Blood Plums

This is the last of the plums. We've had good crops of cherry plums, green-gold greengages, and blood plums this summer. Blood plums, the last to ripen, are my favourite of all plums.

Mr Pip looked so hopeful

I shared it with him

Pip considers the day

I really like grace's practice of posting every day - and of posting everyday things. See her beautiful blog Windthread and the story cloths she sews.

I'm going to keep paying attention to day-to-day things. 

Every morning Pip has a walk and goes outside until the evening. He's just getting used to this new kennel. The old plastic greenhouse disintegrated last winter. 

Catching up with November

I've had a paper to write, talks to give and a lot of research tasks so I've been a bit (!) behind here. 

The garden has been full of roses and jasmine and so, therefore, has the house. 

We've had four birthdays in the family. 

I've been up at the Ballarat cemetery looking for a 19th century Ballarat Chinese doctor who is buried here.

and found him.

The weather has warmed up, summer is almost here and I have not caught up with the weeding - but I have put up a post.

Autumn colours

Mr Pip admires the Autumn colours

First summer harvest

Lemons (well they are fruiting most of the year), artichokes and rose geranium to scent the baked custard.

The hay is from the stock-food store. I've been taking the dog off his comfy hay to take photos lately and he huffs very gently to himself as he is hustled off.

Sorry Mr Pip, you can have your brekky now.

The welcome dog

Every evening I am warmly welcomed home.

Mr Pip has been here over 8 months, has settled in and we have got to know one another. He is a gentle, elegant, well-mannered dog.
 
He's not a guard dog like our beloved old sheep dog, Kitty, and  not a jester and adventurer, like Paddy the labrador. He is a meeter and greeter, a welcome- home dog.

Greenhouse dog

It's getting cold here, winter is just around the corner and the dog needs a daytime shelter.

I set up my old, placcy greenhouse,strengthened with duct tape, wedged in between the fence and the wheelie bin.
It's windproof and rainproof with visibility all round.

I had to sit in it awhile with Mr Pip before he decided it was acceptable.

(Yes, it was a tight squeeze)

Don't be fooled by that look, Mr Pip loves his greenhouse.

Generic dog

After a very short while the hole that Paddy & Kitty left in our lives grew too big to live with.

 I went down to the RSPCA a few times and found Mr Pip aka Pippy. He'd spent a couple of months in the adoption pens there as he's six, and while a lovely bloke, is not a spectacular dog. 

In fact, if these signs posted around our local lake are any guide, he is the generic dog.

 This is our Mr Pip.

He has obviously come from a loving home as he is a smart, gentle and trusting dog, used to rides in the car and living with people.

 

  He's still settling in and we are just getting used to each other, so I walk him on a'gentle leader' and am working on a suitable walking style with him. 

It's so lovely to have an energetic  dog to walk with. We've been on 3, 4 5 km walks most days.

He likes to have a rug outside. He carts it off with him to each new spot in the yard, drops it and sits on it.

Paddy and Kitty

 I haven't been able to write about this until today. 

It's now two weeks since we lost our two good friends. Paddy was 17 and Kitty was 15. They were in pain and aren't now. Yin and I cuddled them both into their last long sleep.

They were the best dogs and we miss them terribly.

Clean dogs and straw

It's warm enough to put the doggies out now, so I put down some straw for them to lie around in. Kitty has just been clipped (by me) and washed (by me) a heroic job tho' I say so myself.

She was not amused.

Still not amused.

Poor thing, she is 15 and feels such goings on are for younger dogs. I feel sad when I see how frail she has grown.

Paddy and yoga

Paddy is seventeen, really old for a labrador. He spends a lot of time lazing around. However he is a tough old beast - we describe him as the Holden ute of the dog world - and he maintains his reputation for stirring.

Shut out from yoga practice, because he will join in despite shouting and most unspiritual insults,

he goes off to occupy The Forbidden Chair.

Dogs of Honour

bees and butterflies and dogs

There haven't been many bees in the garden this year. I 've seen clouds of butterflies and masses of dragonflies but very few bees and not many blow flies.

I live near a very large park and most springs I see a swarm or two of bees - in the park and even settling briefly (and a bit scarily) in my front garden. Not this year. The lavender, which should be abuzz with bees, is full of butterflies instead. Perhaps the weather has been too cold and too wet for bees?

I wonder if the reason I haven't had any plums, peaches, apples or almonds this year is because there have been so few bees?

Berries have been good though - I grew lots of blackberries (the approved non-weed kind),  loganberries and wrested a few raspberries from the birds - or the dogs.

Paddy loves fruit and will scavenge fallen fruit and steal it from lower branches. He got most of the feijoas last year. The nectarine tree did well this year and so did Paddy.

Perhaps you can see the fragment of a nectarine at his feet. The Kitty dog is much more conventional in her eating and usually leaves the fruit alone, but this year she followed Paddy's lead and began to eat ripe nectarines too. Here she is watching Paddy eat his nectarine.

Now she's off to find one too.

Sneaking behind the lemon tree, and sniffing around for fallen fruit.

Then she looks up  - yum!

She looks a bit ragged and un-sheepdoglike as I have just given her her second summer haircut.

Frost in May

This morning the dandelion clocks were frosted and the roses blurred with ice.

But I love winter and the frost. Kitty the sheepdog loves the cold too. She's nearly 14, and is taking life easy now, but this morning she dragged me off to the park

We both sighed with pleasure when we got there.

Kitty adores frost and cold. She rolled and ran like crazy and was soon speckled all over with ice.

Lots of happy dog pics - if she had a camera you'd see happy human pics too.

I had fun in my own way.

Even juice cartons

bits of paper

and fenceposts are beautiful under frost.