How's your Irish?

10:30pm and still a lot of light left in the sky

You can never say that my life is boring just lately. On the one hand I have been able to relate to a post on the Ploughs and stars project blog, where the author is pictured lying in the field exhausted, just resting his aching back and gazing up at the sky and on the other hand I needed to rest my aching brain, after translating from Irish English to Latvian English. Our neighbours who own a wood products company were a little nervous at the prospect of a meeting with an Irishman about some business and discussing everything in English. I usually take the phone calls, as it is always pretty difficult to speak another language over the phone with no visual clues as to whether you are being understood or not and usually face to face meetings are easier. No disrespect to the Irish, but they do love a good "crack" (translation talk) and at quite a pace too.  I think it is quite a while since I have had to keep up with talking in English at quite that speed, even though I did have a lovely chat with an Irish lady, a friend of my daughter's, whilst in Australia. I'm not really sure if the meeting was successful or not, our neighbours will have a lot to discuss, but at least the actual meeting went smoothly enough and I think the translation went well.

I haven't really been lying in the fields, but it is tempting. The problem is I am always afraid of the multiple varieties of insect life we have in our grassland to actually just lie down in it and that is from previous experience. Ian has continued to cut down a lot of the grass to try and reduce the problems of the flying biting ones that we have a lot of in the early summer and the hope is that it will make life more pleasant for the alpacas this year. We have already started with the mosquitoes, but fortunately they are more of an evening insect and hot weather or windy weather keeps them at bay and makes for a more pleasant time. Everything is growing at such a pace now and of course the grass is no sooner cut than it looks like it might need doing again. I have got quite a bit more gardening done as well as managing to end up with sunburn on my lower back - note to self, where a longer t-shirt of put suncream on there. I also took advantage of a couple of rainy days to work in the greenhouse, a job that has become almost impossible on the sunnier days, consequently all our tomatoes are now in and most of the melons. We are trying two new varieties of melons this year, to see how they fare - Lada and Vidzeme.

That rather thick custard is an absurdly yellow colour, not
from food colourings but due to the eggs our chickens lay.
We have had bright yellow cakes and intensely yellow
boiled eggs too, all because our chickens get access to grass

We have eaten well this last week, asparagus has been featuring widely in the diet - don't worry not too often, especially with its rather embarrassing consequences. One evening I prepared an asparagus, onion leaves, and pea-top omelette, served on a bed of lettuce that had grown from seeds leftover from feeding chickens with gone to seed lettuces and carrots that had been stored over winter. The only items not grown ourselves was the salt and oil and even the oil was a cold-pressed rapeseed oil from Latvia. Other treats were the scotch pancakes served with dandelion syrup that I made last week. That syrup worked rather well, so well in fact that Ian helped me pick a bucketful of dandelion flowers so that I can make some more of it. It is a long time since I have had any maple syrup, but that is what comes to mind when I taste the dandelion syrup. We have had dried apple slices, as we tried out the solar dryer that Ian made last year and that failed due to the lack of sun, or solars as we keep saying. This year a day in the solar drier and the apple has been just about successfully dried. We have so many eggs that we are having difficulty keeping up, but I'm guessing we will have plenty of help soon as our new chicks are ready for hatching out in about 10 days time and about that time we start with the influx of family visitors. We candled the eggs (shone a really bright light through them to see if there is life) and found that three definitely have not been fertilised and two are suspect, but the rest seem to be developing well. So keep watching this space for lots of cute chick pictures soon.

Our eggs in the incubator

I have had to balance the gardening with my uni work though, as I have a few rather close deadlines for things that need completing. One of them is a study plan, that has taken far too long to sort out, but it is now acceptable and ready for sending off. I also have an academic paper to write for a conference that had to be fitted into two pages and not the normal length of a paper which seems to be around 12 pages. It is my first attempt at writing one of these and there were a few new things to learn along the way, such as having to look up "corresponding" in the dictionary for a new version of the word, as in a person who deals with written communication. I had just never used the word that way. When I told Ian, he looked at me in surprise that I didn't know that. Okay I know you have correspondents who write articles for newspapers but corresponding to me was always used in terms of something matching something else, like someone's views corresponding with someone else's views. I am quite pleased that it didn't take too long to write and didn't require a lot of amendments. That is always helpful. There are times I can completely miss the point and fortunately this wasn't one of them.

The prodigal returned, looking a little dishevelled

I forgot to mention our cat went missing for a couple of days last week, she returned on the night we were shearing Herkules our alpaca. I don't know why she gets wanderlust, but it seems to be a regular thing with her. Last year she disappeared about three times, sometimes up to a week at a time. That was usually after a telling off or after she was given tablets which seem to traumatise her. This year, there didn't seem to be any reason at all, unless she was doing a thorough sweep of our forest for tics - she is an absolute tic magnet. Hopefully though the tic medicine will soon sort her out and keep the wee beasties at bay.

