La Buona Vita

Once again I apologise

For the tardiness I have shown recently on blog updating. I’ve been that busy. Heard that one before have you? I expect so.

Anyway a quick fill in before the big, and I mean BIG news.

La D had a good time with her siblings and pa but it was rather lovely to pick her up from the airport.

With the lumberjacking done, I had been in charge of the slash and burn of the ground to liberate it from the weeds and general overgrowth. It was great. When La D got back it was time to move the timber up to the house. It was hard going but we managed it over several days and now have a good wood stack which I am hoping will last perhaps two years.

With the advent of some warmer and dryer weather we have also done a bit of decorating in the kitchen and sitting/dining room. We had the doors and windows open all the time so the smell of the paint didn’t get to us too much. Looks very good.

The lovely Spring weather has also meant we have been eating breakfast and lunch outdoors for about three weeks now. Lovely.

Veggie gardening is about to go ballistic as we head into the major sowing season although our fava (broadbeans) are ready now. Lovely with sheep’s’ cheese. So there will be lots of weeding and putting up of support canes. Good fun. In fact one of things that La D have been thinking about is perhaps going into a sort of partnership with some friends and working out what we all grow best and set up a small cooperative venture. If we grow toms best then we grow all the toms, if somebody else grows onions best then they grow all the onions, etc.. Or something like that. We’ll see. We haven’t talked to anybody about it yet.

BIG NEWS TIME!

La D has been banging on about something for quite a while now and I have been resisting – not that hard mind you, just a bit to give her something to push against!!

When we heard that what we have just got was likely to be “at risk” quite soon, we took the plunge.

We now have a friend for Bertie!! She (another dog might prove problematical in the future, temperament-wise) is just about 12 weeks old and scrummy.

Her name is Freya and she is one of six pups from a farm not too far from here. The shepherd’s dogs had 5 bitches and 1 dog. Whilst the shepherd has no problem with a dog, they don’t need bitches as they tend to breed. Surprising that. So he wants rid of them. Mind you she was expensive compared to Bertie. We had to give the shepherd a packet of cigarettes, when Bertie cost us nothing! The shepherd was more than pleased someone took on one of the pups and he was thrilled by the ciggies.

Some friends have seen the pups since they were born. They do in fact have a sister of Freya’s from the previous litter.

Freya’s great. Very pretty, clumsy, fluffy, bitey but licky too, and almost house-trained already. When you think she spent the first nine weeks of her life living in a field, she has taken to domestic living very quickly.

Bertie has come round rapidly. He was a little distant at first but I expect couldn’t resist the way Freya just threw herself at him, literally, to get him to play. Bertie is just coming to the end of his moulting and we often see Freya with a mouthful of white fur from where she has charged into him, mouth agape, nipping him. He tells her off sometimes. Not often.

The time of year is of course brilliant. The dogs are outside all the time. Of course a lot of puppy-watching is essential to her correct upbringing.

Here are some photographs.