca house. They are getting big though so we thought
it probably won't be long before they take flight and join their
parents eating the insects. I love watching swallows
in flight.

One of the worst features of the cats is the fact they find small birds make a great delicacy. We had noticed a bird going in and out of the old alpaca house and were quite excited that a pair of birds had made it their home. Unfortunately we were responsible in part for their sad demise. The last sheep to give birth had to be put in the shed so that we could milk her to try and save the lambs, which if you read last week we were unable to do, but our cats thought it was a great adventure to follow us down to the shed each time we went. They seem to be less afraid of the sheep than the alpacas, as the sheep by and large ignore them, where as the alpacas are liable to investigate, which frightens the cats off.

Today they flew their nest. It was obviously getting a little
cramped in there

I always shooed the cats out of the alpaca shed, especially when they started climbing. One of the biggest problems for birds is the fact that Sofie is an excellent climber. One day we spotted her as she was starting to climb up the outside of the alpaca house, she was obviously after the nest. We shooed her off and she scampered away, but we knew it was likely to be only a matter of time. That night she hung around while we put the animals and chickens away, she was unusually attentive. Maybe I am reading too much into her behaviour, but it was as if she was making sure we went in and were out of the way, before she returned to an uninterrupted feast of baby birds. The evidence of torn and shredded fleece that was stapled to the side of the alpaca house to stop the snow in winter and help warm up the interior of that particular shed was enough to let us know what had happened.

We are quite relieved to see these two spending time with their
mother. We were worried at first that they still hadn't bonded 
well enough and she didn't seem especially attentive to them,
unlike the other mum.

The season has been tough on the plants. We finally got the rain we desperately needed and we were surprised that it appears it might have just arrived in time to save some of the shrivelled buckwheat, but it is still not as good as we would hope. Potatoes are finally starting to poke through and some other plants are finally beginning to put in an appearance after their winter sleep and so are the weeds now. It looks like we might have a grape cutting that overwintered successfully, but it has taken until now to show any signs of life. The rain might not have been in time for some of our blackberries. They were flowering away well and then suddenly started dying off. Most of my sage plants don't seem to have even bothered to appear, there are still no signs of life. One small sage plant fortunately is already in leaf and flowering but the large bushes - nothing!

Fortunately our solar dryer only blew over without any
significant damage. 

The unsettled weather unfortunately also brought a storm with it. One night the caravan was shaking with the wind and the next morning several trees were down, along with the branches in the middle of one of our cherry trees. Our new small greenhouse collapsed, but fortunately that was due to poles coming apart rather than breaking them. Connectors broke and there was already a small tear in the plastic and that got a bit worse, but it has been repaired and put back up. We are still not sure how well it will fare in another storm. Our old one is still going, despite the fact the plastic is getting brittle in places and seams tearing. That one though is well anchored into the ground by burying about 10cm or so of it into the ground and that seems to be the trick to keeping it safe. We are glad that our Christiania bike went to its new home though before the greenhouse collapsed as it was being stored there.

Fortunately this was not as bad as it looked and Ian has been
able to repair it

What I don't understand is how this shelter is still standing. It
has definitely got more and more of a lean on it, but the storm
didn't finish it off. It will be going soon though as it needs to
be taken down to make room for an office for me.

Ian has had his fair share of escapades this week. He managed to get the tractor stuck digging more holes to encourage water to stay on the land rather than run off elsewhere. We are trying to strike a balance between having somewhere for water to go when there is too much, which happens frequently and somewhere to store it for when we do not get enough rain, that also happens too frequently. He dug some larger holes in a ditch but it wasn't quite as dry as he hoped and whilst digging hadn't realised that the big wheels were sinking deeper. He spent a fruitless afternoon trying to get himself out before admitting defeat and calling for reinforcements from one of our neighbours (unfortunately no photos, as I wasn't there, I was at our apartment doing some sorting out). I saw our neighbour afterwards and he said it was easy, like plucking a carrot out of the ground. Amusing! The good news is that the holes in the ditches are full with water after the rain and the big pond that Ian dug last week is slowly beginning to fill up. The ground around is still likely to be boggy around there and so we are going to plant that area up with cranberries and blueberries. Hopefully we can take some cuttings from our other plants.

