town, country, hills, river, sea - mamma!

so, as i mentioned a few posts back, my fab mum came to visit the other week, for a couple of weeks. it was just what we needed! so nice to spend some time together and chill. though we didn't do much chilling to be honest - either physically or temperature-wise! we had fun going around visiting various places and people, though the temperatures were veeeerrry high indeed - high 30s, often 39°! eek! we visited the countryside, the hills, the sea, the city, the allotment, the relatives down south (more photos from the south in a later post!).... it was fun! the plan is now to get my mum out here again soon! understand, Mamma?? hehehe :)

well, i guess i have a backlog of little stories and photos for you, as this weekend mr m. and i also went away for a lovely 3 days in tuscany. but more about that in another post too. in the meantime good start to a new week! all the best, nà

padma and elgo

so, yesterday i told you about the new addition to the house. we weren't planning on an extra cat. partly as our cat, padma, hates all other cats. but whilst my mum was here we went to lunch at a friend's house. a lady was there with three kittens. two had found new homes. one hadn't. hehehe. so, home she came with us, in the car, strangely panting all the way back, mouth wide open, like a dog in disguise as a kitten. we got home and .... ta-da, padma loathed her immediately. and it lasted, and lasted, and lasted. and then some more besides. but over the last few days we started to notice an improvement. we called the new cat helga. then i took her to the vet's for her kitten jabs and de-worming etc, where i was kindly told by lovely vet man that helga is more of a helgo ... he showed me the bits to prove it too! gosh, i am dense! so, anyhow we now have a girl cat (padma) and a boy cat (new, revisioned name is elgo for the time being). we thought we would have to find him a new home, with him being a boy and also being loathed by padma. but, see, as these photos show (and as wise, cat owning friends had told me) things are getting better. in fact, today padma and elgò are in the same space, and can even sit next to each other in tranquility. sometimes they play catch with each other, and padma evens sniffs his ears and nose (his bottom too, but i'd prefer she didn't as it doesn't seem very lady-like and genteel for one as fair as she!). but anyhow, it seems then that elgo is here to stay, and yay, i'm so pleased!

i thought i would post this up right now, so my mum can see it and take a sigh of relief, as she was rather worried about the two of them together - see Mamma, they like each other now! yipee!

have a good day folks, many miaos from the two moggelies, nà

sweet peas, sweet days

hello there, i'm back again. sorry it's been quite a while. the superfantastic visitor, a.k.a. my Mum, went back home yesterday, boo hiss. but we have had such an ace time whilst she has been here. i will have more stories and more photos soon. but at the moment i'm rushing to get ready for a choir concert we have this evening (yes, that dress!) and for 4 hours of school tomorrow morning (yes, the summer hols are temporarily over, for this week only).

in the meantime i leave you with flowers from our garden, including some sweet peas which my Dad would have really loved, and also some paper bunting made from magazine pages and hung up colourfully in our kitchen to welcome my Mum (who, incidentally, rocks) when she came to visit.

... we miss you, Mamma!

oh, and by the way, we have a new kitten too! padma isn't best pleased, but more about that some post soon.

all the best, i'll be back over the next couple of days.

all things considered...

hello there. thanks for your nice messages, but i'm afraid to tell you that the lovely little Sofia didn't make it. we took her to the italian equivalent of the rspb on monday and the man said he would check her out. yesterday evening we spoke with the very kind man there who has been helping us and he said that for her sake it was best if she went to fly in birdie heaven, as it were...

the emotive part of us obviously wanted to keep her rather than that.... but all things considered, and thinging about her and how she was feeling, rather than what we would personally have preferred, then we knew that really the man was right. it didn't make it any nicer to know though.
but now Sofia will be flying in house martin heaven together with Jacopino, the abandoned baby house martin that we tried rearing two years ago.

they are the most beautiful of birds....

yesterday, with this week's very special visitor extraordinaire, we were walking to the car when we spotted these flowers. very small, a bit bigger than daisies. but look what strange things can sometimes unfurl from flowers!

all the best. nà.

10 good things

it's been a busy few days. little work, but lots of other things. nice things. but busy. short sentences and several photos to sum up quickly before i get back to doing the things i have to get done...

1 - yesterday we went to pick up an old pedal sewing machine, which is fully functional, from some lovely friends who were (gasp!) giving it away. it's now in my study next to my desk. it's lush.

2 - when aforementioned friends knew that we were going collecting lime tree flowers they let us collect theirs. lots of it. to dry and use as tisane this winter. lush. my two favourite bits of summer are the arrival of the swallows, swifts and house martins and the smell of lime tree flowers.