It is often said that "there is nothing new under the sun," in fact it is a saying from the time of Solomon, so it has been around a looooong looooong time. The quote below could have been taken from yesterday's paper, the subject matter is so relevant, although perhaps nowadays it is not just Continental farm-produce but worldwide produce.

The fact, however, that Continental and other farm-produce of all kinds can be sold in our own markets at less than would be its cost of production in this country, while the quality is often superior, goes far to prove that there is something in their knowledge of the subject and that it is not all the result of cheap labour or a better climate. "Stephen's Book of the Farm"(1888)

Ian has been reading this book in his downtimes in the caravan and finding it fascinating. The book was used in the programme Victorian Farm as a reference book for most of their activities. It helps to know what some of the more primitive implements were used in the smaller scale farms and how some things were harvested or stored in a less technological age. Sometimes it is good to revisit the past and see if there is anything that has been forgotten about that might actually be relevant for today, it is also good to find out the things that are best forgotten about for good. Not all old practices were bad and not all old practices were good.

Still waiting to go out in the garden, more squash plants.
Let's hope they fare better than one lot, which is being
inundated with snails.

Well I have nearly finished waffling on, but just want to finish off by one of the low points of this week. Having flown all the way to Australia, we had been hoping for a nice lot of points put on our Eurobonus airmiles card, but no! Between Scandinavian airlines, Singapore airlines and Star Alliance the partnership they operate under we find we are not going to get the points. When you book you are allocated a booking class and for some reason the ones we were booked onto, was for booking class Y that does not accrue any points. The problem I have with it, is no one books to get a particular class of ticket, you just book the cheapest on the day, whatever that might be. It seems therefore an utter lottery as to whether the flights are due to get points or not. It doesn't exactly make me feel inclined to be loyal to either airline either now. I think I will be looking at other loyalty cards then, as I will be doing a lot of travelling over the next four years.

Help needed!

Oh yes! That's me in shorts and my
Australian hat. I didn't buy the hat in
Australia, I bought it in Colorado. As
for the shorts, they won't be appearing
much for a while, not because we are
expecting cool weather, but the
mosquitoes have decided it is summer too

Well if anyone fancies a week or two doing lots of exercise, we have a few jobs that you can help with. We are well into the busy period now, so many things have been done and still a lot more to do. Once all the seeds are planted, small plants planted up, then it is just weeding ........ continuously until the end of the season. Actually there is usually a bit of a lull before the harvesting starts and then there is quite a bit of time spent preparing vegetables for storage, but that is still to come. This week we saw high temperatures, more akin to summer than late spring, 25C - 30C (77F-86F). It is a bit of a shock after such a long winter and, as I mentioned last week, everything seems to be hurrying along to summer, including the weather. We've had several thunderstorms already, accompanied by our electric going off for up to several hours. Not what we really want when we have eggs in the incubator. At least the storms have brought some needed rain and so the grass is starting to grow quite quickly now - good news for our alpacas. The trees have also continued in their race towards summer, in only approximately two weeks the trees have gone from virtually bare sticks to full leaf, the change has been quite staggering.

How about that for a lawn then! 

It is not just grass that is growing of course, the ground elder and dandelions too. The dandelions look so pretty as they colour up the landscape with swathes of yellow, but not exactly what we want to see when we are trying to improve the grassland. Ian has been doing mega lawn cutting marathon to try and keep the yellow peril down and I have tried making dandelion honey with the flowers, since we don't have any bee honey at the moment. I thought if this works like the internet article said it would then it would be cheaper than buying any. As it turned out, it made a passable syrup anyway, I needed to boil it a bit more obviously, but I haven't really been at home enough to do that. I found the idea for the dandelion honey when I was confronted with a meal that was decorated with dandelion flowers and I wanted to know if they really were edible or just for decoration. I know the leaves and the roots are fine, but wasn't sure about the flowers. Fortunately the cafe I was in had Wifi and I had my computer with me and so I did a quick search before eating.

Herkules had decided to sit down on
the job, so most of the shearing was
done on the floor.

Keeping the grass cut is not just for improving the grassland to get rid of ground elder, dandelions, wild raspberries and nettles but also to keep the fly population down that bother our alpacas so much. This is especially important as we shear them. Some friends of ours came around from the nearby camp to help us today and lend us their shears, so we had some idea of what to do. Mind you, our helper has only sheared one sheep before, but at least he knew more than we did. Between him and Ian they did a pretty good job and Herkules, our first victim... errr volunteer didn't look as bad as some people's first attempts at shearing, judging from the stories. I think we worked quite well as a team (I said we needed help), there was a young guy who is really strong and he made sure Herkules was pinned down and Ian and our friend took turns in the shearing, mainly our friend, but Ian did have a go. He also got his nails clipped while he was down on the ground. I sorted the fleece out into two sorts, the really good fleece and the rest. It should be sorted out into more than that, but I wasn't sure the cutting would be quite good enough this time around to make a second quality cut. It will probably have plenty of other uses, either as a stuffing for toys or duvets or something like that. Herkules isn't our best quality animal and so it will be interesting to see what the fleece is like off our other two animals.