Mother and son are doing well. He is a little photogenic lamb

I often wonder what we have done over the years here, especially when considering how precarious our residence is with such things as the EU referendum in the UK. If we left tomorrow would we leave a legacy? I then think of the times that people have looked again at the rural area around them and realised how rich they are, if not in monetary terms, but in natural resources. We may not have been successful farmers or business people, but hopefully we have encouraged some to re-evaluate what they have here in Latvia and value their natural environment that is in a better state than some of the land in the UK with its over-intensified farming. Where in the UK can you hear a cuckoo on a regular basis? Where can you regularly see ospreys and eagles circling over head? Where do you see the flower rich meadows? Where can you see so many stars on a clear night that it takes your breath away?

A rather large visitor of the feathered kind. It is still amazing
after all these years to see so many storks. Not a common
sight in the UK

Many people who come are amazed at what we have managed to do over time, as they don't have the vision to see something like this happening in rural Latvia. Okay we are not turning a profit and sometimes there is a lot of work to do so we get tired, but we are eating the sort of fresh food that you pay a fortune for in the supermarkets, we are enjoying the outdoor life and the companionship of our alpacas. We have people come and visit who have heard about our alpacas and Ian never tires of telling people about them. Occasionally we also have visitors where a real connection is made and it turns into an opportunity to have a chat about lots of other topics and sometimes those chats help them to think that there is something more to hope in and there is something in the path we have tread. I am sure there are those that can tread a similar path and make more of a success of it than we have and I'm fine with that, in fact I'm more than fine with that.

Official now!

A little greener this week

Before I get to the all things official I mentioned last week we were in Jekabpils collecting eggs for our incubator, I didn't mention that we took the opportunity to do some shopping and have a fish and chip lunch - not often do you get those in Latvia, not proper English-ish style ones anyway so a rare treat. Later on in the day we were in one shop and we were looking at electric fences, as we will need two eventually so the alpacas can graze the land and not just stay in their paddock. Whilst looking at the different types a lady tapped me on the arm conspiratorially  and said something like "don't get that sort, these ones are much better." I've had shopkeepers tell me which sort of merchandise is better and not to choose what we were buying for different reasons but never a customer adding their opinion. Bless her! Hope she was right anyway, because we bought the sort she recommended.

Yellow flowers this week, maybe
Yellow Star of Bethlehem but if anyone wants
to correct me you are very welcome.

We were back in Jekabpils this week again, only this time we were handing in forms to register our barn for animals and get a flock number. It can seem a bit of a palaver at times to get registered for various things. We went to the office (once we found it that is!!!!! long story and involved several long telephone conversations with a friend to direct us there) and we gave them the forms, they looked at them and then gave us a piece of paper with the bank account details of the office and we then had to travel right across the town to the bank, pay the fees and then travel all the way back to take the receipt. That often happens with state institutions but it does ensure that they do not have to handle money and be a possible source of corruption. A photocopy was taken of the receipt, a quick phone call to a friend to finalise some details and all was done. We went home to await the arrival of our paper to say we are registered which we expected to arrive in about two weeks time, but much to our surprise we had a phone call from our friend and she had the numbers for our registration. Can't imagine getting that kind of service in many countries. So the palaver of travelling from one side of town to the other worked out for us in the end. Of course we still have to wait for the actual papers but we have the necessary numbers and that is what is important.

Okay so this looks like a plastic bucket to
you! It is but with the addition of a toilet
seat rim. After perching on bucket rims to use
the loo for the last couple of years we splashed
out on this. A very expensive plastic bucket
really, but as far as I'm concerned the comfort
is truly worth it.

So this means we are a step nearer to getting the alpacas, we have the necessary numbers we need to transport them, we even have transport lined up, because as we found out this week we might not be able to collect them ourselves,  and we are going to visit the farm on Wednesday to see the animals, but there is still a big question mark over whether we can get it all to come together and get the alpacas soon. It all hinges on whether they have the right vaccinations for the travel in the end, if they have then we will be fine, if not, it means waiting another 40 odd days and then trying to arrange more transport or arguing our case for picking them up ourselves.

