Well Behaved Pigs.

It was windy and I wasn't too sure if it was going to rain again which was my excuse for driving rather than cycling to the zoo though in the end it stayed dry.

It was very busy at the zoo, a combination of peak holiday season and being a bit cool to be on the beach all day.

Most of my regular weeding areas are more or less under control so it didn't take long to get them weed free. It was when I began clearing the moat around some empty enclosures that I found great masses of bindweed roots that needed digging out. Before doing that I broke off all the stinging nettles coming through the wire fencing so that I didn't get stung as I worked. Good plan but now my fingers are stinging where the nettle stings got me through my work gloves.

During the hot weather when it would have stressed the small animals (guinea pigs, rabbits and rats) to be picked up for the animal handling sessions the staff began bring out Otis and Truffle for 'meet the pigs' on the grassy area by the ponies. They are both well behaved (I mean the pigs though the staff are well behaved too) and have learnt to sit down which looks so comical. They can also spin and will come running and follow the sound of a squeaky pig. (The same one we had at Christmas). 

Apart from entertaining the visitors it's good to keep them socialised and to stimulate what are very intelligent animals. Plus it's good to be able to move them around or to be handled by a vet without stress.

Out in the car park as I was leaving a young lad maybe 7 years old said to his mum "I love animals, I can't understand why people hurt them." They might have been a vegetarian family but even if not this shows the benefit of children seeing animals in real life. So many people live in cities with little or no contact with animals or nature in general.

 

I didn't do much once I got home. I attempted to mend Peter's surfer necklace but I've had to order some leather cord as the cord I had was too thick.

Hopefully it will stay dry tomorrow so that I can finish off painting the garage door.

A Drop Of Rain.

It was still raining this morning though the water butts don't have much water in them yet. The rain soon stopped giving us a grey day with the sun only breaking through towards evening.

It has definitely not been a day for painting so I can't cross that job off my list yet. Instead I did some small jobs around the place including hanging a small picture in the bedroom. That job might not have got done if I hadn't come across some picture wire I bought last year. The sooner I sort the garage the better.

Then I had a relaxing time deciphering a crochet pattern for a tiny sleeping dragon. I don't normally crochet with a pattern so to be on the safe side I'm having an initial go with double knit wool rather than the embroidery thread the pattern calls for. So far I've mastered the 'magic ring' and made the head and one ear.

And now for a few photos from yesterday's walk around the nature reserve-

It was so peaceful with the only sound (apart from the ever present high pitched tinnitus) being the low hum of bees in the heather. Borth could be seen in the far distance but though I could see our neighbour's house our place was hidden by the spire of the church.

Suddenly in flew some geese heading for the open water,

while at my feet a tiny damsel fly clung to a grass stem. The pale colour is due to it being newly hatched.

As I picked blackberries swallows darted about overhead. They are not easy to photograph.

Honey Festival.

If Sherlock Holmes saw this photo he would no doubt be immediately able to detail my day's activities. Walking boots mean I must have been on a walk, berry stained fingers denote blackberry picking and paper wristband and jingly bell anklet are sure signs that I was at a festival.

 

Festival first, this was the Summer Honey Festival put on by Wainwright's the local honey producers. They sell a number of different pure honeys, most local plus some from Africa. These are the people we get our honey from up at Glaspwll.

The festival was twice as large as last years and very busy. The first field had plenty of free or not too expensive activities for children and a number of festival type food vendors selling food that was interesting. Things like freshly made pizzas, paella, welsh cakes, pancakes, Syrian food and lamb burgers.

And of course plenty of honey and beeswax products from local producers for sale. I tasted a few different honeys but 'hot' honey will not be on my shopping list. Heather honey is far nicer and helped take away the taste of the chillies.

I also tasted a couple of different meads and decided to buy a bottle of the traditional mead as a future gift. But then the chap offered me a voucher and said if I ordered on-line I would get a 10% discount. I asked how I would get the bottle and he said he would deliver it. But, when I got home and went to buy on-line even with 10% off the delivery charge  made it £4 more expensive which was annoying. I have sent a mild complaint to the company saying they had lost themselves a sale.