Here what are you doing in there?
And can we come in, it's raining

In preparation for the shearing we had to clean out the alpaca hut. We use the deep bed system, which basically means that hay is continually piled up on top of hay and only cleaned out once a year. It is nowhere near as bad as it sounds as straw or hay is quite absorbent and as long as there is plenty of fresh hay on the top it doesn't smell bad either. It is also more hygienic than you might think. Ian has reduced the poop pile in the middle from time to time so they aren't standing on a mound, but apart from that this is the first time we have cleaned them out properly since they came back in July. It was a job we were dreading, but in the end it wasn't as bad as we had feared and we had got the job done by the end of the morning. Mind you, the alpacas were hovering, partly because they are always very curious about what we are doing and have to stand have a good gawp and because of the heat, they wanted to be in the cool of the shelter. Who said that alpacas like to be outside all the time? They haven't met ours, they go into the shelter if it rains, if it is too sunny and if it is too cold. Sensible creatures really.

Finishing off

Like I said, it is our busy period and so Ian has sown the buckwheat crop, as it doesn't look like we will have a frost in the foreseeable future and I have sown broad beans, lettuce, radish, squashes, more pepper plants, apple, pear, ash tree, plum and some sweetcorn. The tree seeds are just to see what comes, we love to experiment. The sweetcorn I have planted both under cover and out in the open, since the temperatures have risen so much, but I have planted them quite deep. I have risked putting some squashes outside as the forecast is not for particularly cold nights and I have put them under fleece anyway to protect them from the fierce heat. Even our chickens are busy at the moment as they are regularly laying 6 eggs a day between them, we even think our broiler hen, who we have nicknamed big bird as she is even bigger than the cockerel is laying too. I did wonder if she was getting to fat, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

Now who's a pretty boy then!

Don't you dare laugh! 

On my journey home on the bus. A small taste of Estonia

As I mentioned last week I was in Tartu for my studies. Monday I did a presentation, that I thought went well and the fact later on in the week I was asked to lecture to some MSc students seemed to confirm that. Unfortunately there was no way I could really go up just for one lecture this week, but  I mentioned that I will not have any problems in the autumn semester and the lecturer who asked me was happy with that. I had a meeting with my supervisors on the Tuesday and finally managed to clarify what I'm doing now, so the study plan should be finished this week, rather late but since I don't seem to be doing anything normally then that is fine. Wednesday, I took THE exam! Statistics! I made some really stupid mistakes on the exam, but fortunately did enough to get through. I also finished the statistics assignment and I'm just waiting to see if that was enough to pass or not. To cap the week for my studies, I managed to book on for a conference in Italy and I booked the flights too. It all seems a bit surreal, one moment I'm planting seeds, helping with sorting wool from alpacas and the next planning to jet of to Italy for a conference.

Another view from the bus. It was a glorious day

I sent off my passport this week to be renewed. It isn't due until December, but this is the time I will be doing least travelling and so needed to do it now. I was rather disgruntled though to find that even though it costs £72.50 in the UK, I have to pay £126 and a courier fee of £19.86. I am not sure why being outside the country should make a difference as it still has to go back to the UK to be processed. I can understand the extra courier fee but not the extra £53.50. I wonder how they manage to justify the extra expense? I kind of understood when it was processed abroad, but not now it is all sent to the UK anyway, it just seems very wrong.

On our way home from the land

I was quite relieved to hear this week that the EU can make sensible proposals if they want to. There was some concern that all seeds, regardless of origin would have to be subject to stringent standards. This could have affected small companies that sells seeds, the local seed swap or the larger seed swap organisations that aim to improve the availability of heritage seeds or open pollinated varieties. I realise that biosecurity is an issue, both from the harm that can happen when doling out diseased seed but also to unwanted additions to DNA. The fact is that it is not often that small swaps of seeds are going to lead to big problems with disease or large escapes of resistant crops, it is big business where that happens most often. In fact is is the small seed swappers who keep heirloom varieties or landrace varieties (plants specific to an area and well adapted to that area) alive, these are the sort of seeds that are dropped by large scale commercial growers. If we lose these small varieties we have an even bigger biosecurity problem because it reduces the gene pool we have access to whenever a disease threatens to wipe out certain types of plants or trees.

More help needed. Can anyone identify these flowers for
us. It is a vine with lemony scented leaves.

Spring is here... or is it summer?

