Not So Sunny Sunday.

It has been much greyer and damper today. We still went out for a walk around Morte Point. Fewer people out today, just a couple of groups of older walkers - a club or U3A? (Peter did point out that we are not exactly young ourselves.)

There were plenty of sheep around, unconcerned by the steep cliffs and swirling sea below. I suppose sheep brains don't really contemplate such dangers. David Kennard who farms these sheep chose this type of sheep as they are more placid and less likely to fall down the cliffs. People are supposed to keep their dogs on the lead when walking around the Point but some holiday makers have no brains and think it amusing to see their dog chasing the sheep around. David Kennard is an interesting young man (he gave a talk to our WI), who originally came here on farm holidays with his family and by sheer determination now farms here for the National Trust. He has written several books and made a film about one of his sheepdogs - Mist. He trains sheepdogs and runs , I think 5, at the same time , each dog having its own set of commands.

Usually when we round the Point we walk from chill shade to warm sun but today it was all grey and damp. The surf was 3-5ft and clean at Woolacombe & Puts so there were plenty of surfers out in the water. I'm a warm weather body boarder but Romas would tog up in his winter wetsuit, hood and gloves and be out there whenever he could persuade me that I needed a walk along the beach.
I put in a couple of hours weeding this afternoon simply because I am determined to get the main hillside finished. This year I'm really getting all the weeds out unlike last year when it was a lick and a polish. Today I discovered my arch enemy - bindweed, pretty flowers but what a horrible weed. It spreads and smothers and spreads. Leaving the smallest scrap of those nasty spaghetti-like roots in the ground starts the cycle all over again. When my neighbour filled in the swimming pool with stuff he was digging out to build his house there was a lot of bindweed in it. That is one of the reasons why it took me 18 months to trench my way across the whole area removing every last root and consigning them the dustbin. Today's discovery was confined to a small area so hopefully I've got it all out.
Peter has made a big potato, cabbage & cheese casserole for our supper. We called in at Tesco's to get a white cabbage on our way home and got a lot of bargains (nice breads, bagels, beef, sausages, cold meats, cottage cheese, lettuce & bananas ) reduced by 75% so the freezer and the fridge are full again. I keep trying to use up what we have in our large chest freezer but it is sensible to buy bargains when I see them. Looking forward to the casserole and Dancing on Ice.

A Frog He Would A Wooing Go.

All week long, as I've been working outside , the frogs have been croaking away in the pond. As soon I wander over to have a look they disappear into the mud with a great flurry of amphibian limbs. Today I crept up the steps and got some photos of them ........ doing what frogs do in the spring. As well as their croaking the air has been full of the sound of bird song; the high pitched chinking of finches, the melodious song of the blackbird and many others & of course the mad quacking of the call duck. My constant presence outside is annoying the jackdaws who keep moving from one side of the house to another but keeping a safe distance so they won't be 'shot'. Once in a while a scout would fly over but there I was , on my hands and knees, weeding on the hillside. How long I wonder before they decide to go and nest somewhere else? It's been another sunny day so I got plenty of work done. In order to motivate myself I wrote a list on my kitchen whiteboard, of all the various tasks that need doing in the garden. By the time I had finished I wasn't so much motivated as horrified by the length of the list. Perhaps it'll be better when a few more things have been ticked off. In general I like lists especially when I can work my way through them. I have this desire to get things DONE but I am very easily diverted from the task in hand so having that goal in front of me does help. Looking forward to an evening of easy tv by a nice wood fire.

One annoying thing today. Along with our letters the postman delivered a card from the Post Office. This card tells us that a letter could not be delivered because it did not have sufficient postage paid. I have to pay the excess on line before they will deliver the letter. The fee for this is £1. And the underpayment was ....... 8p, someone must be a real 'job's worth' to hold a letter back for such a nominal ammount.

A Gardening Day.

It has been sunny and warm today, 10C ! I've spent most of the day gardening and have managed to finish weeding all the heather banks. I'm giving myself a pat on the back for that as I was tempted to work down by the stream in the lovely sunshine rather than on the north-facing hillside. But I resisted and got on with the job in hand. At least I was able to look at blue skies and the sun lighting up the winter foliage in other parts of the garden.

