Ffordd Ar Gau

We're having an entertaining week transport-wise, here in our little village. Last week the council, all of a sudden and without much warning (merely a sign announcing dates) decided to close the road and give us a nice new surface.

Terrific! It needs it! So the road has been scraped clean of the grass down the middle, the iron works have been raised, it's been scrubbed clean, bits have been eaten off by one of those road-eating machines and we now await a shiny new surface.

Getting to and fro our farm is the problematical part. The road is long and narrow with high banked sides, twisty bends and no junctions for means of escape. The detour is fine but tiresome if you attempt the road, find it blocked and then have to turn around. I've taken to dashing out early on the school run, taking the long way round to minimise the risk of meeting the road gang and after the first week of term (see Yesterday) I've abandoned the afternoon school run in favour of the bus anyway.

You see every cloud has a silver lining! The surprise coming home on the bus thing (because idiot mother left her lights on and flattened her car battery) was a huge hit with all concerned and is now part of the a daily routine.

My afternoon low-carbon school run now looks like this:

The dogs' enthusiasm for the new arrangements is such that they start howling at about 2.45pm just in case I change my mind and don't take them. They caught on straight away to the fact that the Big Walk involves a nice circuit - up along the footpath through our fields, down the road to the village to meet H10 and R8 from a minibus and then back along the road, up our driveway and back home.

It's about a mile and the dogs are inclined to tackle it at full pelt, towing me along. (I'm training them NOT to do this!) I carry a rucksack with the girls' wellies in it (so as not to wreck their nice new Startrite shoes) and it's lovely in the autumn sunshine and not too bad even when it's raining. I suspect enthusiasm may wane during the snowy, icy months though, but I'm sure even that can be conquered with the right clothing (there's no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothing.)

The road gang members are (mostly) friendly and inclined to wave as we stomp past in our wellies. On Monday we met a very tall, very African chap with a big smile (with tooth missing in the middle) who was kind enough to escort the bus through (he paraded magnificently along in front of it) and stopped the circular saw (which they were using to cut out a drain) while the children were there.

Haylage - at last!

Mown cut and baled - some of the bales in the first field...

...the rest in the second. This is the only flat land on our farm.

Brian brings all 30 down, one by one, carrying them on a spike on the back of our ancient Ford tractor.

They get lined up and then wrapped all black and shiny in plastic, thus preserving them for the winter. They're sitting in the field now waiting to be taken and stacked in the hayguard. Where they'll join the ones we have left over from last year! We made 30, we need 15. The leftovers end up (eventually) as rather splendid compost on the garden.

Yesterday

Yesterday I couldn't sleep (again) and I got up far too early. Yesterday I had a big row with my husband (I was grumpy and tired). Yesterday the something crunchy in my pasta was one of my fillings. Yesterday the postman was bringing something nice that needed a signature and I missed him. Yesterday it was raining and I forgot I had my lights on and when I went to start my car for the afternoon school run the battery was flat. Yesterday I accidentally put R8's favourite toy, Milly the Billy Goat Gruff, in the washing machine.

Yesterday was a bit tiresome in parts.

Yesterday I checked my Euromillions ticket and we had won!

Yesterday, being the sort of day it was yesterday, we had won £3.

Sigh.

Angelic angelica

Phew! It's September. In some ways I'm glad August is over, what with the family summer holiday and it being everyone's birthday (Mum, Dad, me, G11, Andrew... and others!) not to mention the need and opportunity for day trips out and then the annual topping up of the school uniforms. It's a long and expensive month. September heralds a big sigh of relief.

It also brings the blooming of the angelica on our small very wet field that we call The Moor. This field usually dries out in the summer, perhaps at least a little bit, but this year it has remained gloriously wet and the angelica loves it.

The flower heads change from neatly pink to fluffy white and then to deep, rich purples and greens. They are usually laden with brown, fluffy-bottomed wild bees, hover flies, butterflies and the occasional dragonfly. The bees seem to love it the most, roaming over the umbellifers giddy with nectar.

It's a gorgeous, tapestry effect. A beautiful perennial meadow.

How to buy a present for a Virgo

It was my birthday yesterday and I feel fortunate that I have lovely and generous family and friends who bought me such lovely presents.

I reckon that I'm easy to buy for because I love books and I can't afford to buy them for myself. I really look forward to getting one for my birthday and these ones about sum me up perfectly.

Gardening at Longmeadow by Monty Don. Gardener's World is an addiction for me. Woe betide anyone who tries to speak while it's on! Monty is now using his lovely garden at Longmeadow on the programme and this book charts the history and the making of it.

The Intolerant Gourmet by Pippa Kendrick. Not a book I'd heard of before but this is a perfect cookery book for Virgos. It combines the love of cooking with the likelihood of food intolerance (we're a sensitive sign). Authored by the friend of the mother of a friend of my sister's. Some delicious looking recipes lurk within.

Doodle Stitching: The Motif Collection by Aimee Ray. Over 400 easy embroidery designs. I've recently rediscovered hand embroidery (and R8 is discovering it along with me). Full of useful techniques and inspirational designs.

