Today I shall be Mainly...

[Stanley]

The news is that they have another dog, a puppy......
Up to now it has been a morning of washing and cooking on top of my normal morning activities. No sweat, I shall be in the shed later for an hour or so, Getting back in the shed and the longer walks is having its effect. Walking is easier and my knees aren't complaining as much standing in the shed! There is hope for us yet!
However, it just goes to show how quickly you can loose condition.

[PanBiker]

However, it just goes to show how quickly you can loose condition.

You notice exactly the same when you haven't been on your bike for a while. Small hills get above their station and become mountains.

Today I will mainly be having my brain scanned.

[chinatyke]

The news is that they have another dog, a puppy......

Does this mean that the vicious one has gone?

[Stanley]

They disappeared it five minutes after the attack China.
I shall be finishing my crankshaft and taking Jack to see Gillian. I want her to examine the dwelling on his neck.

[Marilyn]

"The dwelling on his neck"...ha! I love it.
not good of course if the dwelling is swelling. Hope it is just scar tissue..
( Come on Jack! It's time you healed and stopped worrying your dear old Dad! This affair with Sausages cannot go on forever!)

[Stanley]

I suspect I am being over cautious Maz but I have seen too many beasts die 'just as they were getting better'. It is often because the guard is dropped. Better safe than sorry.

[Sue]

The swelling may be an abcess from the bite.our cats often suffered from this after a scrap with a local ‘ invader’ to their territory. Antibiotics will put it right I am sure. Don’t worry Stanley.

Its Pams last day so we are going out for lunch. It is a typical mid August day with a thick fog. Hopefully it will burn off by 11.00. Nothing else planned today. Yesterday was the big car boot sale and we had a successful visit. I found a pattern for a summer top shorts and trousers, a pair of beautiful embossed silver scissors, a big sack of medium sized lego type bricks which we will take home for Erin(all now washed and dried in the sun) , a wooden box with a handle, great for storing my watercolour paints over here, and a fold out wooden sewing box on legs which I managed to get at a reduced price by a bit of very successful bartering and at one point walking away. Pam got several cross stitch kits.

[Stanley]

I'll be glad to get Gillian's opinion but I am pretty certain you are right Sue. I am not going to let my guard drop.....

[Stanley]

You were right Sue.....
Butcher's, shopping and bit of light tool making in the shed.

[Sue]

So pleased to hear it was nothing more serious Stanley.

Pam goes home today so its a trip to Nantes airport and back. Typically its going to be warmer and drier today with a return to higher temperatures for a couple of days. However it is definitely autumnal with cool nights and early mornings. I have put the lightweight bedspread back on the bed as it is so chilly about 4.00 a.m

More friends arrive on Thursday for a week, our friends who went to Alaska with us, thus this reminds me that we go home in just over two weeks, leaving just after them.

[Stanley]

Gillian reckons it is just normal inflammation as part of the healing process. I shall be monitoring it looking for any indication it is changing. It is 18 days since the attack. A wound like the one in his throat takes 40 days to heal completely. We aren't out of the wood yet but every day is a bonus.
We are getting the first signs of back end in the early mornings......

[Stanley]

I hope to be on light duties in the shed this morning.......
Otherwise the same routine, looking after Jack and myself.

[Sue]

a bit of post visitor cleaning and a trip to the shops to buy some mushrooms and other veggie. I may do a little gardening later or, as a rarity, just sit in the sun and enjoy the luxury, we won’t get much more of it.

[Stanley]

Sitting in the garden looks favourite to me Sue. Make Bob stop as well!

[PanBiker]

I'll second that.

Today I shall be mainly claiming my State Pension and trying to chill the best I can.

[Stanley]

Good plan Ian, you've earned it! Keep as mobile as you can within your limitations. Remember that standing at the sink counts as light exercise!
I shall be plotting my next moves in the shed......

[Sue]

Sitting in the garden looks favourite to me Sue. Make Bob stop as well!

He got the mini tractor out and finished cutting the grass in the field/orchard. He doesn’t do sitting! I a,so did some cooking. Pam does not like courgettes so we had a glut, I was creative managing to make a few dishes that could be frozen, if I can get them in my well packed freezer!

Today we are visiting a local flower show, then lunch out followed by a rural fete. A busy but relaxing Sunday. It was thick fog this morning at 7.00 am but seems to be clearing. A sunny day at 27 degrees is forecast

[Wendyf]

It's wet and windy here so I'm relieved that I managed to get most of the grass cut yesterday afternoon. I might do some tidying up in the polytunnel if I need to get out in the fresh air.....or make a start on tidying my "work" room which is in desperate need of attention!

[Wendyf]

We couldn't help collecting more mushrooms on our morning walk so I am busy grading and processing them! Large flat ones for Colin's breakfast fry ups, nice button ones will do garlic mushrooms for lunch. I've sliced up the slightly more open ones to go in a tomato & onion sauce for the freezer and the slightly less pretty flat ones are going to be soup. Yummy!

[PanBiker]

Sally is green with envy, quite a haul.

[Wendyf]

That's our third day of collecting them Ian, without straying much from our usual walk around the fields. We keep trying to ignore them but they look so tempting! I've never seen anything like it since we have been here, though there was a similar year when we were in Scotland, the weather conditions must have been just right.

[Stanley]

There are fungi on the Green Wendy, as you say, just right for them. Young Tooley who had the barner's shop in Earby was noted as the biggest liar in Earby. A man went in one day with a mushroom 6" across and said to Tooley "I'll bet you've never seen one as big as this". Tooley told him he'd picked a bigger one than that in Thornton Bottoms and his biggest job was getting the sheep out that were sheltering under it.....
A quiet hour in the shed I think.......

[Sue]

I am always wary about collecting mushrooms. I think I got scared when I studied mycology at university and started thinking every wild mushroom was potentially poisonous.

Last night was a hot night, first for weeks. Its already 20 degrees at 7.55 am. Its due to be a hot but cloudy day with a couple of light showers in the afternoon. I have some sewing to do. I came with a bag of crafty , arty tasks to be completed and this is the last one on the list. The bobble hat knitting and the lacy shawl crocheting are ongoing but this sewing task has to be completed by my first sewing lesson of the autumn, the 15 th September I think it is. Thus I can start my sewing season with a clean sheet ready to tackle something completely new.

Bob is making progress with the ensuite, all walls are now built and painted, electrics completed, holes for drainage pipes and water cut with some in place and flooring laid. Its looking good. The shower has priority as we only have one shower which runs on a small hot water tank of its own, thus the third person in has a cool shower. The new shower will have its own tank as per the french system. We ( the Royal we ) have been altering the shower over the bath too. It is a hand held shower head positioned in the middle of the long end of the bath with no wall behind it as it is a full length bath across the corner of the room. As a shower it is thus useless. So we have made an extension pole at one end next to tge wall, to hang the shower head on. The plan is to extend this to include an overhead square shower head. Its taken us 15 years to work out how to do this aesthetically.

[Stanley]

I share your distrust of myself and my ability to identify them Sue. Better safe than sorry!

[Wendyf]

I only ever pick field mushrooms which are reasonably obvious, the only other fungi that looks similar will stain yellow when bruised or cut and doesn't smell like a mushroom, apparently it smells like Indian Ink!