'Hello George.'

After a night of torrential rain today has been windy and quite sunny (and warm) too. I chatted to someone at the zoo who is staying in a caravan in the holiday park behind us and she said that she thought her caravan was going to be blown right over last night.

My idea of putting a dumpy bag over the garden gate worked a treat and first thing this morning I gave it a second coat of 'proper' varnish which has dried nicely in the wind.

 

At the zoo the first thing I did was to plant more mint along the boundary fence. I like having mint in our front garden but now is the time to take out all the mint apart from the 'mint bed'.

Above - the new fence around the mountain goats' enclosure is almost done so hopefully no more wandering. At the moment the gaots are confined to the paddock area (the bit with the trees) so that work can continue. Before I left I spent some time giving one of the goats a scratch on his head and neck. I never remember their names and usually call them 'the stinky boys' as they can be a bit smelly at times but I noticed their ear togs are numbered 1 and 2 so maybe I'll call them Goat 1 and Goat 2 ala Dr Zeus.

I spent most of the time weeding the gravel by the ferrets, one of whom came out to say hello, and other odd bits in that area. The recent rain has caused so many seeds to germinate that I couldn't pull up each one but had to be satisfied with turning the stones over.

George the cockatoo was in a very chatty mood today. I spent some time interacting with him before I left and there were lots of 'Hello George', 'Goodbye' and 'What are you doing?' some of which sounded very much like S, another volunteer who talks to him a lot.

One lady asked how old Mr Pea the peacock is as she had fond memories of seeing a peacock on a visit 19 years ago. None of us knew how old Mr Pea is as he was here before the current owners bought the zoo. I've just had a look and apparently peacocks can live up to 50 years in captivity so he could quite well have been the one she remembers.

I haven't done much since getting home apart from preparing my supper (Peter is off on a curry night with the rowing club) and getting ready for Pilates which starts up again after the summer. Despite my best intentions I have not managed to do a daily exercise session using one of Rachel's FB reels so I guess it's going to be hard work tonight.

Read First !

Photos from yesterday.

Today has been warm and windy but not that sunny.

In the morning we met up with our friends to practise our Welsh. Class starts again next week so in anticipation of a revision lesson (which is what our tutor usually does after the summer break) we went back over some earlier units.

 

A small yellow darter.

When I got home, after dropping Pete off to play pool, I thought I would take advantage of the good weather. First I went round to the neighbours' front garden so that I could cut back the corner of the hedge that I hadn't been able to reach from the street. Luckily I only needed to carry round the stepladder and hand tools.

Then as it was such good drying weather I decided to do some painting. The uprights at the sides of the garage door needed a final coat of white and then I thought I'd give the gate at the bottom of the front garden another coat of brown varnish. 

I found the tin that I'd used before and soon the gate was a smart brown once more. It was only as I peered at the tiny print on the tin to see how best to clean the brush that I found out it was a water based varnish and not the best for outdoors. Who knew that such a thing even existed?

No problem, I could give the gate another coat from a different tin of oil based varnish for durability. Hmm, I wonder what the forecast is for tomorrow? Oh good, dry all day with less than 5% probability of rain. Ah! better check the overnight forecast. Yikes, 90% probability of rain. Today's varnish is already dry but to prevent rain damage I've covered the gate with a big dumpy bag.

Today's lesson - read the information first.

My final garden job was to cut back some of the lavender that's overhanging the path. Call me soft but I couldn't bring myself to simply cut it all back and deprive the bees and butterflies of a last remaining source of nectar. Instead I carefully cut only those stems where all the flowers had finished. There are still stems across the path but it should be easier to step over those and after any rain there'll be less chance of getting soaked as we walk along the path.

Glaspwll.

After a wet night a sleeping dragon was sending its breath up between the hills. The day itself has been warm and very sunny, right up to the point when I arrived home from my walk. Just as I was about to enjoy the sun on the terrace along came a cloudbank that kept the sun firmly hidden from view.

Today's walk was around Glaspwll, a peaceful valley just off the main road before you get to Mach. This week I drove and gave a lift to two of my fellow walkers who also live in Borth. It makes sense for us to lift share especially when like today there is limited parking.

 

Our route took us through overgrown woodland paths, across open fields and along forestry tracks and narrow lanes.

Most of the time we walked through the Garthgwynion estate. I've not been able to find out much apart from the fact that the estate was established in 1911 by the founder of Owen-Owen department stores in Liverpool. The main house looks like the setting for an Agatha Christie novel.

The track to the house is lined by some impressively tall yew? trees.

