Brrrrr!

A frosted thistle

It's cold! The rains stopped and the temperature plummeted. We had a mild frost last week but this morning we had a proper frost. It killed off the leaves on the grapevine and the uncovered tomato plants. I think even the beans that were under cover suffered. It was a lovely bright day today but oh when the sun went down it was chilly. It was a good job that our friend came to pick up our blue grapes a few days ago to make wine. I think I will have to sort out some ice-wine with the rest.

Frost accumulated on Ian's boots after a walk around the farm

It rained a lot this last week. The ponds are much fuller
now and the top pond is nearly full to overflowing. The
alpacas don't seem to have been that bothered though.
Sometimes a drop of rain and they go scurrying inside and
other times they don't even bother, they just carry on eating.
At least someone took shelter under a tree here.

Ian thinks he saw one of our bikes that I mentioned were stolen in last week's blog. If it was, it was someone very local who took it. It was tempting to walk off with it, but since it was a different colour,  due to a bad paint job and a different saddle we couldn't be 100% sure and it would have made us no better than whoever took ours. Every time I'm out and about now I'm looking at people's bikes to see if it is one of ours, which is kind of sad.

I don't think Freddie was under the tree in the rain though.
Although with such a sad face, you would think he should
 have.

I couldn't decide which photo of Freddie to use and so I used
both of them. I like the close up in the other one and the
contrast of his colour against the trees in this one.

At least it wasn't all sad this week. We had a visit from a friend who has been many times before and so we got to sit around and chat a bit. We had to eat our evening meal back at our apartment, as it was a tad too chilly to be sitting around talking. It worked out okay as she was staying in our apartment anyway. It felt odd dropping someone else off at the bus station though the next day as it is normally Ian dropping me off when I go on my travels.

Is Brencis singing in the rain?

Nope! The droopy mouth gives him away. He's been spitting

We decided to go out for a meal this week for Ian's birthday. His birthday was on Friday but since I had a Skype meeting on that day we decided to go out for lunch on the Thursday instead. As we are putting the animals away around 7pm it is easier for us to go out for lunch and then we have plenty of time to get back and plenty of time to eat. Most restaurants around here close at 8pm or maybe 9pm on the weekends and the one we went to was half an hour away and not the local one. It was a lovely meal with an interesting salad, which was beautifully arranged and plenty of colour. Besides the normal normal cucumber and tomatoes there were local berries. No I didn't take a photo.

What a hair do. 

Jakobs is no better. 

It is our son's birthday today, so happy birthday son! Ian will get to see him soon, so I am sure they will take the time to celebrate, although I think our son has lined up some jobs for Ian to do while he's there. It's funny to think he was once a little baby that I carried. I was thinking of that today when I went for an ultrasound. When a woman goes for an ultrasound when she is young it is often to check on a baby, but when you are my age it is to make sure that there is nothing more sinister there. I knew there wasn't. As I mentioned last week I've been feeling pretty good just lately and mainly over the menopausal wobbles. As I thought it was just a fibroid that I have known about for ages. Nothing to worry about and nothing to do. Perfect! That's what I like to hear.

But Ilvija wins the cutest wet hair do. I just love the curls

Ilvija's mother, Chanel, eating over the fence again

Of course being in Latvia did mean that the appointment itself wasn't so straightforward. My friend took the call from the hospital to book the appointment lats week and so I thought I just needed to turn up at the hospital. Apparently not! I think I should have had the usual note from the doctor anyway. When I got to the registration desk they were a bit bemused and told me there were no appointments for today. It was my turn to be bemused. I thought surely they should have my appointment on the records since they called me. Fortunately I still had the number on my phone and my friend rang to find out what the problem was. The people in the department then rang the registration desk. Problem solved! The lady at the registration desk even left the office to show me to the room. I'd been before but we had taken the long way round to get to it the last time obviously, much to our amusement.

Not amused at being caught

The boys playing twister again.