The leafy lanes of Tartu. This is taken on
the hill near the centre of Tartu where
the ruins of a Cathedral lie and the vague
outline behind the statue is the outline
of those ruins

What a difference a week makes. It is almost as if spring is racing into summer. One week the trees are all bare, the next they are covered in rapidly expanding leaves. Normally we see a more gradual change, but this year, the late winter has meant there are some trees playing catch up and all seem to be developing at once. I'm back up in Tartu again this week and it has been so nice to walk along the paths that are not covered in ice and, despite the thunderstorm this morning, the temperature is rather pleasant. The last time I was up in Tartu, I was constantly afraid of going outside, in case I slipped on the ice again and hurt my arm even more. My field of vision was reduced to the path in front of me and it took an intense level of concentration to walk on them. This week I have been able to saunter along, taking in the peacefulness of leafy lanes. Watching the guys out on the grass doing push ups and laughing to myself at the fact they had started off so fast but were now struggling to keep going, still they managed more than I could do, perhaps I shouldn't have been laughing to myself. It must have been a club of some sort out training, but I didn't manage to work out what kind of sport they might be training for.

I'm not quite sure what this bridge is here for, but it is on
the same hill as the ruins. There looks to be an observation
point on the top of the mound, but what is viewable from
up there I don't know as the trees have grown up so much
around it. There was also a young couple up there and so
I didn't want to interrupt.

Last week was a week for planting, interspersed with revising for the dratted statistics or attempting the assignment. Ian managed to get the gardens rotavated and the flatter plot ridged up, which meant that we could get the potatoes in and we finished off the last two bags of onion sets too. One plot is on a slope and requires short ridges across the slope to catch the water and stop run off of nutrients and so that plot needs ridges putting in by hand, not as easy as using the ridger on the two wheeled tractor, but doable. At least the soil is not heavy clay and even after a shower the night before it was still easy to work. The plot that could be ridged was much easier to do and we just made holes with my spade, which is smaller, and pop the potatoes in. We won't hoe them up, but put straw around them as they grow to reduce the weeds. The British way of putting them in, maybe more productive, but is so much harder to do and in a wet year would mean the potatoes are sat in water, this way they are sat in the ridges and water can pool underneath them and we still get a reasonable amount of potatoes out of them at the end of the year.

Freedom! The alpacas have been given an even bigger area
to eat from now that the grass is growing well. The area
they had last week, only lasted about two days, before they
had eaten most of it down. They look so white against
the green grass!

Many of our tomatoes are planted in the greenhouse now, but still covered in fleece to protect them from the strong sunlight and any danger of low temperatures. In a few weeks time I will take the fleece off and start tying them up to the metal wires we have running along the length of the greenhouse for support. It is exciting to see the young plants bursting their way through from the trays I planted up and, before I left for Tartu, there were cabbages, chinese cabbage, calabrese, pumpking nut squashes and sweet meat squashes, amongst others, all starting to poke through. Ian also planted up one of our ploughed areas with oats, whilst I continued planting up carrots and beetroot outside. It has been dry since the snow melted and the ground needed a shower to encourage more grass growth and seeds to germinate and we have had that now. By next week I will probably be moaning about the weeds.

We don't have many problems getting them put away now,
they just follow Ian into the shed whenever, he has their
evening feed in hand. He doesn't even herd them in.

I had an interesting time this morning meeting with fellow doctoral students, all a little further on than me, even if it is just a semester. It makes a change from sowing seeds anyway. I was so pleased to hear another student was also struggling with the statistics course, as I at least felt it wasn't just me, not so good for her though. I also found out that doing the course in Estonian wasn't any easier, even though the slides for the lectures are all in Estonian. The task for today was to give a presentation about me and the aims of my research. Being a little older than most students meant my introduction was perhaps a tad longer than most, but folks enjoyed it and there were questions not just about the topic of my research, but also about the alpacas we are raising. My fellow statistics sufferer said it had always been a dream of hers to have some land and alpacas. Maybe we can sell her some in the future.

The carpet of wood anemones look wonderful

On a completely different note, one of the things I have found I am getting quite good at is spotting what I have found out are called Spambots. They are comments that people/companies put on blogs to encourage others to click through onto their webpages. It is obviously too much hassle for them to actually personalise their comment on the blog and so they tend to be fairly vague in their wording, with phrases that are so general they can apply to many different blogs. The trick to working out whether a comment is a spambot, is there is no reference to the blog post at all, not in any direct way anyway.  usually check a comment that I'm suspicious of by copying it into google and seeing what comes up. If the same comment comes up all over the place, then I definitely delete it. If you want to know what I mean and see some of the types of comments that are posted all over the blogosphere here is a site with a list of them. It makes quite entertaining reading.

Ian grading the road with our friend's grader he welded
together. It has helped a lot to flatten out the ruts and bumps
on the road and where the wild boar have been. The areas
have also been raked and seeded with a hay mix of seeds

Updated broken link

The Spring flood!