A good thing that I stuck with the job as the early heathers are covered in almost open flowers. Now I will be able to enjoy the full glory of the swathes of purple and white along the hillside. Before we came here I wasn't keen on heathers at all apart from out on the moors but in our wet, soil-less clay conditions they are ideal and I'm so happy to have planted them. They also fit the local conditions as they are not affected by the legions of slugs that inhabit our garden. The rain that had been forecast for the afternoon finally arrived at 5.30, about 5 mins after I had finished for the day.

While I was feeding the hens this morning I saw my neighbour in the next-door meadow by the lake. They have been given another call duck by some people who live about a mile away. Apparently it spent most of yesterday trying to walk home up the hill but today it was at least swimming on the lake with the very noisy call duck and a few wild ducks.

Dentisht.

First thing this morning saw me at the dentist having 2 crowns removed from a couple of molars. Being one of the poor masses I have to go to the National Health dentist where the treatment is often not as good as paying to go private. Regular readers will recall last year's fight to get NHS treatment for a root canal filling (not being prepared to pay £1000 for private treatment), and the eventual loss of the tooth due to long waiting lists. Today's treatment was due to the fact that in the 20 years since the crowns were fitted my gums have receded a bit and the teeth were becoming sensitive (one also had some decay underneath), and will cost me £250. I now have to wait over 2 weeks for the new crowns and have, I discovered no ability to chew as the dentist just left the stumps. That sounds awful but it is all at the back. I'm sure I can nibble on some chocolate & cream cakes to keep up my energy levels. I'm not a fan of our NHS dental service, thank goodness ordinary medical treatment is completely different. The NHS used by 95% of the population is not excellent and there are some restrictions on treatments and waiting lists but the one thing you can be assured is that you will never have to pay for treatment. You do have to pay £7 for each prescription unless you are under 16, in full-time education, over 60, pregnant or on government benefits. I read with horror of people in America having to enormous amounts of money and fight insurance companies who seem to want to pay for as little as possible. The last thing you want when you are ill is to have to worry about paying for treatment. How much I wonder would all my recent treatment for my back, months of physiotherapy, MRI scan, x-rays, & surgery, have cost? I might not be too happy with our local hospital who have been known to make mistakes but at least everybody gets the same treatment.

This afternoon I was back at work, the injections at the dentist had made my mouth go numb and it was rather challenging to teach a phonics lesson first thing. Straight after the dentist I had met one of my mums in the supermarket and all I could do was point to my mouth and mumble 'dentisht'. Because we stream the children from 2 classes I couldn't even rearrange the phonics for later in the afternoon. It was quite a relief when I realised the injections had worn off and I was able to talk normally. I stayed on after school to go through the children's ability and effort levels for short half-year reports as I had been their teacher last term. I'm not back at school until Tuesday morning. It has been raining for the past few days but the forecast is for sunshine tomorrow morning so I'll be out there tackling the weeds once more.

Cooking.

