By Slanted Light

Look what happens when I have two days off work... honestly! Let's catch up with Thursday and Friday's happy-making things.

Thursday
At one end of the day, another breakfast outside, under the sound of songbirds, and my landlords colourful flower bed.

And then at the other end of the day, wondering if I could catch the not-quite-perfectly-full-pink-supermoon, going out at 10pm when it was supposed to rise, realising there were hills in the way, and waiting... and waiting... and there it was.
Then walking back the other way, to see Venus shining so brightly above the houses...



Friday
The trees in are in blossom!



Hope you had some happy-making things in your day too...

Monday just seems to keep coming around... and today it blew in with warmth, and a kind of muggy feel, which normally I wouldn't like at all, but which made a nice change from the cold of winter today! also it had rained overnight (and dripped a bit today too), which was actually something we've needed for a few weeks! Doesn't feel right to say it after endless wet days (it felt like) over winter, but there you go! Today was a gloriously spring day, though...




I was out food saving again tonight, but because it was a yet again situation where the carer who'd stepped in was called away and couldn't do it, and I'd filled everyone I knew easily's freezers over the last week, I sent out a call for anyone on the village support group who might want food - and had half a dozen replies from people who said they'd be glad of a bit extra, including one guy who'd been living on food bank deliveries (via our village group) for ages. So I was very happy to be able to do something useful there too. It was dark by the time I got back, but the moon was full and it was a gorgeous night. *g*

Also, my current awkward work assignment is almost finished (last day tomorrow) and although I don't have anything else lined up yet (which is always very gulp when they leave it late to send), I'm very happy to be nearly done with this one!

My body is rebelling - my wrist is much better, but I must have slept strangely because I not only have a cricked neck, but a sore shoulder/back. Ack! So exercise much needed today, and here's what I saw on the way around - happy spring colours, and a field full of bunnies, including some very brave young ones only just over the wall from the road!





My next bedtime Pros-read is Forever True by Elizabeth Holden - another perennial favourite!

Catching up again...

Monday
The most glorious day. Mother Earth reminding us that really the world is beautiful and that one day it will be okay again...


It was actually warm enough to sit outside (and obviously read *g*) for lunch, and that I had a companion for lunch made me happy too. *g* I actually got so warm sitting in the sun that I had to go inside for a bit! Tried to work out there for a while too, but it's really too bright for my screen... But such a gorgeous day!

Tuesday
This made me happy yesterday, via ariss_tenoh

Make sure you keep watching to about two and a half minutes. *g*

How're you doing?

This is how light it was outside at nearly 5.30pm today. The days are getting longer! *g*

Suddenly spotting a wee circle of toadstools in the green grass made me happy too.

Also:
- reading Pros fic from the UK Paper Circuit Library (see post over at CI5hq)
- finishing work on time to go to creative writing, and actually doing some writing. *g*
- going to bed before 2am. Almost before 1am, but not quite. *g*
- family tree stuff!

I don't seem to have a spring icon - very remiss of me, because it's definitely spring. Today was a going-out-and-exploring day, and so I headed for my new most-local National Trust place - Stowe, which is about half an hour away. It was a not-sure day, all grey clouds with flashes of blue, and not cold but looking as if it should be...

The visitor centre is actually beside what was once basically the pub that catered for people going to visit Stowe's landscaped gardens - New Inn is all its called, but in fact they've done a lovely job of setting the rooms up just as I imagine they might have been. Look - Doyle left his jacket slung over the chairback while he had dinner with Bodie... *g* And their coats, hanging up beneath the stairs. I suspect they took rooms for the night, don't you? They may not have used them both, of course... *g*

( I imagine one of them... )

Still a day behind... Just went for a walk around the hack track yesterday - it's a river of cow parsley, the fields scattered with buttercups and dandelions, lovely! *g* It was also supposed to rain all day yesterday, but instead was the most gorgeous summer's day.

There are critters in three of these pics too, though I guess the horses aren't exactly wild countryside beasts. The one looking all who, me? actually had a mouthful of grass hanging down either side when I saw her, but I fumbled my lens cap and was too late!

Remember these guys, born just yesterday?Well I was just about to finish up on my laptop and go to bed a bit early, listening to the wind get up a bit higher and being very very sleepy, when I heard clattering and clunking outside in the bit of shed-building that's almost attached to my bit and where Mrs Sheep and her two babes are currently ensconced. Oooh I thought, I wonder if something's gone over... hope the sheeps are okay... And I thought I'd better go and check, cos I'm a good girl. *g* It wasn't the wind though, it was Landlord, setting up a second sheep pen, because - on the night we're forecast rain and gales - the second of their four sheep had just decided to have her lamb, and it was already looking a bit peaky and mum was just being hungry not paying much attention, and do you need a hand with anything? says I? If you wouldn't mind helping us get them in, says Landlord, We need all the help we can get...

So off we tromped to the field in the dark, and picked up the lamb, and encouraged mumma along with sheep nuts and a good hold on her, and some encouraging shoves behind - she didn't want to come - and eventually managed to get them both indoors... and then she didn't seem at all interested in him... ... ...and we wondered whether to get the other two sheep in, just in case they chose the same lousy night... and we watched to see if mumma had another one coming, and whether lamb would start to feed, and it didn't, and the recommendations were after two hours give them a feed with a tube, and the time came and went, and Landlord decided to go for it, and it's not all dip-your-finger-in-milk-and-let-it-suckle, it's tube-down-the-throat-to-the-stomach stuff, which he took really well, and then we watched to see if he perked up... and then decided to get the other two sheepses into Landlord's garden at least, so they'd be closer anyway if they needed moving to the lambing shed, and... phew! And then mumma delivered her placenta, and Landlord was a goodun and cleaned it up for her (though she got a few nibbles in before that...)

Luckily the weather's held - it's been really windy, but it's almost balmy with it, not cold. Only - you see the trio of dots up there? That's where I suddenly heard lots of loud bleating from the lambing shed as I was typing this, and decided (again) that I'd better go check, and I was just peering in and trying to work out what was wrong, and realising that my back was getting really wet now cos the rain had come, when landlord appeared through the window on the other side, and realised what the problem was. The lamb I was looking at wasn't lamb, it was one of the day-old cousins who'd somehow got through from his pen to the new pen... So he rescued him, and here I am again, having even made up a hot water bottle after all, cos brrrr.

Phew! Mind you, now I feel like I live in Somerset... *g*

Well I was sort of in an office, and worked hard actually - all that thinking about Rasch graphs, and Wright Maps and... quite brain-exploding stuff it was... and now of course there's the coursework about it - eeep! We finished early though, and I didn't get a headache today, and then I ended up deciding not to trog around London when I had no particular plans and did have luggage, so I walked over the river (well, on the bridge, not actually... *g*) and caught the train and was home in time for archery, but then I was quite tired and didn't go after all. I would have had to rush, and miss dinner, and... so no.

But London was lovely and London. Here's the view out my hotel window, and a London-y contre-jour (thanks gvenanne!) photo...

( And then... )

...I seem to be home in England, in Cambs. - in fact I seem to be in exactly the same place I left three months ago (but with new squidgy carpets and fresh paint in my old room *g*) because my landlady didn't find another tenant - and there's the most gorgeous chill in the air... Sorry, I expect everyone here's rather tired of it by now, but I did miss winter here, compared to 41C and half a state on fire... Hello northern hemisphere! And yet again it felt like I was on the right side of the world again, when I got back. So... there. *g*

I know I barely managed to post when I was away, but... here's England!




( Turned out that family's not conducive to... )