haar!
I'm on a train, or perhaps, in honour of the mobile phone cliche: 'I'M ON A TRAIN.' The novelty of being able to sit here and surf in only mild discomfort (unless you get a table there isn't enough space for me and a laptop, alas I am no longer as svelte as I used to be), hasn't yet worn off, and the carriage full of grumbling pensioners can be ignored with a clear conscience (the buffet car has run out of tea, the horror!).
Yesterday was another one of those slightly bewildering climate adventures, our weather tends not to follow the nationally predicted line, and we awoke to brilliant sunshine and clear skies, proper flip-flop and t-shirt weather. After a morning of blameless pootling about we decided to sort the recycling and head for the dump. Bathed in the sort of warm inner glow that shoving plastic bottles into a bin induces, we decided to reward ourselves with a pint and the sunday paper in one of our favourite pubs on the harbour of a local fishing village. There was a very boisterous, but rather inept darts competition taking place when we arrived, but no worries, we set ourselves up in the sunshine outside the pub. I was sufficiently absorbed by the gastronomic horrors I was reading about not to notice the temperature plummet, until I looked up and realised that visibility was down to about 20 feet, and it was distinctly cold. This was a haar, a cold sea mist that we are quite prone to, and as we drove back to our home, we could see it creeping up the glens towards us. It arrived about half an hour after we did, and the rest of the day was spent shrouded in fog, with nothing but the melancholy call of the lovesick pheasant to remind us that life goes on.
The cat, incidentally, was not impressed.
nimrod?
Maybe calling him Puszkin was a mistake, as each morning we have arisen to find yet another green wobbly bit in the middle of the kitchen floor. This doesn't appear to have affected his appetite, as griblets are hoovered up with messy enthusiasm.
There was quite a lot of shouting at around 3.00 am this morning, and there were muddy footprints when I got up to make coffee. I thought nothing much of it, confining my activities looking around rather bleerily in case I was going to stand on something nasty and still warm.
So, some time around midday, I was a bit disconcerted to wander into the kitchen and find a large field vole sitting in the sink, eating fresh mint that had broken off the pot on the windowsill. The cat had thankfully subsided into his customary coma, and was unable to assist me as I popped a cup over the rodent prior to evicting it. As I walked across the roadway outside the kitchen door, I startled a deer about 25 yards away, and it crashed off into the nether regions of the estate. I suppose we should be grateful the cat is sticking with things he can still get through the cat flap.
new tree
Last one from Colombia for the moment; one of the things I found strange about Bogota was that there was very little visible life, apart, of course from the hordes of humans. There were very few birds or insects, I didn't even see any rats.
On the other hand, situated as we were, at the end of the Andes (there's a joke struggling to get out there), there were a great many trees. Regular visitors to this blog may recall that I have a fondness for the genus Araucaria (most commonly represented in the UK by the Monkey Puzzle), and I was delighted to discover a variety new to me. Unfortunately it was the wrong season to collect seeds, and I was unable to identify it (kind and more knowledgeable readers might care to comment and inform us all).
A little googling and wikipedia search reveals that the tree is most likely to be Araucaria Angustifolia (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Araucaria_angustifolia) also known as the Parana Pine, so there.
Labels: araucaria
colombian spray art
These seem to be mostly political, but there's nothing wrong with that and they are pretty good...
new arrival...
This is Puszkin, he seems to have taken to country life. At any rate he was out all last night and is now so comprehensively knackered that he can't be bothered to struggle out of the chair. Quite a change from the terrified creature who cowered behind his bed in the animal rescue centre less than ten days ago.
