Fresh Lemons

La D’s mum and dad bought us a lemon tree about two years ago. We’d given up hope of ever having lemons from it. The flowers would come and the fruit would follow. The thing was the fruit was ever only small and green. It would never get large and yellow. Well, we now have some lemons. They aren’t very big but boy oh boy are they lemony! The wonderful aroma that comes from them when you cut into the fruit.

La D is terribly fond of a G&T and now that we can make one with our own lemons she is even more stirred up to become a professional G&T tippler! Mind you, it won’t be a big move. Ha, ha.

The odd thing is the timing of the fruit. Very strange, but very welcome.

Big Egg!

The girls are doing very well, even in this bitterly cold weather. They are still cranking out three a day. That is apart from the other day when only two eggs were in the nest.

Oh well, we thought, it is cold so it’s not surprising that one of them hasn’t laid an egg.

However the next day there were three eggs again, but one of them was a whopper as this picture shows.

And it turned out to be a double-yoker. It was as delicious as all the others the chicks are laying for us. We really can’t get through all the eggs they produce for us but our friends and neighbours are very grateful!

La D is still at it

These are two classic La D verbal faux pas (what is the plural of faux pas? I don’t know either, so just make up your own!)

You may remember that I was given a great little gadget that measured the temperatures inside and outside and also gives pressure readings. Of late we have been looking at the temp outside – I don’t really know why as we can see it’s cold and also if you were to put your nose just outside the door, it would probably be frozen in a few seconds

However, the pressure monitor displays an upwards arrow and a sun when the pressure is on the rise and a downward arrow along with clouds when the pressure is on the way down.

There is also a  humidity indicator. It displays a number corresponding to the percentage of humidity.

Well, the other day La D was looking at this little weather station and she looked at the humidity figure and announced, “Do you know L’uomochifa, the humidity today is 56 miles per hour.”

As often in these cases of La D’s misunderstanding, I was quite mystified for a few microseconds and then painfully trying not to show the humour that was bubbling up inside.

“Hmmm.” I managed in quite a high pitched way.

A side long glance by La D was enough for me to grab my inner desire with an iron fist and hold it, tight.

The other one was a beaut of a malapropism

Can you spot the difference?

We were walking with Bert and saw a couple of engineers on the roads taking measurements for something or other.

“I wonder what those men do with those troglodytes L’uomochifa?”

“Non lo so (I don’t know) my darling,” I said  “But I think you mean theodolites.”

“Do I? Alright, what are those theodolites doing with those troglodytes?” She grinned. She’s playing me, I thought.

Doh. I give up. Well, not altogether.

A posto.

 Ciao, mantenere la fede

  

Felice Nuovo Anno Tutti!

This means Happy New Year all, in Italian, as if you couldn’t guess.

Well, what have we been up to? Not a lot really.

We have had Bert’s sister with us again for a week whilst her owners, M&S, went to Austria with M’s parents. They went to look into some family history as it has only come to light quite recently that M’s father’s father was not his real father, but somebody else altogether who died in WW2.

They had a revelatory few days and have discovered a whole chunk of family they did know existed and of course vice versa. Fascinating.

Family

Some news on the family front. My eldest boy and his wife are going to have a baby. This will be their first (and last?). They have waited quite a while but both are getting on, in terms of having babies that is, and also his wife is almost 40 so I suppose they didn’t want to leave it any later if they were going to start a family. Also he has been so busy whizzing up and down motorways and things for his job and she has been running stables and been very involved with horse jumping things, that we are quite surprised.

Anyway, many congrats to them.

So, we will be grandparents again. The child is due at the end of June.

Also we have just been informed that my nephew is getting married in the Autumn. We have met his fiancé when they both came over and stayed with us in 2009. She was part of the crew of a boat in a Trans- Atlantic yacht race a couple of years ago.

So many congrats to them too!

My nephew’s dad, my brother, has just moved. He was living up a mountain about 250 miles from Seattle on the west coast of the USA and he now lives 3000 miles east in Maine on the Eastern Seaboard. Apparently, whilst loving the area,  he and his wife got fed up being so far from any services and suffering from the extreme winters and the extreme summers. Although they did know this when they moved there seven years ago.  It took them ten days to make the journey and the trip was not without interest. At one stage they had to drive through a proper blizzard!!.

My brother now knows a sure fire way of putting on weight. Drive across America! The only eateries he ever came across were those that sold burgers and fries. Very comforting but not too good for the waistline and scales.

Foraging

In an effort to eke out our wood supply for the fire in the kitchen, I have been doing some foraging in our woods at the bottom of the garden. It’s brilliant. There is quite a lot of dead wood, big branches, that have fallen from the trees whether in a bit of wind or just through age.

I go down there with my wheel barrow, bow saw – La D doesn’t like me to use my chopper too much -  and a length of old TV aerial cable and cut up loads of this wood. The reason for the cable is that the timber is very light and I can stack the barrow really full of it without making it too heavy to push up the hill. The problem is then one of stability. This is where the cable comes in. I just keep going under the barrow and over the load with the cable, tie it down tightly and I can then easily transport my spoils up to the wood shed by the house. Free fuel. Excellent.

It makes very good fire starting material as well as being useful to get the fire going again if I have forgotten to keep it fed. I have to admit I do do this occasionally and then I incur the wrath of “she who must be obeyed” and I’d rather not invite her displeasure.  

Ciao, mantenere la fede