Spring has sprung. The alpacas in the distance (the white
specks on the opposite side) have been let out of their
paddock to feed on green grass. Unfortunately we still have
bare earth from the winter damage too.

Whoosh and now it's spring! Well that's what it feels like. We left Latvia with a half metre of snow, or thereabouts and temperatures of -18C and when we return the snow is gone, although there are the odd spots where snow has been heaped up in shadowy areas and they still linger, but that is all. It was quite disorientating, all the landmarks we were used to over the winter had disappeared, all the high banks at the side of the road had melted away and there was even a blush of green around the fields. We've had lovely weather since we arrived back, but it is still cool due to a cool wind, but it has meant we can get on with some of the many jobs we need to do to be able to feed ourselves and the animals over the next year.

The voles were busy over winter too. Those
channels through our little blackcurrant
bush cuttings are the remnants of the vole
runs. Hopefully our cats have been doing
their job, as I haven't seen many of the little
critters around.

We said we would hit the ground running and we have, fortunately our flood is more the flood of work that needs doing and not the real floods that parts of Latvia have suffered due to the rapid Spring thaw. On the first day after our return we headed out to the land and stayed out there until about 8pm, so we took all our meals with us. I also took my computer, as I still have my statistics to revise for and an assignment to finish. So in between revising, I planted onions and peas, unwrapped the young trees in the orchard from their winter plastic coats, sorted out the herb bed and flattened molehills of which there were many in the orchard plot. That was the first day.

A combination of damage from clearing snow, trying to
drive on muddy roadways and laying the cable at the
end of last year. Hopefully by the time Ian has graded this
lot and a spot of rain on it at the weekend, we will have a
green and pleasant land once again and not a muddy mess

I am so grateful for spending time making the beds from rotted wood chippings two years ago as they are so easy to deal with - no digging over at all, just remove the weeds and rake over a bit. I did add some alpaca manure at the end of last year to the beds as wood chippings alone are not enough to feed the plants, but apart from that I haven't put a lot of work into them. It does mean I managed to sow onions, parsnips, peas, carrots, beetroot, spinach and salad leaves outside with no bother this week. It is a good job that the beds don't need digging over much anyway as my arm still aches, although it is much better than it was. It aches because I am doing more and more with it, and it protests. My guts are still not right either after that course of antibiotics I had a few weeks ago and I had to resort to the medicine cabinet yet again this week (not that you really wanted to know that, but that's my life at the moment).

First area ploughed

Ian's been busy too and he has two areas ploughed with the two wheeled tractor - much better on slightly wet soil than getting the big tractor out. They are ready now, one for buckwheat and one for an oat clover mix. The oats didn't do well in the wet last year and lodged (fell over) and got a disease called rust (because it looks like rust spots on it) but the clover is still there and some will be turned in and some allowed to continue growing. We are going to plough strips into the clover, as we don't need the whole field for peas, beans, squash and marigolds. Just in case you are wondering, the marigolds are for the chickens to give nice golden yolks and can be used in food for us as well. Ian has also borrowed a grader from a friend, to level the damage done by the wild boar in the autumn of last year. Normally he would use a chain harrow on the fields after winter to level small damage and molehills, but the damage this year was too extensive and needs a more robust piece of equipment.

We managed to fit in a quick visit to the local Spring market this week, so we got some lovely local cheese and two sacks of seed potatoes. One lot of our potatoes we don't want to use again for seed due to the possibility of blight, so starting with a fresh batch seemed the best move. The other batch are full of small potatoes that have sprouted and we will chuck them on the ground and cover with straw, if they come they come, if they don't they don't. Well that's the theory anyway.

One of the difficulties we have of living here is not speaking the language, but it is not always a problem and we are not the only ones that struggle. I saw a local I knew and stopped for a chat, he's actually German and doesn't speak much Latvian, so our conversation was conducted in German and English, but somehow we managed to understand each other. Shows how communication can happen despite the barriers. He now knows we were in the UK and Australia visiting grandchildren and I now know he saw our neighbour driving our car around.

The mess we call the greenhouse, before we
took out the caravan and chicken arks. All
the fleece hanging down is because of the
cats, who have treated the fleece as a
challenge, to see how far they can walk
across it before falling through it. That was
up there to give a bit of shade in the summer
and prevent a little heat loss in the winter!

The post holiday blues, caught me out though and I was feeling a little overwhelmed on our return. The statistics still looms large and I have still to fix a date to take the exam. I have got as far as fixing the week, but not the actual day. The gardening jobs are also stacking up, and we needed to move the caravan and chickens out of the greenhouse, so that is available for planting up with tomato plants which are busy taking over our living room. It took a walk and a song to get me set right again, or at least the title of a song. Adele's song "I set fire to the rain" seemed to shake the lethargy. It is such a ridiculous concept really, but I have felt in someways that we've done that before, done things against the odds and things have turned out okay. If we've done it before, then we can do it again. We feel God has given us this path to walk and if he has, then he doesn't do that without providing the skills and the wherewithal to do it. And if we stray from the path? Well I also trust God to let us know.