Oh yes it's spring! Mr and Mrs Toad were a
little late for the ski run this year, all the snow
had gone by the time they were taking a hike
across our ski hill

We also finally got a contract signed with a hunter to hunt on our land this week. He would have liked to put a feeding station on the land in an out of the way place to distract the boar, but I said "no" as my research shows that they increase the damage and the numbers so I don't want that (I joked with his son, who was doing the translating that I had been reading too much). They are fine to drive hunt as long as the dogs are not released near our land - that was the advice of the hunter who specialises in training the dogs as they wouldn't like to be responsible for something bad happening to our alpacas and they are fine to build some hunting towers on our land too. So wild boar beware and maybe if you visit there might be a wild boar steak or two on the menu. At least that is a tasty way to help the environment, as they seem to be getting far too numerous and causing far too much damage and our out of balance with nature.

The school accomodation block is having a make over that
started this last week with scaffolding going up. You can
also see the smoke is still coming out of the chimney which
is situated behind the school and provides our heating. It did
go off this week though. Cooler nights are much easier to
sleep in.

Forgive me at times if I repeat myself and you may notice if you follow the blog that some of the same pictures appear year after year, well not exactly the same ones but something similar. That is because it is all part of our rhythm here, as our year is dictated by the seasons. Maybe I have mentioned the children playing outside our apartment before, but they are a joy to watch as they play with simple toys such as spades and buckets and not much more. Quite a few of them now and  different ages, playing together, having fun, getting muddy and splashing in the puddles in the sandpit. You can imagine the mess! I smile as I watch and part of me thinks, thank goodness they aren't mine, all that washing, but there is also a part of me that thinks this is the way it should be, not stuck in front of the telly or the computer, but outside in the fresh air and with active imaginations working hard. Oh and don't misunderstand me, the kids do have other toys but they are quite happy playing with their spades and buckets in the sandpit for hours on end. Even if I haven't mentioned the children, I will have mentioned all the things that are springing to life again, even after such a long time covered in snow. This week the grass is definitely greener, the days longer and flowers are starting to appear again. We even uncovered our fruit trees from their plastic winter wraps and turned on the electric fence again.

Not the best picture in the world but that
really is a water vole. Looking fairly
petrified poor thing.

Animals have featured prominently just recently from the eggs in the incubators to the wildlife on our land and our cats. One day we were sat having a cup of coffee watching the insects and frogs in our pond when I glanced up and there was a deer stood on top of the hill. I was quite shocked as it was mid-morning and said "Oh! Deer!" Which Ian, who was looking the other way took to mean "Oh dear!" and thought I was joking about the life we lead, sitting around absorbing the sun and drinking coffee on such a beautiful Spring day. Fortunately I managed to get him to see I meant a deer and we watched as it bounced across the land - they don't really run do they, they bounce! Another beautiful morning drinking coffee by the pond and we noticed something climb into our overflow pipe, it was the water vole again. We have found out they are vegetarian and not something we want to encourage near our greenhouse, but we wanted to be sure it was a vole and not a rat. We went to opposite sides of the overflow pipe and Ian fed a small pipe down the pipe to encourage it to my end while I stood with a bucket in hand to catch the thing. I wasn't too happy about this as I wasn't quite sure what it's reaction was going to be or if it was really a rat, but I managed and whipped the bucket lid on as fast as possible to stop it escaping. We then sat and finished our coffee while debating what to do about it. I was fairly sure it was not a rat, as it's face was too round and I am not sure that rats swim under the water so much and in the end we decided to release it in the bottom pond, further away from the greenhouse and so we wouldn't disturb it as much and also we felt it belonged on our land anyway. Just hope it doesn't cause too much damage.