Inside the warehouse were an impressive number of drums filled with honey.

A group of ladies from Borth, a few of whom I know, performed their amusing bee waggle dance.

This was then followed by a performance by a local band Misha and the Kings. I had heard of them before as one of my friends has booked them for an event she is organising in the autumn. Also they pop up quite frequently on my FB reels. I see the drummer every week as he works in Lidl. Loud, boppy music (they did a cover of The House of the Rising Sun). Although I can't bear background music I find I enjoy most genres of music when they are played live.

The usual walk had been swapped for a visit to the festival so I knew that there would be people from my walking group there to hang out with. At first there were just a couple of the regular walkers but as I wandered around I kept meeting people I also knew from choir, the rowing club, Borth, disco aerobics and unexpectedly riding. 

Not only did I chat to the boss of the riding stables who was there with her mother but I also met a fellow rider who hasn't been coming for the past year as she had a baby last year. She was there with her baby and partner and as her partner isn't a horse person we had a long horsey chat. 

After a couple of hours I said my farewells and went off for a solo walk around Cors Fochno (photos tomorrow and finished by picking 3lbs of blackberries which are now in the freezer.

PS We've just had a light shower which is good but I'm hoping for a dry day tomorrow so that I can finish painting the garage door.

Drying Day.

The sun returned and so did the wind (a cold wind today). First thing in the morning the sea was almost flat but then as the wind picked up whitecaps appeared as far as the eye could see. 

It was a perfect drying day. I have nothing left to wash but I had painting to do. Conditions were so good I got three coats of white on the garage door frame and one coat of blue gloss on the garage door. I chose oil based gloss which although less convenient to use is more robust  and should last longer. 

I did make one mistake which was to not decant some of the gloss paint into a smaller container. Standing on a stepladder clutching a very full tin of paint was not the best idea and resulted in a minor spillage and extra drips and splashes.

Lesson learned I'll use a paint kettle (if I can can my one or an ice-cream tub if not) when I give the garage door its second coat and go over the side door/gate which got flecks of white when the builders sprayed the house walls with the permanent (hopefully) coating.

 

Whilst waiting for each coat of white to dry I got on with some other jobs which were all interlinked. First I smashed the glass shower door which I'd been keeping hoping somebody could make use of it. I nearly found a new home for it but the person who might have had it was inundated with shower doors.

It was surprisingly hard to break even with a 4lb club hammer. I'd sandwiched the door between old dust sheets and the first few thwacks did nothing more than make a loud noise. Then I remembered that to break a car windscreen you need to hit it in the corner. One tap in the corner and the glass door disintegrated into a million small chunks. I now have two buckets of glass fragments to put in the glass skip at the dump.

Having the shower door lurking in one corner had been holding up my garage sorting plans (unlike Peter I'm very good at organising spaces and as he seems to have come to a halt where the garage is concerned I'm stepping in).

Behind the shower door were the last of the mirrors we'd saved from the house. I like mirrors and we've managed to re-use most of the original mirrors, as well as put up our own mirrors but these ones were still left over.

Three tall mirrors are now behind the trellis that screens the oil tank. The photo doesn't show it but instead of seeing the oil tank (since I cut back the honeysuckle) you now get glimpses of acers and clematis as you walk past. Of course it wasn't a matter of just leaning the mirrors against the trellis. I needed to make wooden frames for the mirrors to sit in so that the wind wouldn't blow them back and forth and eventually smash.

With the door and mirrors out of the way I'm already starting to move things around and work out the most efficient way to store all our bikes, tools, materials and everything else we store in the garage.

The poor tomato plants have struggled with the hot weather especially as I didn't water them enough at the beginning but I'm already picking them and will have a couple in a salad tonight.

All Change.

Never mind the eclipse, today was a case of 'where did the sun go?' Yesterday's sea fret was still here this morning resulting in a damp look to the terrace and my neighbour's plastic roof and I had to drink my morning coffee sitting just inside the open door. But 20 yds inland the mist had risen to form low clouds that hid the sun for most of the day. Much later in the afternoon there was an increase in temperature and a hint of blueness to the sky but only for a moment.

