Persistent
Posted: Sat 23 May, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Thoughts, Weirdness 4 Comments »And now, a question :
The scenario : You’re dropping off something (letter, bill, leaflet, whatever) at a house, and your child insists on putting it through the letter box. From inside the house, you can hear a dog going completely nutty, barking and barking at the people the other side of the door. (i.e. barking at you and your child) But your child is – for whatever reason – having real issues with getting the envelope through the letterbox.
So – the question…
Bearing in mind that the dog is going mental, and sounds really aggressive, would you keep on letting your child try to post the envelope, or would you take over, get the job done, and bugger off so that a) the dog could calm down and b) your child didn’t get their fingers nipped if they put them through the letterbox?
Working From Home – Downside
Posted: Wed 20 May, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Own Business, Work-related 2 Comments »One of the downsides of working from home at the moment is things like this…
Problem exists between keyboard and computer
This is standard practice – although at least this time he wasn’t sleeping on the keyboard itself
More Garden Guff
Posted: Mon 18 May, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Green Garden, House Work Leave a comment »Yesterday was emphatically not a day of rest – primarily because we spent most of it in the garden. Again.
The first surprise came when I went up to let the chickens out in the morning – and found three peacocks (OK, technically one peacock and two peahens) in the chicken run. They quickly fluttered up on to the fence, and then next door, but returned a couple of times more before finally being scared off by Hound. There’s a colony of peacocks over by the church (probably half a mile from us) so it wasn’t a complete “Where the hell did they come from” moment, but it’s still the first time we’ve had them in our garden since we moved here.
From there we got a bundle of work done, including finishing filling the remaining three raised beds on the veg plot (using the best part of another ton of earth) and finally planting stuff in the bloody things. So we now have raised beds containing :
- Broad Beans
- Peas
- Strawberries
- Pumpkins
- Courgettes
In addition, scattered round the rest of the veg patch we’ve got :
- Raspberries (18 canes’ worth)
- Gooseberries (4 bushes)
- Blackberry (1 plant)
- Rhubarb (4 plants)
- Garlic (2 rows)
- Onions (3 rows – although they’re not doing much)
- Beetroot (1 row of white, 1 of red)
- Potatoes (3 buckets, two of which have so far been successful)
- Various herbs and odds-n-sods
Bear in mind, this is actually a reduced list from last year, due to us not actually managing much garden-wise last year. *ahem*
Anyway, with that little lot sorted, Herself also planted a bundle of stuff round the new pond (Hound was being a pain in the arse by this time, and got dragged indoors by Yours Truly) including foxgloves, lambs ears (it’s a plant, we’re not that cruel!), salvias, and other stuff I now can’t remember the name of.
Along the way there was also other bits and bobs, but it was a pretty busy day all told.
And that’s why I didn’t update yesterday…
Pond Life
Posted: Sat 16 May, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Green Garden 1 Comment »This morning, our lovely garden maintenance man came round, and we now have a small pond in the garden.
It’s been part of the plan for a while, but we hadn’t got round to getting it done. And now it is.
It’s not really planned to be a decorative/ornamental pond, more of a wild-life one, so we’ve had to think about the best ways to make it work. As it is, it’s got railway sleepers round the edges (which we’ll then probably cover with wire in order to stop Hound getting into it) with gaps so that animals can find their way in/out without too much hassle.
The main things we expect to use it will be the copious numbers of frogs and toads we’ve got in the area – I’d be very happy to have it get populated with frogspawn every year, but have no idea how long that may take – and possibly the odd hedgehog or whatever. That’s the plan, anyway.
Of course, now we also need to buy some plants to put in it – again, nothing massive, but enough to keep it oxygenated and clean. I don’t know whether we’ll bother with fish in it – we might, we might not.
But all the same, we now have a pond. That’s quite cool by any estimation.
Mileage – Part 3
Posted: Sat 9 May, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Driving Leave a comment »Another day of heavy driving today – this time to collect Hound from Berkshire, and come back to Norfolk.
I must be bloody potty…
Meerkat / Dog
Posted: Thu 7 May, 2009 Filed under: Animals, News, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Is it just me, or does the image of the world’s oldest dog on the BBC look very like Alexander, the meerkat from CompareTheMeerkat.com ?
Houndless
Posted: Thu 7 May, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Driving, Travel Leave a comment »This week, the house is remarkably quiet – primarily because Hound is down at her kennels/respite care place. It’s made sense, because of the work we did over the weekend, and the ongoing painting etc. that Herself’s been doing – but it still means the house is strangely quiet.
Of course it’s also lovely – it’s meant uninterrupted sleep at night, for example – and I’m sure that our neighbours are finding it equally odd/pleasant without Hound, and without inane/insane barking whenever we’re out in the garden, or going up to see the chickens, for example.
Psycho Cat is surprisingly unhappy about it too – he’s already attacked both of us for no good reason. He definitely misses Hound when she’s not around, much as he’d never admit it. (if the fuzzy bastard could talk, anyway) And when you take into account that he hates change too, it’s not surprising that he’s being a little grumpy fucker.
Of course, normality will resume on Saturday evening, once I’ve driven down to Wokingham, collected Hound, and driven back. (Another six hours on the road, and a 300ish mile round trip)
But for now, well, I’m just going to enjoy the peace for the next few days.