Ian backing up to the greenhouse

Caravan on its way out after nearly 7 months of being cooped
up inside

Summer position

Sometimes we expect life to be conducted at 100mph and sometimes it just feels like that is what it is doing, whether we like it or not. But life isn't like that all the time, or it shouldn't be. Life is full of ebbs and flows, season of activity and seasons of dormancy where nothing seems to be actively growing, something that Mark Pixley in his blog talks about. Living life at full pelt will lead to burnout and that is something I'm very conscious of, I've seen it happen far too many times for my liking. Some people can hack it, but from my observations they can only do that by screening out other things and in so doing don't absorb the stress. I wonder if they miss out on other things though, well that's not for me to know. I think one of the antidotes to living life at full pelt is to have a garden, especially a vegetable garden. It is in the garden that you can begin to appreciate the ebb and flow of the seasons. It is in tending the garden that you can see the point of removing some of the good things in life to let other things grow and develop better and at the end of the year, when the frosts come, there is not much to do apart from tidy up and dream of next years crops and pour over seed magazines, the ebbing of the year. I'm not the only one who thinks it is good to reconnect with a garden, as Nancy Sleeth says

"Oh, if every church and school had a garden, how different this world might be! Caring for a garden provides something that cannot be purchased at the grocery store: the satisfaction of eating food planted, tended, and harvested with our own hands. A garden cultivates gratitude, reminding us that every ounce of food that passes our lips ultimately comes from God. And as any experienced gardener will attest, a garden keeps us humble — constantly aware that the enemy, entropy, is very much alive."

Seems like as good a reason as any!

If it's Monday it's.......

This has been my blurry view for much of this week. I spent
a lot of time sitting staring out of the window, whilst our
son drove us up and down the country. Hope he doesn't
need a week off to recover

What a week! We seem to have spent most of it on the road or eating. Of course we started off our journey by plane as we flew from Perth in Australia to the UK via Singapore. The planes had much better air conditioning this time and were nice and cool. On a 13 hour flight that is quite important I think. The outward journey was a little stuffy. What I do like about the Singapore flights are the friendly staff and the relatively good food. Even the tomatoes and prawns had taste, which can be a rare things these days. We did wonder if we were going to have an incident though as a couple of men got a little irate as they wanted a smoke. They didn't seem to comprehend that smoking is banned on the flights, even if they are that long. It was the one and only time I saw the staff not smiling and talking quite abruptly to any passengers. With voices raised I wondered if they were going to end up being restrained, but in the end they settled down and we didn't hear much else from them. Not sure if it was the alcohol that rendered them quiet or the staff had worked their magic.

Spring captured!

Our eldest son and his family picked us up from Heathrow. We were all dreading the journey, as the English road system is not noted for its free flowing traffic at the best of times and late afternoon is about the worse time to travel, or so we thought. It has been known for it to take us eight hours to drive from London to Sheffield a distance of 168 miles (270km) and an expected journey time of 3 hours, but this time the journey was relatively problem free. We of course had to stop, so the little one wasn't continually cooped up in his car seat and so all of us could stretch our legs. There was only one point in the journey when our hearts sank as we saw the cars stacking up, but we quickly realised it was purely due to cars slowing down to see a very recent accident of about five cars or vans, on the opposite carriageway, so recent the emergency services were still some distance away. Once passed the accident, the traffic speeded up and we were safely on our way, unlike the opposite side, which was already stacked up for several miles.

Pops and our grandson having a laugh
after a nappy (diaper) change

Our first stop was with some good friends of ours who we had planned to stay at a couple of years ago, but couldn't because it snowed so heavily. On the night we were due to stay we wouldn't have got to their place the snow was that bad, or if we had got there we would have been stuck for several days - a risk we couldn't take because we were heading to parents before heading to Australia for our first visit and our daughter's wedding. Thankfully, although the weather was cool and England has experienced a bad winter, we weren't hampered by the snow this time around. Sometimes when we meet friends we have known for a long time, we wonder if we will ever see them again - no not because we are that old or they are, but because our paths take us on such different trajectories. Even though we have shared many years together as our children have grown, our lives have taken us to different places and much as we would like to, we can't visit every one. Thank goodness for social networks then that help us to stay in touch.