So we sat outside and waited. We even let a lady go in front of us as she had an earlier appointment but had to come back and she needed to catch a bus. No problem, we weren't in too much of a rush, even though we had been waiting a while already. We reminisced and talked about hospitally things. Ian has spent many an hour in a hospital, fortunately working most of the time and not in it for health reasons. Eventually I went in and the lady was lovely. She contacted her daughter at one stage to translate - as you do. Her daughter spoke good English because she is an English teacher. This might not be considered correct procedure in some places, patient confidentiality and all that, but at the end of the day it got the job done. I got to understand what was happening and that there was nothing to worry about so there will be no complaints from me. I just have to make sure that my GP gets the letter and the ultrasound scan. I texted my friend and said, "It's a boy! Hahaha not really."

Good for wearing down teeth, not so good for the tree though

George giving yoga lessons. Not sure I will be joining in

What a weird political week it has been, although weird seems the new normal. I've seen some things that have dismayed me and some things that have encouraged me. I have watched with interest the court case against the government about prorogation of the Parliament and wonder if this is going to be one of those let downs or another tale which requires suspension of disbelief. The rise of young people to defend the climate though, is the one that brings most hope to me. These children and young people are the future and they are rising up and declaring our political institutions are bankrupt. They are no longer fit for purpose as their own futures are at stake. We need a radical generation to take us into the future, ones prepared to get out and demand changes. We do well to listen to them instead of patronising them.

Here have you heard the latest?

No Aggie, you are supposed to prefer short grass

Mari shows where Jakobs gets his looks from

Short grass? Well I suppose it will save Ian time not having to
top the grass on a regular basis.

Yes it's getting cold. Jumpers and rain coat on

Not that the alpacas seem to mind. Mind you, there woolly
coats are growing well.

Please turn the lights down a bit, I have a headache or maybe
mmmmm sunshine at last. I think the latter really.

A frosty morning on the farm

Aggie looks happy to see the sun

The leaves on the trees are looking very autumnal

Everything changes and nothing changes

The sun has melted some of the snow off the oak tree

Well today, as normal, I am sat in the apartment that we have called home for the last ten years writing this blog, and yet the apartment is no longer ours. We signed some papers today to sell the apartment to an American family. Nothing changes yet though, as they are heading back to America later this week and we will gradually sort out and move out over the coming month or two. The paperwork is more a formality that needed to be done while they were in the country. The difference to us, is that this is now real, not just an idea. Now we have a proper timetable to work to. It is the slow closing of another chapter in our lives.

Ice-cream anyone?

Last week's frost on our orchard garden

We still have our other apartment of course and so we won't be out on the streets. The first and most pressing thing to do is to create more storage space. It is going to be tight for a while until we sort out what we are doing about a cabin and even then that will only be small, compared to this apartment we are vacating. I guess it doesn't help that house prices dropped so precipitously shortly after we moved here and never really recovered from that point. Still that's life and we are blessed in so many other ways here, for example with our land, alpacas, barn, caravan etc.

Iced flower heads

Ian has been having his morning coffee sat outside, some
mornings.

It feels like we have been backwards and forwards to the big town this week, as we had to take a trip to the hospital for me to have an ultrasound. This was something that the gynaecologist wanted me to have after she visited our village in November of last year. It takes time sometimes to get around to these things! I have no idea what it was for exactly, but that comes with the territory when there are language barriers and I couldn't be bothered with getting more information. We are kind of used to it. I think the ultrasound was fine from what little I understood. It is a good job that we are conversant in gestures though, as sometimes that is the only way to communicate without being constantly on the phone. It works and sometimes it quite funny trying to work out what people mean. At least today we had an official translator for the legal stuff, now that wouldn't work with gestures of just using a phone so well.

Herkules

A bit different from the frostier scenes last week

Some of our alpacas have been giving us a little cause for concern. First one of our youngsters, Freddie, doesn't seem to move his leg properly. He seems to swivel it as if there is something wrong with a joint and yet he doesn't seem to be in pain. Ian was concerned enough to decide he needed to see our vet. Since he is only small we decided to take him to her rather than drag her out to us. Well at least we thought he was only small, it turns out he was a bit bigger than we anticipated but still small enough to get in the car and sit on Ian's lap - well kind of. He is more fleece than anything, but still he took up a lot of space.