In response to demand by my readers...... well OK it was one person who asked, I thought today's post would show the range where I struggle to cook. It's not actually this Victorian range. This was installed by the previous occupants, at great expense (I believe about £1000 !! ), up in the barbecue area where the swimming pool was. We did look into ripping it out and selling it but it would have needed some major demolition and wouldn't have fetched very much anyway. These stoves were not designed to be outside, hence the rust, and it would have been the job of a hardworking housewife or maidservant to keep it clean and polished. I could just give it a coat of rust paint but as it is fully functional with a proper chimney the next owners of this place might want to use it so I may just give it a going over with a wire brush.
This is the Rayburn that I have a love/hate relationship with. I love the way it keeps the kitchen warm, provides unlimited hot water and dries my washing ....... BUT I hate the way it is a nightmare to cook on , the fact that it burns fuel 24/7 and the way that any food or grease splashes get heat sealed on. It is all enamelled so you can't use anything too vigorous such as wire wool and there don't seem to be any products that remove baked on grease from a too hot to touch surface. Any ideas anyone ? I even went into a posh Aga showroom to ask about cleaning but they didn't have any ideas. Perhaps most Aga owners have plenty of time or cleaning ladies. All I can do is scub with a kitchen scrub/sponge and very carefully scrape with a sharp knife but it is too easy to scratch the enamel surface.
Cooking is a bit of a challenge. There is a large hotplate on the top, one side of which is a bit hotter than the other but it never gets hot enough to fry anything. You are supposed to be able to adjust the oil flow and thus the temperature but it takes at least half an hour to react and is unpredictable so I generally adjust my cooking times to the temperature it is running at. The oven is the small door with the gauge on the front and yes it is rather small. The more you put into the oven the lower the temp drops. The temp is also dependant on the direction of the wind. The small oven below is only a warmer, good for drying wet boots and gloves, when it is open the cats often creep in with the boots. The 3rd door opens on the oil burner parts. This is a modern rayburn and uses heating oil (kerosene). It is designed to run a central heating system as well but that didn't work for the previous owners and we were advised to put in a separate boiler and closed system for this size of house. To supplement the rayburn I have a microwave oven and a large electric hot plate set into the work surface. Cooking on the rayburn needs a lot of forward planning and some luck.
Peter hates the rayburn with a vengeance because about every 6 months the wicks get sooted up and he has to dismantle and clean it. The heavy hotplate has to be taken off so that all the soot can be hoovered up and the oil burner has to be taken to pieces, cleaned , new wick put in and then replaced. It often takes several attempts to get the oil flowing evenly as the levels have to be just right and everything is in a confined space. This usually takes a whole day and leaves Peter bad tempered with skinned knuckles.
The cats on the other hand love the rayburn as somewhere warm to snuggle up to. Smudge in particular likes to lie stretched out with his tummy against the rayburn to get the full benefit of the heat. You can always tell when it is getting cold because the kitchen starts to be populated by cats looking for a warm place (only 4 now but we did have 6 and a big dog).
Other details, I did all the tiling in the kitchen using basic white tiles topped with Laura Ashley borders (I made matching curtains from LA fabric, I do like a touch of Laura Ashley around the place.) I also painted the hen, copied from a kitchen magazine, and the sweet peas to match the border and I used wavy dark blue tiles set at an angle to make the splash back. Oh and the floor is cork tiling on concrete. We put down cork tiles in our old house and loved them so much we did the same here. If for any reason we were to lose both the oil and electricity the wood burner in the sitting room has a large flat top which gets more than hot enough to cook on. And those are the cooking facilities in this Devon farmhouse. It will probably take a while to adjust back to a normal oven that comes on at the flick of a switch when we do eventually move.

Wetter But Warmer.

The kitchen is looking a lot tidier as today's rain was not conducive to being outside weeding and instead I spent time doing housework. I wouldn't mind housework so much if A. other people did some as well, Ha-Ha, and B. other members of this family could learn to put things away though I do have to admit at being almost as bad as everyone else. It's just that I'm the one left to sort everything out as no one else minds.

Once I had driven up the hill at lunchtime it was straight into the clouds. Lashing rain, mud pouring down the sides of the road and the occasional flooded section. Below the cloud level everything still looked rather misty. With the rain came warmer temperatures so I've been able to turn off the central heating in the day. Tonight's weather forecast is for more snow but luckily not in our corner of the country.

Worlds In Miniature.

I've spent the whole day weeding. I find it very hard to stick to doing one thing and keep seeing other jobs that need doing but today I stayed on task and cleared several of the heather banks. I did have a senior moment after lunch when I spent about 10 mins looking for my secateurs. I'd raced indoors at lunchtime because it was raining , leaving them - so I thought on a bush. I did find them eventually, under some leaves lower down the bank. There have been a few arial interruptions today. First it was a low flying fighter jet plane probably on its way over to Wales where they are allowed to skim the deserted mountains. Then a helicopter flying low. It was the red air-ambulance helicopter, (funded by charity and very necessary in this rural location). It flew low over the valley up to Indicott, turned and came back at about tree height, turned at the corner of the garden, slid over Paul's hill (I'd walked up the road by this time) and flew at minimum height towards East Down. Then it came back and headed off north, they were obviously having difficulty finding the place they had been called to. I hope the casualty got to hospital safely.

Having decided not to show boring weeding pictures instead I thought I'd show some rock pools from yesterday.

Snakelocks sea anemones. I have to admit to teasing them a bit with some dried seaweed which they grabbed in an alarming manner. I didn't use my finger because the book says that they do have a painful sting.

A more gentle beadlet sea anemone sharing its pool with at least 5 kinds of molluscs.

Finally, a group of dog whelks guarding their eggs with another beadlet sea anemone. All these rock pools were no more than 2 or 3 inches across but contained a wealth of life. Isn't nature wonderful ?