Sunday mornings are the best

Sunday here.   Daylight savings begins today. Which means I am a little late as to the clock.  Mia is trying but she still cannot tell the time.  So I think I will be forgiven. But it amuses me how sheep learn routines. Since she has been sick, every afternoon I let her and Mama out into the Forbidden Field. The grass IS growing, but is still way too short to graze intensively so it is a balancing act. You will remember that this field was only sown last spring. However every afternoon about two these two start to loiter over by the gate, and if I am not fast enough Mia will set up her Moaning.

After bolting through the gate, they wander about the clean fields, finding a few new shoots to nibble on. Green grass is such a tonic for them.  And by the way, Mia is eating her yoghurt and garlic like a very good  sheep as long is it is heavily laced with molasses. 

Poor old Hairy MacLairy. Last week when I was  focussing on Mia,  the calves and Daisy were being naughty so I separated them quickly and I forgot all about Hairy and left him in with the calves.  He hates the calves he thinks, quite rightly, that they are stupid.  Yesterday I realised that he had not come out of the barn all day, he was lying in the dark looking depressed. So I led him to Daisy’s  gate  and let him into the Corridor field with her. He looked at me as if to say  Took Your Time! and trotted back over to his Best Friend. 

The bees have been drinking their sugar water. But it was too windy for them to venture out yesterday. I am hoping that today will be a better day for them.  

Cooder needs his nails cut. Bags not me! We have never had to cut them before, as he has kept them down with his road work, but he tends to run in the ditches and fields now taking short cuts on the morning run with John.  The poor old fella has an aspirin in raw milk every morning for his arthritis.  Aspirin is derived from Willow bark. It is a very old remedy.  In fact Hippocrates writes about its use in relieving pain in childbirth and swelling in joints.  So, with that kind of recommendation and as long as it is taken with milk, it is worth a try for him.  By the way the vet told me that sugar coated aspirin will not work the same – it has to be the old recipe, hence the milk. 

And if you were wondering what happens to the ceramic sugar bowl Tops after the ceramic bowls have been grown into the hedges. They sit in the  bird baths. The bird baths are also old ceramic plates and chipped platters sat on the metal skeletons of broken chairs and topless tables and even a wine rack  that I found dumped on the side of the road.  Both the bees and the birds appreciate lots of water.  One of the joys of spring is seeing water once more shimmering like daytime stars in the gardens.

Good morning!  The sun is going to pop over the horizon at any second, the world is light now.  Clear skies and a warm day promised. John will shortly take out the cooking oil car and drive 12 miles to buy a  Sunday paper.   They don’t deliver them any closer than this service station in a little town on the main road.  So he makes the trek on Sundays. How can Sunday be a Sunday without the newspaper.

Have a lovely Sunday/Monday.  I will be outside in the gardens all day again. What a joy.

celi