Mari is always up for the challenge of finding the food at
the back of the feeder. Is it any wonder she had to be scalped
last year to get the straw out of her hair

Not a good photo, but a picture of Ian with
Freddie at the vets. We were joking that
maybe we should bring him again later on
in the year as he was certainly attracting some
interest. You can't see the row of ladies all
lined up just out of shot, cooing over him

He was quite calm in the car and even when we took him into the vets and people were coming and going and fussing over him, he was still quite calm. We were quite surprised. The problem is that he wouldn't really walk about much, which means our vet couldn't see what the problem was with his leg. Like us, she couldn't find any painful spots or anything that seemed swollen, when she examined his leg. In the end we put him on a lead and took him outside, which Ian didn't really want to do because he hasn't been halter trained yet. He wasn't terribly happy about that and he jumped around and kicked on the icy car park. We were worried he was going to do more damage to his leg and so Ian got hold of him. For the first time ever that I know of, he squealed his displeasure and started spitting. I don't blame him though. Once inside again he calmed down fortunately. So we still don't really know what the problem is. He has been given some vitamin D and other bone and ligament type medicines to be going on with. Maybe it will improve when he gets on the grass, at least we are reasonably sure he isn't in pain anyway.

Winter sunrise

Freddie with his mum, Chanel

The other alpaca of particular concern is his mum, Chanel. She also has a problem with the same leg, which seemed to start after we got back from taking Freddie to the vet. Typical! This time we found a hot spot though and her foot was definitely swollen. She is on antibiotics and an anti-inflammatory. She now seems to be walking on her foot better, but she is a little shivery. She is quite a sweaty alpaca and we think this might be causing her problems in our current cold weather. Another issue with her is that whereas Aggie and Lady V seem to be responding well to the magic cream, it is hard to say with her due to her dark skin. It is easier to see if the red spots are healing on a white alpaca, not so easy on Chanel. She also seems to have a problem with lots of crusty skin and we are beginning to think she is one of those zinc dependent alpacas. The newer feed has less of that but more balanced in other things. We need to work out a way of getting more zinc into her and then see if that helps with her general skin problems. Sigh! At least the boys seem okay.

Aggie enjoying some sunshine and actually outside the
alpaca house.

My ski tracks from last week are still visible

In between all that I continue with my writing. It is a funny process for me. I always seem to be getting somewhere when it seems to throw up some missing aspect that needs addressing. When I address that, it then seems to be even further away from being complete. At least at the moment I feel like it is all coming back together now. I hope one full day will see it pretty much ready to go to my supervisor for looking at. Then I will probably get the other one back to do more work on. And so it goes, everything changes and nothing changes in that respect too. At least one piece of work should be finished by tomorrow and that is the brochure for our Latvian Alpaca Adventure. It has taken perhaps a bit too long, but better late than never. So watch out for the news later on this week.

Lady V. Despite her age, she still produces some lovely
fleece.

So that's about it for this week, Ian has been spinning Lady V's wool in the evenings and we now have a collection of hanks lying on the back of the settee as you do. I actually read a real book. A non-fiction book at that. It was good to be reading again. It is a book by someone I "met" through this blog, called Bill or William as his book says. The book is called Jim Wrenn (by William Guerrant) and is based on a news article he saw about a lady who wanted a new home for her children because she couldn't look after them any more. He imagined what happened next. It really emphasised the precariousness of life before social safety nets and proper working conditions in factories, a situation that sadly many people across the world still face today, even though this was set in the early part of twentieth century America. I enjoyed the book particularly as it wasn't a rosy story, it was one that did not gloss over the hardships of life, especially in a rural farming community.  I look forward to the next book, as I understand that Bill is in the writing process too.