Hi again!

Are you ready for more Blitherings? Here goes…..

It was really good having the Transfiguration Day get-together, thank you to those who put in so much hard work at such short notice. I think everyone really appreciated it.

It’s been a bitsy sort of week here with a lot of different things going on.

This week was the week that this year’s lambs needed dosing and giving their vitamins and then the ewes needed separating from the rams. It’s gone colder now so my son is taking them some hay every day when he checks them and I think this week he’s going to buy some mix to feed them and some salt licks.

Today he’s taken the tractor to pick up some scaffolding boards so he can fix a bale trailer. He has a small bale trailer but usually in the summer he has to borrow other farmer’s trailers to get all the bales in. The man who has inherited the next farm along isn’t going to farm it and has given my son the metal skeleton of a decent sized bale trailer so he is going to take any rotting wood off and repair it all, ready for hay time.

He and his girlfriend have gone off to get them and I am dreading them getting back!…I have some bad news for his girlfriend. They went out leaving Mali, his spaniel, in the kitchen…..with his girlfriend’s lovely new pair of Nike trainers. I have to tell her when they get back….that she no longer has a pair of Nike trainers! She has one trainer and a pile of chewed up ex-trainer bits. Mali is now sleeping the sleep of the guiltless next to me while I write this letter…..

Today my eldest daughter has gone into the hospice to stay for a week. She goes in for a stay every so often for them to check how her system is doing, to take bloods and give her therapies.

She takes her assistance dog Carrie in with her. She is a golden retriever. Carrie has an amazing time whenever she goes and the staff love having her there. She is so spoiled. The staff buy her toys and give her treats. The kitchens cook her sausages and scrambled eggs and other things that retrievers might like. My daughter went to the hospice on Carrie’s birthday this year and the cook made Carrie a birthday cake! Carrie gets invited into the rooms where the patients are coming to the end of life. She lies on the bed to comfort them and their families and she cuddles up to the people with Parkinson’s or dementia who can’t remember much and sometimes can’t speak but who can always remember how to cuddle a dog. A couple of weeks ago the staff borrowed Carrie to sit with a lady who had just that day lost her husband and was close to the end of life herself. Carrie just sat quietly with her head on the lady’s shoulder and the lady stroked Carrie’s head and was calmer when Carrie was with her. She’s an amazing dog…we are so blessed to have her.

Last week whilst I was at Berwyn my middle daughter was at A & E because she had managed to fall down a step and land on her hand. By the time I was back to the car I had a message saying that she had already had an x-ray and been seen by the doctors, which has to be record time for our hospitals recently. She has broken one of the bones in her arm but also got infection into the cuts on her hand from where she landed. She is really annoyed because not only is she having to wear a really horrible salmon coloured wrist splint (they can’t put a plaster on it because the infection needs to be checked) but she had been learning to drive and now can’t have another lesson until her break has healed. She had been really nervous about starting to drive but when she finally started, she was really enjoying it. She has already booked her test and now is counting up the days, trying to decide whether her arm will be healed in time to give her enough practice before the test date.

The autumn colours round our fields are beautiful, even if everywhere is completely soggy. It’s rained so much this week that the stream that runs though our garden has been in full flow and one of the fields has standing water in it. Last night I saw a fox running down the hill by us and I could hear the barn owls calling. There are so many berries on the trees this year its beautiful. The old farmers say that when the trees are full of berries, then its going to be a cold snowy winter….we shall see! I do know that at the moment I am beginning to get a bit sick of rain and more rain.

This letter has come back full circle and I’m going to end with the usual character….Mali. I think she is going to fill our letters just as much as Lenny used to, for those that remember him. Mali has just come back from a walk….well, maybe a swim…..perhaps even a muddy puddle diving competition. She looks like this…

So now I’m going to have to finish up writing to you to go bath a spaniel …again!

She has grit and mud caked all over her and she stinks!! So that’s what I’m doing with my afternoon.

Blessings,

Elizabeth