Fire lunatics

Going cross-eyed at the moment using Adobe Photoshop to work on a cover for Daisy. Not Adobe's fault, I hasten to add. The things the software will do are  amazing, but my knowledge of it is tentative to say the least. I use it so infrequently that all I learn in a few sessions is lost when I complete the task in hand and forget about Adobe for several months on end. I think if I was leaving school now I'd like to move into graphic art but it was just another unavailable option when I was at that stage. Unavailable? It was almost unheard of except for people who went to work for Walt Disney and that was all about working in cinema rather than computers.

We have some undesirables in the woods where I walk my dog. They think it amusing to set fire to to the resin that leaks from pine trees, and this is the result. They are pyromaniacs in the making, if not already there, for I see the remains of camp fires all over the countryside. One was still burning when I found it but the lads had long gone. These, I suppose, are the idiots who start forest fires.

It is horrid to see the trees like this or literally hacked to bits to provide fuel for a fire. There's plenty of dead wood in the woods without hacking at living trees.

The primroses hang on in damp shady spots, wood anemones are in full bloom and the bluebells are unfurling. Soon the woods will be a sea of hazy blue. The endless mud has dried and gone now, thank the lord. I was lucky I didn't slip on my backside sometimes, and both Tim and I got tired of coming home and having to wash him down. Heaven help the poor folk who own long-haired dogs.

The lambs are out in the fields, tiny and sprightly and I saw a fox, running across a field, in full daylight the other day. Tim watched and then gave chase, but he was nearly half a mile away so I wasn't worried he would catch Monsieur Reynard!

The tallest tree in the valley

Today is going to be noisy. There are two diggers working outside, one pushing down trees and the other smoothing out the "spoil heaps" that was excavated when the pond came into being. They do look like spoil heaps, too, because the land here is rocky with limestone. Farmers in England would think it was terrible soil, but it seems to grow exceptional crops. Tim is mad to be out racing round and round the machinery, but obviously we can't allow that, so he's pacing about indoors like a caged lion in spite of the fact that he's just had along walk up the hill to the Gite Rural. 

I waited and waited to get a picture of the old tree coming down. The two lads who were trying to fell it must have thought I was an idiot. I waited the best part of an hour while the digger pushed and battered and the lads chainsawed the old stump into submission. Then one of the lads darted away, Tim barked as if someone had come calling at the door, and I went to look out. There was no one there. When I got back to the window, the stump was down. Call me paranoid, but I think it was a plot...

It had been a beautiful tree. Two years ago, when we were last here, it towered over the mill, the tallest tree for miles. The leaves constantly whispered in the breeze that drifted along the valley. Now it is a grey wreck beside the pond, and an old stump that went several rounds with modern machinery before it finally gave in.

So I'm sitting here behind open windows with closed curtains, writing my blog and drinking a small bottle of Kanterbrau beer. It's a biere blonde at 4.2% alcohol, so I don't think I'm in any danger of being drunk when dh arrives back from Vergt with the groceries, The thing is, the beer is beautifully cold out of the fridge, and I was hot after my walk with Tim. Better than starting on the wine at 9am in the morning, don't you think?
Time to get on with my novel,

Prior to the thunderstorm a day or two ago, we spotted this visitor - or it may be a local resident. How are we to know? (After all, we are the guests here.) Almost three feet long, it froze when it saw us, hung around long enough for me to take pictures, and then shot off through the long grass and into an old, overgrown wall beneath the trees.

The same afternoon, we saw a much smaller black snake wriggling across the upstairs balcony. We got there in time to persuade it outside was much preferable to the interior of the house, and it obligingly wriggled off. We thought that one came down from the roof tiles to seek safer quarters in a thunderstorm. I suppose they hunt the small lizards that live in the walls and the roof.

Once the new arrivals had rested up after their journey from England, we started the real business. Felling and hauling out old, dead trees. Trickier than it looks, even with the help of this lovely little piece of equipment. After several hours work we had two large specimens hauled out onto the field where they can be safely cut up to make winter fuel.

We were muddy - because the trees had fallen across the bank of the stream - and sweaty, and once work was declared over for the day, there was a rush to have a shower and find clean clothes. But what a satisfying day! And we certainly enjoyed supper and a glass or two of wine.

New Horizons

I've spent an hour trying to get a picture onto here so that I could say No prizes for guessing where I am now! But, because I am using a tiny pc I've only had for tweve hours, I haven't found the way to upload pics. Typing is hard enough. Mine read rather like the policeman in 'Allo, 'Allo who transposed all his vowels, until I realised I must look at the keyboard and slow down my fingers.
So where am I? If I loaded a picture it would show a massive single-span steel bridge towering over buildings. Yes, I'm in Sydney, on the other side of the world' where the only tree I recognise among the millions around me is a gum tree.
The birds are different, too. The large parrot family screeches and squabbles, kookaburras cackle and there is one plaintive mimic in the trees in the garden who sounds alternatively like a homesick woodpigeon with a sore throat and a mobile phone ringing. I spent a while hunting down what I thought was a hidden/lost phone until an amused husband informed me the bird was in the tree above his head. I'm sure it is that bird that wolf whistles us as we walk down the street.
Sydney seems to be a city of eateries, and caters for every culinary taste. Restaurants employ the very civilized habit of corkage, which means they charge the very reasonable sum of A$2.50 to open the bottle of wine you take into their premises. You but the wine at the Grog shop (or Bottle Shop) and if you are lucky you can buy a clearskin - a wine that is surplus to production and sold stripped of its well known label at a much cheaper price - and very good they are too.