This morning I rode Betsi again. No surprise there. The stables were very busy with holidaymakers coming to ride so we had the boss teaching us. Once the horses were warmed up we went straight to doing shoulder-in in trot and Betsi aced it. Then we did some canter work and unlike when I first rode her we had a tidy canter and quite a long one too. Because we had May with us, she's relatively new, we cantered individually. May goes well on a hack but in the school she's a bit more of a handful. Not only did she keep racing off but as she went past the mirrors at the end of the school (she doesn't like her reflection) she kicked out at the 'other horse' in her space and put a hoof sized hole in the wall board about 3ft up. It was such a loud bang I wondered what had happened. The chap who rides her is very experienced and eventually got her cantering in a more collected fashion.

The final exercise was shoulder-in in walk down the centre line of the school and Betsi did it perfectly and was even pointed out as an example to the other riders. 

 

There were two newcomers at the stables this morning. A pair of farm kittens just big enough to leave home and oh so cute. I'll take some photos next time. They are called Halen and Pupur [pip ear] (salt and pepper). Halen is black and white and Pupur is a tabby. Being farm cats they are still a bit shy of people but I managed to stroke Halen and they both enjoyed pouncing on the tassel at the end on my schooling whip.

Afterwards I took a full car load of hedge trimmings to the dump and bought some bright blue paint for the garage door which at the moment is a boring brown.

It had been very humid in the morning so the first thing I did, after throwing my clothes in the washing machine, was to have a shower followed by a big mug of tea. I could have gone to sleep at that point but instead I baked a marble cake to go in the freezer and then brushed and scrubbed the garage door and frame in the hope that I will be able to start painting tomorrow. 

Sea Fret.

It's been hot again as was most of the country but here at the coast we've had a sea fret (mist) to contend with too. First thing in the morning it could be seen as a haze in the distance and then it rolled right in at 5.00 almost emptying the beach, rolled back out and quickly returned. Always something new with the sea.

I went into town to collect my new swimsuit which thankfully fitted fine. No, that's not me. Just a photo from the ad though of course in my mind that's exactly how I look. 
 

Coming home from town I saw that for once we had waves that were good for bodyboarding which is a very rare occurrence. On went the new swimsuit, I brushed the cobwebs from a bodyboard that had been lurking in the garage and down to the beach I went. NB. there's nothing like walking down the road in only a swimsuit and flip-flops to get you holding in your stomach.

I don't go in the sea very often here but bodyboarding is my thing though I reckon it must be at least 10 years since I last went bodyboarding. The waves were coming in even and clean at waist to neck height and I had plenty of nice runs even if they weren't terribly long. My only problem was that my beach shoe kept coming loose and even floated away at one point. I had to put my other foot on top to keep the loose shoe in place. Tempted though I was to take the shoes off and leave them on the sand the thought of the weaver fish which are around this year, made me keep my shoes on. The shoes have a couple of loops that I can put a strap for future swims. 

By the time I walked home and had a shower the waves were already beginning to die down showing how lucky I was to catch the right moment.

I had planned to start painting the frame of the garage door but instead sat out in the (very hot) sun and pricked each sloe before getting this year's sloe gin started. Morrison's had run out of large bottles of gin but then I found some 'Pink Gin' for the same price which had some sort of fruity flavour which should this year's sloe gin interesting. I follow a recipe, sort of, but I suspect I had a lot more sloes than the recipe called for. Still should be fine. At the moment the jars are in a kitchen cupboard because cool and dark does not describe the garage at the moment.

Eclipse Day.

It has been another very hot day. Above is the temperature on the terrace at 6.00. Fortunately with doors and windows open the house was 10 degrees cooler and it was very pleasant sewing at the kitchen table with a light breeze blowing through the door.

We woke this morning to a light haze and in common with most of Ceredigion and further afield a strong smell of burning. People were so concerned that they phoned the fire service but it turns out the smoke was from wildfires 70 miles away in South Wales. 

The chart shows this morning's wind, temperature and concentration of particulate matter (smoke) in the air.