3 - the other day i made one hundred and three ginger snaps. with root ginger, cinnamon sticks, cloves and lots of other goodies inside. i counted them because i like to count biscuits when i make them. when i know how MANY biscuits there are it seems all the more exciting. they were lush. here's a before and after picture.

4 - i don't usually go to the supermarket, ever. the reasons i go are for: dental floss, tooth brushes, female essentials and flour when our usual source of flour is unavailable. today i ran out of flour and was meant to make bread. so i went to the supermarket. and coming out, taking the track behind the supermarket which i don't usually take, there was this little creature on the grass next to the track. she's a young house martin and cannot fly because one of her wings seems dislocated. i took her to see our bird expert friend f., he taped up her wings and gave me some advice. then i spoke on the phone with two friendly men from the national bird association. our helpful friend f. decided she should be called sofia. even though we don't really know if she is a he or a she. sofia it is. i've been feeding her baby food and water through a needle-less syringe. so far so good. fingers crossed. if all goes well she'll be staying with us over the weekend and on monday we'll be taking her down to another town to a bird protection centre who will give her some help.

5 - at christmas my Dad gave me a necklace to wear with my choir dress. he told me expressly, "this is to put on with your choir dress when you sing". my Dad saw me sing in a concert once when he came over to visit us the other year. tomorrow is the first concert i'll be singing in a choir concert since he gave me the necklace, and since he passed away. i shall be wearing the necklace with honour and pride, and thinking of him. i hope he'll be close by...

6 - next week a very special visitor extraordinaire will be coming to stay for a while. so i am cleaning the house. in theory! my blogging will probably be less frequent for a while, but i'll still be around.

7 - we tried to guess which of the 50-ish runner bean plants would be the first to flower. some are extremely tall, others aren't. we expected it would be a tall one. we were wrong. it's a shorty, near the sweet peas (fiona, i wonder if the planting position has anything to do with it?)

8 - the poppies continue to bud and bloom. they're incredible.

9 - for the past four days i've been walking 3 km each morning in the countryside with mr m.'s mum. it's been lovely.

10 - on sunday we're off folk dancing, i'm looking forward to it.

ladybirds and a magical friend

last week i went out into the garden, went back into the house to get the camera and went back out into the garden again. to take photos of the ladybirds. there seemed to be lots of them. and i love them, lots. well, i took some photos and then gathered in the washing, noticing ladybirds on the washing too. and in the house as i put the washing away i felt a ladybird on my neck too.

well, today a parcel arrived from the uk. i was a little confused as it had been posted from a gardeny place, and there was no mention of who it was from. just a lovely, lovely, lovely surprise for my birthday. an lovely wooden insect tower with little ladybirds on it, ideal for fostering ladybirds or lacewings in the garden and giving them a place to stay during the winter! wow! isn't that stunning! just what our ladybirds need so as to be enticed to stay and live with us ...FOREVER!!! heehee!

so, as supermate chesh had mentioned that a parcel should be coming for me, i sent her a message, and found out that the wonderful pixie of our garden was indeed her! thank you sooooo much chesh! what a lovely surprise, you really are so wonderful, and soooo psychic too! and thanks for being, and having long been, such a wonderful mate! from the old days of erasmus and university, right up to now, through the sunny times, the foggy times and the times of CAKE! i'm lucky to have such a fab mate! big hugs!

and on that note i am off down into the garden to see if the ladybirds have started doing their house move yet!

have a good week, nà

some more of our resident ladybirds

here are some more of the photos i took of them last week...

small and stripey

i made this little bag yesterday for our friend c., i hope she liked it. it's small and stripey, a little cotton handbag. the outer part is pale gray corduroy with a corduroy shoulder handle. the inner and the little pocket are in a nice sturdy gray/white striped cotton canvas (chesh, aprons!) which is one of my favourite fabrics at the moment. i have several metres of it and am in love with pale stripes!

the two buttons are simply decorative. but i like simply decorative at times.

it was a bit of a quick experiment bag, at times i feared it was going to turn out terribly, but in the end i was less distraught than i'd imagined.

yesterday afternoon i went to fabric heaven - there's a fabric shop near here which is IMMENSE! and cheap. and bliss! it is such a big place! but i mean, really, really, big for a fabric shop! i bought some new fabrics and am going to try out some more bags.

today is sunday, i just made the bread, mr m. is at the allotment gathering veg for lunch, and after lunch is eaten and the bread is baked, we're off walking in the countryside, and gathering lime tree flowers to dry (yum!) and going to a snail festival!

padma is sitting on my lap, she says prrr! to you all! if i were a cat i would say prrr! to you all as well, but as i am a nà, then i shall say have a fun day. bye for now...