Bella doing her car inspection last week

As for our cat! Hmmmm! We went for a walk around our land and our cats followed us, it was more like having a couple of dogs with us the way they followed us about. Eventually we must have gone too far and they bounded back towards the greenhouse, well that's what we thought. We walked the land, shifted a few bales to give the grass underneath a chance to breath and then headed back to the greenhouse, after inspecting the bulbs near the oak tree on the way back - and yes our mini daffodils are nearly in flower again. When we got back to the greenhouse there was no sign of any cats. We weren't too worried as they usually returned at some point and sure enough Sophie did, but not long before it was time to go. I put her in the caravan and continued packing things away and sorting out but still no sign of Bella. We called her by name and whistled for her, no sign! We walked back up the hill, calling and whistling, still no sign! Eventually we gave up and headed for home, there was not much else we could do. The next day we were up early as we hoped it would stay dry and we could shift the rotten hay off the land, but unfortunately it started to rain as we headed towards the land, gently at first but heavier as we got nearer the land. When we got to the land we half expected Bella to leap at us as she is not the bravest of cats normally and we wondered if she had been terrified by her ordeal. No sign! As Ian wandered down to the barn though, there she was! She seemed pleased to see us anyway, and she even seemed like she wanted to stay out, but that was all bluff, as soon as we got home after finishing jobs off in the greenhouse - no collecting hay as it was now raining consistently - she went to sleep and has pretty much dozed for the rest of the time.

A scene from The Good Life! Or the Good Neighbours in
America, where it was also shown. If you have no idea what
I'm on about then go to this site for more info. 

A few weeks ago I mentioned that Ian has ordered me a birthday present, well it actually arrived and it did indeed come in plenty of time for my birthday, which was on Sunday (oh yes the day we were going to collect hay!!!!). An amazing feat for my hubby, that does not often happen. Love him really as I am probably as bad. He got me a full collection of "The Good Life" - rather appropriate don't you think? Ian credits the series as the reason we are in Latvia and doing what we doing, must have sown a seed in his heart I think. He was going to get it me last year apparently, but when he looked the series was about £250 and not even the complete series at that. Anyway one night recently he dreamt that we were the couple in the series and when he woke up he did some digging around for the series again on the internet and this time he found it and needless to say he didn't spend anywhere near £250 on it - I would've gone ballistic anyway. Well that is our Saturday night DVD nights sorted for errrm quite a while!

The balconies are being removed on this side and the guy
on the right is using a sledgehammer to break up the
concrete. I haven't watched long enough to see what happens
when they get near to the completion of each balcony though.

One final note, I thought it was interesting that the newest head of the World bank will actually be a development professional and not an economist. The World Bank is the biggest development agency in the world and not really as much of a bank as the IMF is. I wonder if the head will have an influence on policies? The World Bank has improved over the years but still has a long way to go on implementing policies that are proven or risking money to gain some improvements - not all money given in unstable situations is going to work and that does mean taking risks from time to time. There is also a need to be in development for the long term and not expect short term results - so where will that all lead? No idea! Let's hope and pray he is actually effective as a leader and channel money where it is needed and not into big expensive white elephants that displace many indigenous communities which has happened in the past.

It is finished

Winter has nearly finished, not much left to go now. Mind
you I've said that before, about three times this winter.

It is finished indeed and no I'm not just talking about Jesus' mission to save mankind accomplished on the cross, I'm talking about my thesis. I finally completed the writing for my course and now it is just awaiting some photos, a grammar check and then it needs assembling into a complete document to send off to my tutor for his perusal and marking of course. It has taken me four years to get to this point, the first year I studied Development Management with the Open University, but due to the increase in fees I started a bit of hunting around for another course and found Managing Sustainable Rural Development with the University of the Highlands and Islands. I am so glad I did as I think this course is much more applicable to Latvia, where I now live, than the OU course, good though it was. The OU course was aimed more at developing countries, rather than a European setting, but it still gave me a good foundation in what development is all about  and the history of it that has helped me enormously in the current course. It also gave me a good start to get back into studying, for which I am very grateful, as it has been rather a long time since I was at Uni, in fact in the meantime my eldest had started a nursing course and is now nursing - that should give you an indication of how long ago it was. The course also gave me a Post Graduate Certificate in Development Management, maybe it will come in useful at some point.