 

You would think that with such high risk of wildfires not to mention that grass everywhere has frizzled to a brown crisp it would be utter lunacy to be out cutting grass on a ride on mower. But this was the sad scene today by the entrance to Bow Street station (halfway between us and town). A council mower was blazing away with the flames about to engulf a small grove of silver birch trees. But someone in the council must have thought it was a good idea though I expect everyone is now busy passing the buck.

For me it has been a good day and I will admit to enjoying being constantly warm. The first good thing was that the car passed its MOT with flying colours, maybe not such a surprise as we only drove just over 4,000 miles last year.

Before getting on with any jobs I hung out some clothes from my storage box stash to air in the sun and at the same time managed to cull out more to give to the charity shop.

Then I finished painting by the path to the gate. That included the steps into the utility room and the garage which had also originally been painted red.

After that I retired to the cool of the kitchen, hand sewed the sides of the blackout curtains and did the alteration to a lightweight cotton top. I only reduced the width of the back panel by 6cms but that did the trick and I like the way this top goes with a cotton skirt I picked up at a jumble sale.

So that's a number of jobs done and out of the way.

Then came the eclipse, not quite a total eclipse but nearly. We sat up on the terrace to watch while other people watched from the cliff and even the sea. We had bought those cardboard glasses so that we didn't burn our retinas (hopefully). They came with a filter to put over your phone camera but all I got were blurry images and I didn't dare risk my big camera.

Fingers crossed for a clear night to watch the Perseids which will be at their peak tonight.

Another Scorcher.

Another hot day. 

I cycled to the zoo, well I couldn't have driven as Peter took the car to the garage for a service and MOT. We haven't heard back yet (Peter missed a call when he was out rowing) so we don't know what if any work needs to be done on the car.

At the zoo I did some general weeding including prising weeds out from the gaps in some concrete which I think might be the reason I have a new lump on the joint of one finger. (Update - it's gone down after some pressure so I'm guessing another ganglion cyst.)

At the zoo I also went into the silver foxes enclosure to help S (who is not as tall as I am) to cut back a bush that was growing too close to the sides and roof of the enclosure. This involved some dramatic balancing on the top of a rickety step ladder and the larger branches of the bush on my part.

Afterwards we sat on some old logs and I fed grapes to Blue the male fox. He will take them from S's hand but couldn't quite gather up the courage to take them from my hand even though he really loves grapes. I had to drop the grapes on the ground in front of him. The two foxes (Blue and Lily) are 8 years old and poor old Blue is deaf which I think makes him even more nervous.

I spent four hours at the zoo which included a rest break where I sat in the shade with a plastic bottle of blackcurrant squash. With a bucket of tools next to me, my boots off and my soaking wet socks draped over the wall of the rabbits' enclosure to dry I must have looked like an elderly bag lady swigging wine. I don't care.

After I finished at the zoo I went up to check out the blackthorn bushes in a nearby lane. There was not a sloe to be seen on the first few bushes but then the remaining bushes had sloes hanging like bunches of grapes. It was hot work but I eventually had a few pounds of sloes ready to make sloe gin to give as Christmas presents.

I also looked for blackberries but since these lanes are a regular dog walkers' route as well as a pleasant circular walk away from the bustle of Borth's one street there were not many ripe blackberries to pick. I'll need to go to more out of the way places if I want to pick a decent amount of blackberries.

I thought cycling was getting easier until I reached the two uphill sections on the way home. It was too hot to be worth wearing myself out and I pushed the bike instead. 

Even pushing the bike up the short stretch by our house wore me out. As soon as I got in I changed into shorts and could do no more than lie down on the cool tiled floor of the utility room before I 'came over all funny'. It was good just to lie there and recover. And there was a bonus to my mad action - because of the bend in my upper spine I was advised at Pilates when I first went to put something under my head when we do exercises lying on our backs. I usually roll up my zip-up fleece into a makeshift pillow.

Today I was so desperate to lie down I didn't bother with something under my head. At first I held my head up with my hands but then did a very low 'bridge' resting my hips on my hands. This allowed me to keep my shoulders down and put my head on the floor. Gradually my back eased down until eventually I was able to put my hands by my sides and lie completely flat on the floor. That is something I never thought I'd be able to do. Perhaps if I do this for a few minutes each day it will help my spine to straighten up.