Edible Seashore (River Cottage Handbook No. 5) by John Wright. I've hoped to have this book for AGES (thank you Lins!!) and it's every bit as lovely as I'd hoped. I spent much of my childhood rootling around the shores of Pembrokeshire in amongst the seaweed and shellfish without really knowing what much of it was. (I have happy memories of hours spent popping bladderwrack, a bit like the pleasure of popping bubble wrap.) I love hunting out crabs and anemones in rock pools. This book is what to find to cook and eat along with plans for lobster pots and shrimping nets. I'm reading this one first!

Thorntons chocolates. Two boxes. I love chocolate and there's something special about a layer of individual chocolates in a box. It says BIRTHDAY to me. Yum.

Google Nexus 7. Thank you to everyone who contributed so generously to the buying of this. Virgos love gadgets (think fellow Virgo Stephen Fry). This is a seven inch tablet - Kindle-sized but like an iPad. Clever, clever, clever. I switched it on, it politely asked for the wifi password and then it introduced itself to the PC and my android smartphone. It's got a Kindle app on it (the first thing I added!) so I've got my happy snout sniffling about in the Kindle store like a truffle pig.

Montezuma's dark chocolate with orange and geranium. Smooth, dark and delicious. The best chocolate.

Not pictured (because I was wearing it and I forgot). Diaphanous web-like scarf in gorgeous jewel-coloured yarn which can only have been crocheted  by an especially talented spider.

Thank you to everyone for all of my lovely presents!

Yesterday we went to see the film Brave, a brilliant animated Disney film set in Scotland and featuring the lovely Angus, my new screen crush.

*SIGH* Isn't he gorgeous?! I think I might have to save up for an Angus!

The butterfly summer

One of our butterflies.

If this summer was a novel I'd call it The Butterfly Summer. This is the year we raised butterflies, ten Painted Ladies, which arrived in a pot as teeny tiny caterpillars, sat on the coffee table on their sugar substrate getting bigger, turned into chrysalids and then hatched into pretty fluttery butterflies.

We kept them in for three days, waiting for a gap in the rain, and then released them a week ago, watching delighted as, one by one, they flew out of the pop-up butterfly house and into the garden. Mostly they alighted on the buddleia, some flew around in a big circle and landed on one of us, others flew straight upwards into the topmost branches of one of our trees.

I've been spotting them for the past week, mostly refuelling on the buddliea. I'm very proud of our butterfly 'babies' but missed having them to care for so immediately another batch of baby butterflies was ordered. This time we have little tortoiseshell caterpillars, almost too tiny to see and they're getting bigger on a diet of fresh nettles.

In between rearing butterflies we've had an austere time as we're saving to go to Mull in October. There have been sleepovers, hot tub days for H10 and R8, riding Itsy, a trip to the County Show (we got soaked), body boarding at the beach and lovely giggly friends over.

The Millennium Stadium, Cardiff.

In the midst of all this the Olympics happened in London and were wonderful. Brian and I got tickets for the football quarter finals at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, which happened to be GB v Korea. GB did what British teams usually do at that stage and lost after a penalty shoot out but it was all very exciting and I really 'got' football having seen it live. The atmosphere in the stadium was like a rock concert - the roof was closed to keep the rain out which made it even more concert-like. We Mexican waved, we batted around big Olympic themed beach balls and we moved a huge flag. Crowds are funny, organic things and it was good fun to be part of such a big one, until it was time to queue for the park and ride buses of course! Ah well, it was an experience!

Wow Mummy, who painted that!?

I mentioned in a bog a few weeks ago (Lovely things) that I'd been offered the chance to try out something from Snapfish and then review it on my blog.

Snapfish kindly gave me £35 of account credit and there then followed a period of delicious agony while I sorted through my photographs to find a suitable image. I decided to go for a canvas print as it's one of the things I have yet to try . In the past I've bought a mug; a big posh photobook; a smaller photobook and a calendar - and I've always been very impressed with the quality of the items and the service I've received.

In fact one of the photobooks, a present for my mother-in-law, got lost in the post and Snapfish replaced it immediately and with a huge apology. They also rescued me last year when I accidentally deleted my July 2011 pictures from my computer. I'd used Snapfish to make a calender at Christmas and all of my prints were safely stored on the site. (I was so relieved, if it was possible to hug a website, I'd have hugged it.)

Here's one I made earlier.

Anyway I finally settled on an picture of H10 and R8 that I took of them paddling at Newquay. I'd previously manipulated it (using a free trial of Adobe Photoshop Elements 10 that I decided not to buy because it was too good and I was too obsessed with it!). It looked (on my computer screen) like a painting rather than a photograph and I was quite pleased with it.

Then we all rushed off on holiday to Devon and I rather forgot about my Snapfish order. When we arrived home there was a big parcel waiting. Inside was the 16"x12" photo canvas.

"Wow Mummy," said H10, awed, "who painted that!?"

It looks and feels like a painting, like proper art. We were all gobsmacked and delighted. It remains to be hung on the wall, once we have redecorated.

It's worth registering with Snapfish - they offer free prints for every newly registered customer - it's also a useful back-up store for all your most precious photos (as I found out!). You can connect to your pictures on Facebook as well as uploading from your computer. There are usually offers at Christmas too which I find useful for presents. Oh and I can recommend the canvas prints!

Disclosure: Thank you to Kristina of Snapfish for giving me £35 account credit and free postage in return for this blog post.