What a sad
day that was, Mike came into my sewing room and said, bad news, swanny is dead.
I cannot express in words how upset and bereft we felt at that moment, that, after 26 years of
just being there, grumpy and beautiful in one descriptive line, and now he is gone. I went to get a bag to wrap him up and move
him on but Mike had decided that this pet deserved a full burial and not the back
to nature hedge chuck we give to our hens. We walked around Swanny’s beloved
pond area and chose the spot and Mike started to dig, and dig, and dig. Swanny had been a little off colour these
past few months and did not go into his most grumpy phase and we were able to
get into the pond area all this year as he was not aggressive and I took this
picture of him earlier in the year standing next to him …so he had lost his
mojo this year and finally decided his time was up.
Mike was
concerned that the water was contaminated as we have had an oily film on the
water and Swanny was struggling keeping clean, we were just getting ready for a
water change from the top well but he died before we could implement that
project. Since then Mike has been airating the water by pumping it around
and we are not using the bottom well. Our neighbour across the road has a
dodgy cess pit situation that he has been given 3 years to put right 4 years
ago and we are concerned that the grey water from his bathroom is getting into
the well water that feeds our pond…….or are we just looking for a scape goat
whilst we grieve the loss of our pond pet. ?? You can see the grave on the other side of the
pond, we put my swan vase on top so the passers-by who stop to look at swanny
will know why he is nowhere to be seen
When
we viewed this house in 2007, Mike was
impressed by the owners grandfather clock at the front door and has
always fancied having one for himself and knew exactly where it should go. We
have had a pine open shelved cupboard there since we moved in and one of Mikes
little gripes in life has been the gradual development of this bit of furniture
into a general dumping ground, looking homely, but unsightly and chaotic. So,
in with the big dinging clock in the kitchen by the front door and the dumping
ground is in the lobby where it looks at home and in the right place. It has taken a few days to stop jumping on
the hour and on the half hour but we are
not disturbed at night anymore and in
the quiet of the kitchen there is a gentle tic tock, tic tock that reminds you that there is not a
moment to waist and time is racing off without us …..not pressure then
Once again
we have been reminded that we live way out in the country as we were confronted
by Monsieur Roulette’s sheep in the road on our way out of Bucaille. They stood
their ground and were not to approached or worried. Mike tried to creep around them but they took
flight and started to run in the wrong direction so he drove herded them into a
chemin out of harm’s way and then we drove around to M Roulette’s to let him
know his sheep were stampeding off into the marshes……cute though.
We are now
coming to the end of the tomatoes, and I for one are not that sad. What a crop
this year, I have filled the freezer with passata and now I am making soup and
bottling it up as I am running short of freezer space. I cleared a space today
for the apple juice and that starts tomorrow, we collected a barrow full of
wind falls and I will juice them down, filter out the froth and freeze the
juice in mineral water bottle so we have apple juice all winter.
The pumpkins
are doing OK but Mike is overwhelmed with the growth and utter takingoverness
of this crop. We only need one big fruit
for the competition we have committed to but we are going to have to change the
rules at the last minute and say it is about quantity, not individual size,
otherwise we don’t stand a chance of winning, and then, I have 10 pumpkins to
deal with. I watched Mike cut back the overspill growth and it occurred to me
that instead of backing research into cosmetics and shampoo why can’t some bright spark find a way to put
some nutrition into pumpkins and feed the world……..
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