Eventually I recovered, threw my clothes in the washing machine and had a welcome shower. A few small household jobs got done and then I was able to relax out on the terrace with some crisps (for the salt) and a big mug of tea. I finished by unpicking a seam on a light summer top that goes perfectly with one of my skirts but is a little too full in the back. Now that I've unpicked the gathered piece from the yoke I can add a centre seam and re-attach it back onto the yoke which should make it less billowy. 

Nearly Done.

The wind is now coming from the north-east which gives it a bit of a bite but it has been sunny all day. Good for the washing that went out on the line.

My first job this morning was to hoover the bedroom carpet and then wash the grubby bits. I really should have had some bound runners made to go beside the bed as it's such a shame to see the carpet looking less than pristine in those areas. Though I have to say that Peter now takes his outdoor boots off in the utility room to save tracking in dirt. 

I'm in and out of the house so often that my strategy is to take off any outdoor shoes either in the utility room or at least before I go in the bedroom. At the moment I spend a lot of time with bare feet indoors. It's surprising I haven't stood on any of the pins I've been scattering around the place as I go from the sewing machine in the kitchen to my work surface on the spare bed in the study or to the ironing board which I sometimes set up in the sitting room and sometimes in here.

 

Most of my day has been spent working on the black-out curtains. Above you can see the difference adding the cream muslin makes. On the left the curtain has definite grey tinge while on the right the extra layer softens the white making it closer to the wall colour. 

I still need to hand sew down the sides which I left for another day as I had ironing and then supper preparation to do.

Another Curtain.

Today has been sunny but not too hot and with just enough wind to dry the washing.

It's always nice to look out and see a yacht moored in the bay. It adds to the general holiday atmosphere even if it is only Freddy's yacht that he keeps at Ynyslas. 

Freddy is part of the RNLI crew and this morning's training session seems to have been  'boarding and towing a vessel in distress'. 

I decided not to go on the Sunday walk but finish off the curtains instead. But before I got to the black-out curtains I had a more pressing sewing project - making a muslin curtain for the terrace door. With yet another heatwave predicted it's handy to keep the door open to let air into the house. But that also lets in the flies which are not wanted in the kitchen.

I had a length of white muslin (the one that wasn't quite 3m), some left over black-out fabric and a long 2" wide strip left over from making the silly seagull curtains, everything I needed to make the curtain. 

But before I did any sewing I had to create a second curtain pole which I did using some plastic tubing that I cut notches into to fit over the existing curtain pole brackets.

I used the strip of fabric at the top of the curtain to strengthen the flimsy muslin and a wide band of black-out fabric at the bottom to add weight and also so that the muslin wouldn't catch on the threshold.

It all took lots of pinning and checking before two rows of stitching at the top and two at the bottom and it was done. 

I didn't carry on sewing as I had ironing and supper preparation to do but I left the sewing machine out on the table for tomorrows endeavours. And I still had time to sit outside for an hour with a cuppa.

As I was sitting outside I heard a clatter and when I looked down there was a crab claw dropped by a seagull or maybe a jackdaw. A nautical version of manna from Heaven perhaps?

Although I didn't go on the walk today I still got to see the countryside .... on the tv. I iron in front of the tv and today I thought I'd try watching Am Dros to see what I could understand. This is a reality show where four people go for walks in Wales. They take it in turns to lead a walk that is local to them and tell the others some facts about the area. They also provide a picnic lunch and organise some sort of game. At the end they score each other's efforts to make it a bit of a competition. It's more about seeing different parts of Wales and for me it's a chance to tune in to basic Welsh conversation. I can understand more now but I still had to refer to my dictionary and guess to understand what they were saying. Once I've seen the whole programme I'll watch it again with the (English ) subtitles.

The second walk today was around Bwlch Nant Yr Arian taking the route that goes past the Big Chair and on to Llyn Melindwr and finished with the red kite feeding. Places I know well and fun to see on the screen.