Lunch was eaten sitting on a pile of cut tree trunks in the warm sunshine.

We ended at the bee research project where I bought five jars of honey including the ivy honey which came highly recommended and a new honey, rowan and hawthorn. Some are for Christmas presents and a friend asked me to get her a jar if ever I was going that way. Whilst at £5 a jar it's more expensive than mass produced honey a lot of which is from bees exclusively fed on sugar it's still much cheaper than the equivalent 'real' honey from the shops. 

A Walk At Ynyslas.

I woke early to a fine morning after not a very good night's sleep. The tops of my thighs were so sore which I can only put down to riding a broader horse and maybe having my stirrups at a different length. It was the level of pain that I was aware of while asleep and though I kept telling myself to get up to rub on some Voltarol and take a painkiller I didn't quite get round to it until  Peter brought me a cup of tea. His suggestion was also to move to disperse the lactic acid and I did feel a lot better after I'd done 20 deep squats. PS Just been looking at past posts and see that I rode Cody on a 4 hour ride and commented how comfortable his trot was. 

It was such a nice day that we went for a walk at Ynyslas. 

From the car park we 

walked along the boardwalk through the sand dunes,

and out onto the beach. There were a fair number of people out exercising children, dogs and even a couple of ponies but of course I've carefully edited them out of my photos.

Well camouflaged amongst the stones was a small group of sanderlings. 

This time we headed northwards up the beach

and then walked around the end of the sand dunes along the estuary and back to the car park.

There are very few shells on the beach in Borth but here alongside the river there was a veritable carpet of shells. I did keep my eyes open for any unexploded ordnance though perhaps kicking at any suspicious objects wasn't the best idea. They were just stones with bits of metal stuck to them but it's best to be on the safe side. 

When we got home I sprayed all the window frames in the garage with woodworm killer after first brushing off all the cobwebs and hopefully any spiders. Then I went round and asked our neighbour if it was okay to step through her garden to spray the outside of the frames. I must have looked a sight with my old clothes and a proper facemask which I couldn't remove as my gloved hands were soaked in the nasty chemicals. She told me that they will be cutting back a bush that is covering the second window in about a month and I'm welcome to come and paint the windows after that. The windows are in an even worse state than I thought and I may replace some of the wood in my usual have-a-go fashion before painting the frames.

Rali Ceredigion.

I woke to the sound of rain this morning which fortunately had stopped by the time (6.30) I was ready to sit outside.

Watching a dunnock that had come down for the seeds I'd put out made me realise how different is the behaviour of each species that comes here for breakfast. The dunnock is so very wary. Even when it makes it down on to the paving stones it stays perfectly still for quite a while making sure there is no danger before darting forward to snatch a seed. The slightest movement such as the wind blowing the tall grasses and it scuttles away to either hide behind a planter or back up into the raised beds.

The sparrows on the other hand spend a moment checking things out from the safety of the hedge and then down they come like a group of chattering urchins sorting through the seeds for the ones they like the best. 

And then there are the woodpigeons. They only come one at a time but I have seen two of them on the roof and boy are they confident. If I come down the steps all they do is hide around the corner until I walk past. And then every seed is hoovered up even if I'm sitting on the wall of the raised beds with my coffee.

At the stables this morning I found that I was going to be riding Cody while L had Betsi. Cody is a much bigger horse, I would say several sizes larger than Betsi and while he goes well and is used for more advanced dressage lessons. I found him quite stompy today. Mainly I think because he is more powerful it was harder on my back to relax into his movement. Betsi on the other hand feels lighter and has more of a floaty action. Not that it isn't good for me to ride different horses but given a choice I'd pick Betsi.

 

While at the stables I found out that the main road between Morrison's and town (up to the police station) was closed due to Rali Ceredigion this weekend. (Rally racing on public roads). I'd seen that some of the side roads were going to be closed but hadn't realised the full extent of the closures. 

As I don't get that much from Morrison's I decided to go straight into town from the industrial estate using the Llanbadarn road and get all my shopping at Lidl.

Although there didn't seem to be many people in town perhaps because the school holidays are over or else people were keeping away but the traffic was very heavy with long queues at roundabouts and traffic lights. It took me 5 minutes just to turn out of the Matalan carpark. 

One of my town stops was M&S to collect a sports top/vest ? (I never know what to call these things) but unfortunately it was too big and I returned it straight away. They'd only had the larger size and I took a chance as its a loose fit top but nope, it was way too big.