Ian's mother and our little grandson

Next was our journey up North, to the Northern most shire in the land, Northumberland. Jokes were flying about the land that would gradually turn black and white, and then the appearance of the horse and carts. Well it didn't quite turn black and white, but browner as spring gradually lost its grip and we entered a world where winter had only just slipped away. There was much evidence of the effects of the hard winter with bare patches in fields or even some fields still waterlogged. It never ceases to amaze me how a few hundred miles can make such a difference in the climate. The weather may not have been warm, but as usual the welcome was. We managed to meet many of Ian's nearest relatives, his mother, his brothers and their wives, and even one of his nieces, who also has a little one we haven't seen before, born since our last visit. We did find out where Ian gets his baby whispering gift from though, his mother. Despite his mother being in her mid-80's and in poor health, she could still cuddle in our son's little one and get him off to sleep without much bother.

A family get together. Ian's niece is at the back on the left
and her daughter at the front. 

Great-grandma number 2 gets another cuddle
and it looks like our grandson is attempting
to sing a song

Next stop was to my parents house and a meal with my sister and her family. Although we are similar in age, I am almost two years older, my sister has a younger family than I do, she had one of 13 and one who is 2. The two year old is a little whirlwind and reminds me so much of our youngest. I have to say, I was grateful to have had my whirlwind when I was 25 and not now. Fortunately the little chap is a sweety with lovely curly locks, just rather active. It was really lovely to see his older sister, taking part in keeping him entertained too, that must be a great help for my sister for some of the time at least, but I can understand what she means when she is so tired at the end of the day.

A Lancashire view from my parent's house

Blue skies on our return to Southern shires

And so we wended our way back down South, gradually entering a greener and greener land, with more and more flowers. Our luck with the traffic also held out, even as we entered into Coventry to see my little whirlwind - only he is not such a little one or a whirlwind any more. He has grown up and is now in his last year at Uni, nearly ready to set off into the world of work. We could only spend a few hours with him, which for his part is probably just as well as he draws his work to a close and gets closer to his deadlines. He had promised his older brother and wife a Christmas present and somehow didn't manage to get one, so a bacon and brie baguette sandwich was on order as a belated present. We wished each other a Merry Christmas and bemoaned the lack of fairy lights, as you do on such occasions- yes we are all completely batty. At least it meant that my son finally got to meet his nephew for the first time and we got to see a bit more of his fiancé and her daughter.

Kite-surfers catching the waves

And now is the last day of our excursion. Ready for home after a month away and much travelling, but sad to be saying goodbye to our little grandson and his Mum and Dad. We have had a lovely time, with much laughter, much food - which all seems to have gone up in price since we left the UK ten years ago and probably an extra few inches of baggage around the middle (not sure the Banoffie pie today helped), as well as the extra baggage in our suitcases. So Latvia, here we come once again!

Chilled out in Oz

Yay! Oh little granddaughter, already growing up fast

Our little granddaughter is gorgeous, but then you would expect me to say that wouldn't you? In just the nearly two weeks we have been here, there are many changes going on, she is starting to take notice and you would almost think she really is smiling at you and it isn't just wind. We haven't got up to much whilst here, having a baby around with frequent feeds, does tend to curtail outdoor activities. My health hasn't helped either. I was back to the dentists for a second prescription of antibiotics after the first lot didn't agree with my system. Fortunately with the second prescription and the recommended probiotics I actually felt human for the first time in weeks and I am finally off the painkillers.

We did manage a short walk and were rewarded with the
sight of some wallabies

So much of our time here in Perth has been hanging around at home, taking trips out to the shops, taking the baby out for a walk to let Mum sleep and in the process testing out the waterproofness of the new pram - fortunately it passed, and a barbecue. We have been looking at the photo updates from back home in Latvia and the snow has now almost gone, with quite a rapid thaw in the last few days and so barbecue weather may have arrived or be about to arrive in Latvia, whereas here it was just about the last of the season with temperatures finally cooling, much to the relief of our daughter and son-in-law. It has been an unpleasantly humid summer for them here.

Not the most glamourous of photos, but showed I did get a
look in, in the cuddles stakes. Grandad is still the best at
getting little ones off to sleep

My daughter surprised me at the barbecue by putting candles into the cupcakes she had made and getting everyone to sing happy birthday to me. I hadn't realised that was what she intended to do with the cupcakes and nearly spoilt the surprise by tucking into one, as she was busy feeding the baby during the barbecue. Fortunately no one else decided to follow my lead. My birthday is not actually until today and so the celebrations have continued on this our last day of our visit to Oz. I have been thoroughly spoilt, first by my son-in-law going out first thing to get us croissants for breakfast, then out for a quick trip to the shops to find some elusive sandals (haven't been able to find many - well it's autumn here isn't it), next for lunch out. We let my daughter and son-in-law out and about for a few hours on there own too, while we babysat - a treat in itself, as it has meant lots of cuddles with baby

Australian scerey

The problem with not feeling quite so human is that I haven't been able to get on with my studies which was kind of worrying with assignment deadlines looming. I managed one assignment on the plane on the way here and checked it when I arrived, while I still felt reasonably human, but the statistics defeated me. Many of my notes weren't written up after the lectures due to not feeling well and when I look back at the work I did it isn't making a great deal of sense, partly because not all the information is translated from Estonian, which slows me down a lot. Fortunately my lecturer has proved very understanding and given me extra time to get the work done and a book recommendation. It would have been nice to get this finished off, but such is life!