A little creativity to stop me burning my fingers

Last week our car passed its technical inspection, or to be more precise the previous week, but who's counting? It is always a relief when our car gets through the technical without a hitch, especially as one year the inspector, who was inspecting our car, shook the car so much to test the suspension that we suspect it damaged the wheel bearing. It may have been going anyway, as the roads around here are tough on cars, but the shaking it got would have made it far worse. Even the tyres passed which is surprising, as we are still on the original tyres and we've had the car 4 years now, we will change them this winter though as they are slowly starting to perish. As you can tell the dirt roads we have around here maybe tough on the suspension, but they are not so tough on tyres, unless there are nails in the roads of course and we have picked up a few of them along the way. The dirt roads have been particularly bad this spring and we have never seen such a bad state in all the time we have been here and not to such a large extent, think giant washboard and you might get the idea. We have a robust 4x4 and even we were travelling at 20km an hour to save the car and I have never seen so many Latvians travel so slowly, it was like serious off-roading on road. We were expecting the roads to remain bad over the Easter weekend and so were very surprised to see the grader out on the Saturday and I'm glad to say the roads are greatly improved.

We even have flowers now

That reminds me we learnt the word for potholes in Latvian this week, fortunately it was through the insurance lady when we were sorting out the comprehensive insurance or kasko as it is called here - it is a name that kind of worries me, as it reminds me of the word catastrophe and I know that is what we want to insure against but I would rather not be reminded of that, comprehensive sounds so much more friendly. Anyway just in case you are wondering the Latvian for potholes is bedre and there are plenty of them around on the tarmac roads at this time of the year (yes we do have some around here, they are not all dirt roads). For small cars they are definitely worth insuring against as some of those holes are deep and you can bet they won't have enough money to do a good job on the roads and so once again as soon as the frosts are a thing of the past then the guys with their lorries of hot tarmac will be out patching the patches. Getting our insurance was quite a mammoth performance as we managed without an interpreter (although we had been in about a month ago with an interpreter to check things through and so she knew we would be back). I think we were there about an hour which included her photographing the car and getting us to test the alarm. The question is though, how do you test the alarm without actually breaking into the car? We managed in the end by winding down the window, locking the car and then Ian waving his arm madly through the open window and eventually it went off. Nice to know it is not over sensitive - I think! Next she needed to take some photocopies of the registration document, but wasn't sure which way round to do the copies so that the front and the back of our document was visible on the same page, side by side (it would have me confused too), meanwhile the photocopier jammed too. Well eventually Ian and the insurance lady managed to get the thing sorted and we were finished, apart from nearly leaving the registration document in the photocopier - bit of a problem as you are supposed to travel with that at all times here in Latvia.

Coltsfoot

Having finished my thesis meant I had a real sense of freedom for the start of this Easter holiday, rather apt really. Friday was a lovely day, if a little cool and so I went out to the land with Ian to soak up some sunshine and do a little pottering about. On the whole it was a fairly restful day, until Ian wanted some help shifting some timber that is. He was sorting through the timbers to see what was leftover from building the barn, as we want to build a shelter for the caravan. It is a bit old to be left standing outside and it would be better under some kind of protection. We are thinking of making it a more enclosed shelter then we can have an area in front of it that we can sit and relax out of the weather, rather than sitting in the greenhouse. It was a bit tricky negotiating with some rather long pieces of wood and I managed to slip in the mud, no bones broken, no ankles twisted but managed to get caked in mud. Yuck! Must remember to leave some spare clothes in the caravan.

The little finger puppet I made. The fabric
is some I had dyed a while ago and had tested
machine stitches on it. So as you can
see there is a reason for me never throwing
out scraps of material

On the Saturday I still went out with Ian, but took some sewing, as it was lovely just to sit in the warmth of the greenhouse and sew. I sewed a little finger puppet for our neighbour's little girl as we were invited to her first birthday party. I love going to the kids birthday parties as it is a great chance to sit and listen to Latvian in full flow and our neighbours fill us in with some of the conversation so we don't feel left out. It is also lovely to feel included, even though we are quite a bit older than our neighbours who have children, but somehow that doesn't seem to matter. We were treated to rasols or a sort of sausage and potato salad and cake and plenty of cups of tea. We also got to try maple juice, the sap from the maple tree. We've tried birch juice before and that can be okay but usually it tastes of aspirin to me, but this maple juice tasted of a slightly sweet but refreshing water. I guess that is another new taste to add to a whole host of other things we have tried since living here. The storks also arrived back outside our other apartment on Saturday and so now it finally feels like Spring may have arrived.