Report on my cooking venture - Peter was only too happy to eat something I'd cooked and said it was delicious but for my part it didn't seem any different to eating an omelette, albeit a very nice one with leeks, mushrooms cheese etc along with (s)mashed potatoes. I think that mixing in an egg, butter and seasoning into the potatoes would have made a difference. One good thing is that I made plenty, enough for tonight and as Peter is out tomorrow night (an RNLI function that I chose not to go to) my supper tomorrow as well.

Windy.

We had good drying weather today, warm and windy sometimes sunny too. I got several loads of washing  out on the line for the first time in days. The bedding is already ironed and back on the bed while the towels are finishing off in the utility room.

Working in the garage I spotted another urgent job. Woodworm in the old window frames. I know these windows are high up but you would have thought someone might have noticed the (considerable) damage before now. Especially the builders who replaced the whole roof! Imagine if the woodworm got into the roof timbers. As it is parts of the wooden frames are completely eaten away. I used what woodworm killer we had on the most obviously affected wood and will buy more, and some wood filler tomorrow.

That done I loaded up the car with unusable wood for the dump and some other stuff. I don't put the bags of garden waste in until the morning as I don't fancy insects loose in the car.

My final job (apart from the ironing) was to tidy up the hedges in the front garden. The end hedge was looking a bit bushy and there were a number of stragglers sticking out of the side hedge. Half the work when hedge cutting is carrying everything to the end of the garden; extension cables, stepladder, electric trimmer, secateurs, brush and pan and bags. But at least I don't have to cut the whole thing by hand.

I popped down to the shop earlier to get some mushrooms and a leek for tonight's supper. It's something I've cobbled together based of a recipe I saw on-line. A quiche with a smashed potato base instead of pastry (I'm not a fan of pastry). On top of the potatoes I've put braised onions, mushrooms and sliced leek and some fresh tomatoes and grated cheese and poured beaten egg over the top. Garlic and oregano for taste as well.

I've stuck it in the oven at the same temperature as I cook everything else and when it looks done we'll eat. Fingers crossed.

Coming back from the shop I looked down at the lavender and as well as the usual white butterflies there was a small blue. That's one I rarely see anywhere. Of course it had gone by the time I got my camera but I did hear and then see a common field grasshopper on the lavender.

I had a couple of encounters on my journey too and from choir last night. Driving along a narrow country lane I saw a bird sitting in the middle of the road. At first I thought it was a woodpigeon as they often sit on the road right until you get up to them and then fly off but then realised it was a small bird of prey, a sparrow hawk. Was it injured? I drove a little closer and it flapped up and then landed back on the road about 6ft away. I drove closer and it stayed where it was so I stopped, leaving my hazard lights on and was about to get out of the car to throw something over the bird to catch it when it flew up the road again then flew upwards and eventually made it over the hedge. Perhaps it was a fledgling confused by the high hedges on either side of the road. If I had caught it I would have driven to choir and hoped that M who is a vet nurse who be there (she was).

My next encounters were on the same lane on the return journey. By that time it was dark and I was just noting the numbers of flying insects in the air when I spotted something furry trotting along the road ahead. Too small for a fox, maybe it was a cub? But as I neared it turned out to just be a cat. The hedges go straight up from the side of the road with hardly any verges so it took a moment before it got safely out of the way. That had been a little ginger car and moments later I came across a black and white cat which soon jumped into the hedge.

Mostly Wet.

After a wet start to the day it got marginally drier with light showers every now and again.

Yesterday Pete had got a message saying that the local pharmacy would be doing 'flu jabs. This was opportune as although we had been sent appointments for our jabs on the mass vaccination day in the Hall we will be away on that day. Pete rang the pharmacy straight away and and arranged for us to go in today.

But when I walked down (Pete decided the threat of rain was enough to postpone) I was informed they wouldn't be doing 'flu jabs until October. Still, I got to have a walk on the beach and surprise, surprise not a drop of rain fell.

Back home I baked another Bara Brith and then carried on with the garage sort out including washing some hanging baskets which I will take to the Climate Shop on Friday. It's far too windy here for hanging baskets and they're just one more thing to water. 

It wasn't until late in the afternoon that the postman brought the black screws I needed to finish the door of the recycling store. And at last it is done. I quite like seeing that it is made with reclaimed wood including posts made from a gatepost that was in the garden. Looking at the photo the black paint behind the lettering on the middle bar makes it look as if there is a big hole in the door but there isn't. I used a gate latch so that the dustmen only have to give the door a push for it to catch and stay shut. Two of the pallets I used came with heavy duty polythene on one side which I left in place to keep the rain out.

This is the ornament I hung yesterday. The words read 'You, me and the sea.' quite appropriate for this house.

Off soon to choir.