Snow has nearly gone back home

I bet these guys are pleased to see the back of the snow too!

Down under

Singapore airport

Well to continue on from last week's blog, I am now sitting in Australia typing up the blog. My very quick update to say the blog would be late because I was travelling was sent from Singapore, our stopover to Perth. We have never been to Singapore and didn't get to see much of it at all, or many people come to that as the airport was rather quiet. The view from the airplane showed a very green land with lots of flowers, rather different from the cold Spring we had just left in the UK. It was sad to say goodbye to our new grandson and his parents, but exciting in another way as we were about to see our daughter, her husband and their even newer baby. Our daughter was fortunately discharged from hospital in plenty of time to meet us at the airport and so we got to see the new baby straight away.

Picnic in the park. Yes no blue skies but I think I still
caught the sun a little

We haven't done a great deal here in Australia for several reasons, firstly tiredness of course, secondly our daughter is not up to long trips out just yet and mainly because the whole purpose of our visit was to visit our little Aussie grandchild. One of our daughter's friends came to visit, someone who we got to know quite well from our last visit as we stayed in her house and our daughter's wedding was held there, so it was nice to meet up again. Whilst she was here she called Ian a "baby whisperer" which sounds very apt, as he is still showing his flair for being able to get little ones off to sleep. We have though visited a glorified car boot sale place or in this case called a community market, as our daughter wanted some metal art that costs a fortune in boutique kinds of places, but was more reasonable in this particular market, we have walked to the shops - a feat in itself with a new buggy, they just don't handle the same way they used to  and we had a picnic in the park today. Not the sort of thing that we could do in Latvia and was even a tad too cold in England, but despite sliding into autumn in the land down under we are in shorts and t-shirts and revelling the sight of green grass.

The picture you were waiting for, our little granddaughter.

There is one visit I would rather have not have made this week and that is to the dentist. My teeth felt fine when in Latvia, but whether it is the travel or the change in diet they started to ache in the UK and by the time we got to Australia I was starting to have some real problems. Our daughter and her husband haven't had the chance or necessity to find a good dentist yet and so I ended up scouting one out for them that had been recommended. An honour I assure you I would rather have not undertaken on their behalf. It would appear that one of the nerves in my tooth was dying and an infection setting in, so an x-ray, a new filling, some digging around in nerve canals and antibiotic paste and you can tell the dollars were adding up. Let us say it cost a tad bit more than it would have done in Latvia and was only a temporary fix until I get back home for the works - aren't I looking forward to that!!!!!!! I will have to let you know next week if it was a success as my tooth still aches and I went and got the antibiotics that   the dentist gave me on prescription today, as it is still not settled yet.

Not something you see every day in Latvia

I have to say I am a little tired of being sick now, it seems to be one thing after another. My arm is still not 100%, although much better than it was last week. I have been threatened with the doctors when I get back, unless my arm is up to lugging bales of hay around. Typically of course I very, very rarely get stopped in security and yet with my sore arm I did, not once but twice. Each time I had to explain I couldn't hold my arm up properly as it was sore, especially problematic in an all body scanner where you are supposed to assume a pose with feet wide apart and hands above your head. Fortunately the lady security officers in both cases, were very sympathetic and gentle, in fact I think they were a little scared of injuring me further, which I found mildly amusing. In the end I did work out that even though my shoes appeared to have very little metal in them, there must have been more sewn into them and so on the third trip through a security scan I took them off. I shall have to remember that on future occasions, as I am likely to be travelling a little more often in the next few years.

The grey skies may seem familiar but the
trees somehow do not

The hoover duck, it just seemed to go around as if it was
hoovering up any little tasty treats, rather like our cat

I love visiting our children now that they are adults and seeing what kind of people they have grown into. I am very proud of their thoughtfulness and the conscious decisions they make around what and where they spend their money. Maybe something rubbed off on them, or maybe I can't take any credit for it, but it blesses me anyway. Both our children use local businesses to buy their fruit and veg rather than the local supermarkets by preference, which I find very encouraging. Our son and his wife in the UK use a local greengrocer - such a rarity these days, and my daughter uses a local delivery service. Both are finding the benefits of using these more personal services, getting to know the folks or just enjoying the fresher produce and variety.

This week back home, our alpacas with their other little
helper. I think the weather is a little different to here

The snow melting and the lake filling in. At
least it is going.