Purple flowers too. Must try and find out
what they are, wouldn't mind but I planted
them. 

Sunday saw us heading off to see some friends of ours that we have made through my course. Simon has written academic papers about Latvia, some of the few that I have found whilst investigating topics for my coursework. I realised that Simon was not a common name in Latvia and did a bit of digging around on the internet and found some contact details and contacted him. I was really interested to know what his research had shown about Latvia and Latvians as I thought it might be useful. Although Simon does not live in Latvia, he does have a house here and when he comes along with his wife, he gets in touch and we meet up. Simon and his wife have a wealth of experience of different countries and development and they love Latvia and so we always have much to talk about. We had a very pleasant day with good food and talk and a walk around the area but it was a little disheartening to walk around as Simon showed us the new wild boar damage they have and it was pretty extensive, not deep but certainly a lot of turf turned over. After my research on wild boar damage in our area I can see there could be trouble ahead in his area unless the hunters get on the case and take some decisive action, which they maybe doing fortunately; hopefully they won't end up with the same scenario that has happened around here with wild boars digging up year after year after year.

Gathering up the hay, yet again. This will only be good for
mulching and composting but that suits us fine.

At least the snow on Sunday didn't amount to much and didn't even stick, which was a little surprising since you may recall, if you follow this blog, that as soon as the snow has just about gone it has snowed again. Our friends to the south weren't quite so lucky though this time as they had about 4 inches of snow (10cm). That did mean though that Monday saw another glorious if cold day, another good day for those piles of snow to continue to melt away and for the ground to start to dry up. We pottered around the land in the morning waiting for the ground to melt a little and I got some tomatoes potted on into bigger pots and in the afternoon we started on picking up the hay off the field that we hadn't had the chance to gather up before the weather turned bad last year. Most of it was remarkably dry, but some was heavy and sticky and the ground became squelchy in places - there's still a lot of water in that ground. I seemed to spent a lot of time shifting hay by hand over the last few years, hopefully this year it will just be in small bales and not using a pitchfork. We need to shift the hay, otherwise it makes it difficult later on in the year to cut the new hay and also it gives the grass a chance to grow back better. It is also less of an attractor to the wild boar and there is enough of that damage on our land this year already from before the winter. If the weather stays dry enough then we might be able to get out and start to sort out some of the damage and get some grass seed down, now that will be nice. Hopefully I won't be too sore tomorrow either. Nearly forgot, we sold another 7 bales of hay to our neighbour and so we have just about sold all our spare hay now and nearly covered all our costs - very pleased.

Sophie

Ian ordered me a birthday present this week, not so unusual you might think but it is. I have been known to wait two years to get a present and not only is this present actually ordered, it is ordered in plenty of time that I might even get a present on my birthday, as it isn't until much later on in the month - now there's a novelty.

There's no pontification this week but I will share a little about our cats, as I haven't shared much about them lately. They are quite talkative cats - is that because they are female cats or are they just noisy? I do wonder as we've only had male cats before. I think Sophie has learnt off Bella, who is definitely the nosier of the two. Bella just tends to be noisy when she wants something but Sophie seems to try and communicate. It is hilarious though when Ian sort of says "neowww, neowww" and Sophie then rolls over on the floor - I thought it was only dogs that rolled over for their owners. Being the fluffier of the two she also slides across the floor easier, which she seems to think is a great game and lets Ian do it quite a few times and comes back for more, he's even started calling her Slidy Soph. The cats are also enjoying their freedom a bit more as we let them out of the greenhouse and even took them down to the barn this week as we hope they will keep the mice at bay in there. Well there is another week on the Baltic equivalent of the Archers combined with the Little House on the Prairie as one friend described our tales.

Bella being noisy